Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is a colossal achievement.
Bechdel’s story was made for this from, or she did she a good job within this
from that I am convinced it was made for it. Bechdel uses several different
devices to be able to convey the message of this book.
References to other texts. This book is littered with references
to other books. They are used to frame chapters, explain behaviors, and as an attempt
to understand her father. Although most of the time they were clear and lifted
the narrative and made sense, such her father’s obsession with Fitzgerald and
the parallels to the ages when they died. There were several times when it felt
overdone. It felt isolating, and at times inaccessible. I know more about
Fitzgerald then I do her mother, and that bothered me. There were times when I felt
Bechdel over reaching especially with all the Joyce references. It wasn’t that
that wasn’t working particularly well, in fact the parallels were so perfect at
times it almost made the narrator unreliable.
It felt more like a crutch to get things out. I was reading about
reading instead of hearing Bechdel’s story from her own point of view. Maybe it
was the only way she could tell the story because that was one of the things
they shared. At the very end however, the pictures that were accompanying the references
were perfect because they had nothing to do with them until the last line. That
juxtaposition of what I was seeing to what I was reading worked really well for
me.
I loved how this book circled and moved through time. There
were repeated references to events that I very much enjoyed. Some of these were
her coming out, her conversations with her mother afterwards, the references to
her father and other men, her father giving her books to read, and the mapping
of the town her father lived in. I know there were others. The point is, that
every time one of these things came up we were given a different detail. We
were given a little more about what had happened or we saw something from a
different angle. One of the more telling scenes was towards the end of the book
on page 220 when she talks to her father about when he gave her Colette. She has
built up this moment in her mind and it was a big point of connection, and to
him it wasn’t. That is just such a true statement for human beings, and a
perfect metaphor for her relationship with her father. One of attempting to
connect.
It is really interesting how the drawings in this book were able
to characterize her father. For example her father seemed like a different
person when he was working and in his jean shorts. When he was dressed up and
in the house he seemed stiffer. He seemed more at piece in the short shorts,
and I wonder, based on the last conversation when the father admits he wanted
to be a girl, if he was. There were some lasting images in this book that are
going to stay with me for a long time. On page 7 there is a picture of her
father in the jean shorts carrying some long piece of wood. It completely evokes
Jesus carrying the cross. The look on his face is one of despair and the house
is in darkness behind him. The words on top of the panel read “It was his
passion. And I mean passion in every sense of the word.” Within the panel it
says “Libidinal. Manic. Martyred.” Here Bechdel is talking about her father and
the house, but she really could be talking about him and almost everything we
know of him, his love of books, he love of men. It is an image that comes early
on in the piece but it really tells the whole story.
Best,
CF
I liked your depiction of Bechdel's father bearing the cross imagery because it completely fits. He was the patriarch of the family, always bearing this "secret" of being gay from his children. I also wondered why the author excludes her mother and chose to zoom in on the father. She talks a bit about the mother's life before marriage, and there's a mother-daughter bonding moment when Alison helps her mom out with a play she's acting in. But it would have been interesting to see the mom's new pathway (or life) after her divorce with her husband, and how she reacted to his death shortly after.
ReplyDeleteher next book is about her mother, BTW. anyway, Cynthia, i agree with : Maybe it was the only way she could tell the story because that was one of the things they shared.
ReplyDeletei believe she does deflect using other writers to write her story. I think she keeps distant from the reader because her distance from her feelings...
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Cynthia you write that Bechdel's extreme reliance on other texts, caused the story to feel "isolating, and at times inaccessible." I agree that this is an impact of the strategy and I wonder if it was both a crutch as you term it but also a decided approach to map for the reader the precise feeling of outsiderness and longing young Bechdel (and the older Bechdel actually writing the work) feels/felt for her father. Inside this I wonder how much of this ends up being "fair" to the reader, or if that's even an important consideration - afterall it is her artistry and I'm not sure there's "justice" per se inside of that - but if it is excluding the reader too much, if it risks bouncing us out, it does seem like an important question to consider.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed in this reading 2.5 a great deal about the way Bruce's body is depicted. Something new that emerged was the way in which he was in continual physical contact with the environment of the house or the outdoors, and the way in which this contact with the environment emphasized his estrangement from physical expression with his family - circling back to the loneliness or outsiderness that the textual act of relying on other authors generated in the text. She is so deliberate and incredible in weaving image and idea... awestruck again by Bechdel's craft.