The Irony of the Fun

As I was writing discussion questions, one thing really stuck with me, and that was the symbolism of the Bechdel's home and the funeral home. I know we've touched on both things during discussion, but I can't help but to see the homes as irony. Bruce keeps both so kept and well attended to, yet, there is nothing "homey" about either place. One holds the literal dead, accompanied by mourning, and the other holds a family that can barely hold itself together. When I think of "home," I think of love, connectedness, support, unity, and the Bechdel's home has very little of these things. After giving my little input, I was curious as to what everyone else thought about the two homes and what they symbolize, if anything.

Alison Bechdel- On A Mission

After finishing "Fun Home" I was intrigued enough about her to want to know a little more so I Google searched her and found her website and personal blogs.  While impressed overall, I was still left with the same feeling Charles discussed in his blog- she feels like a woman missing something.  Her website and cartoons, "Dykes to Watch Out For" are very entertaining and she takes you on a personal tour of all that is "Alison".  However, after finishing the tour, I was left wondering if she will ever  be alright.  All her pictures from all over the world show a sad faced woman looking at the camera.  I don't think she smiled in one...even in Venice.  Her words reminisce darkness and hurt and even though tinged with humor, the longing is evident.  One in particular really intrigued me because she told the story of a troupe doing a stage version of "Fun Home".  They had decided that since Alison's old house was now a rental, they would stay there for inspiration and she decided to join them.  At first unsure she made the correct decision, she wondered if she could rest in that terribly haunted house but later said she did "just fine". What really bothered me personally however was the photo of her laying in her old bathtub plugging the drips with her toe.  It was heartbreaking to me that of all the things she remembered in that home, the trauma induced OCD still came back all these years later and she was still compelled, jokingly or not, to cut of the drips with her toe.  I have to agree with Charles that she seems to be missing something and if she cannot break free from the past and move towards a healthier future no amount of literary success will fill the void.  I hope she finds her muse and happiness someday and finds whatever it is that she seems to be unable to find.

Bechdel's Cathartic Autobiography

It is clear that in writing Fun Home Alison Bechdel is trying to understand the odd relationship she had with her father and other members of her family. Most importantly, she was grappling with her father’s suicide and the events that precipitated it. She explains: “My father’s death was a queer business—queer in every sense of the multivalent word” (57).  In other words, Bruce Bechdel’s death had multiple meanings, as did his life. Does this also mean that there could be a genetic predisposition for suicide in the family? 

Bruce Bechdel’s repressed childhood memories resulted not only in his own pathology, but also caused anxiety in the rest of the family, resulting in multiple disorders. Bechdel reveals these oddities throughout her book. For instance, she confides to her readers: “Though it verges on the pathetic, I should point out that no one had kissed me good night in years” (137). She had only herself and the stuffed animals in her room. Her family was emotionally unavailable. 

There are times when Alison gets close to her father, but rarely, if ever, do they fully connect, despite the commonalities between them. It is like a poor electrical connection that causes the lights to flicker on and off. They never stay lit for long. The haunting images on the final pages offer some closure, but even that is ambiguous. Bruce Bechdel is standing in the pool, poised to catch his young daughter, who appears to be suspended in time. But did he? In retrospect, it seems that Bruce did the best he could under the circumstances, and possibly that is the best that Alison can hope for. And that may be the extent of her catharsis. He was, after all, permanently damaged by being molested as a child.

Fun Home leaves me with a feeling that something irretrievable is missing from the author’s life. The disturbing image of James Joyce’s family haunts page 231. I sense hope and a hint of doubt in Bechdel’s words and drawings at the end of the book. I suspect that she will be all right because she had the courage to embrace who she really is in a public way. But can we really know? The final pages of Bechdel’s life have yet to be written.  

A bit more about Fun Home, the musical

I know Danielle has already posted a bit about this, but there is a musical based on Fun Home, and it's been getting good reviews. Alison Bechdel is a fan. Anyway, check out this piece about the cast visiting the actual home. Lots of good links in this piece, too--prepare to go down a Fun Home rabbit hole!

The Price of Too Much Fun

**Warning Spoiler Alert**
I am absolutely loving the book "Fun Home" and have not been able to put it down since I started reading it.  I have been enthralled with her story and the bi-lines of her family and the human persistence in assigning fault and blame.  I have been fixated on the accident/suicide scenario first because of the family's reaction and later for the cause.  I wondered if it was an accident at all, as everyone else has, but more so because of their need to call it suicide.  If it is suicide does that exonerate them in some way from all the misery in his life?  If it was an accident is that somehow more tragic because they never got a chance to develop a relationship with him...could they have?  Upon pondering this I got to the section about the 1976 Fourth of July celebration in NYC.  Her father washed his face, put them to bed and went out into the night into what epidemiologists would pin point as one of the biggest proponents of the beginning of the AIDS crisis.  Sailors and people from all over the world met, had unprotected sex (possibly with multiple partners) and soon thereafter- the emergence of AIDS in the US.  That got me really wondering if perhaps on top of the arrest and unfulfilled life, did Bruce contract AIDS that one wild night of uninhabited self-indulgence? As Bechdel said in her book, denying your sexuality is akin to death so in this case, his life was denied and then, just maybe, he got an expiration date.  The combination of the factors may have been too much for him (or anyone for that matter) and he stepped in front of a truck to end it.  While it may seem a little far fetched, the ravishes of AIDS in conjunction with being forced into celibacy to avoid infecting another and the stigma assigned to it if this was indeed the case, would be enough to drive anyone to the edge.  Tragic no matter how you spin it, but compelling nonetheless.

Fun Home= Fun Reading

Is anyone else really enjoying reading Fun Home as much as I am?! The only other graphic novel that I have ever been introduced to is written by Marjane Satrapi and it is called Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. Basically, Persepolis is about a little girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution, a time of great turmoil and destruction. It is filled with some pretty graphic scenes, things little girls should not have to witness or even think about when they are growing up. I strongly recommend reading it if you have yet to, especially because of the situational connections that can be made to Fun Home. Probably due to my lack of experience with reading graphic novels I am starting to wonder if this writing style is an outlet for authors with particularly difficult childhoods or life stories to get some sort of closure. For me Fun Home has been way more emotionally trying to read in comparison to non-graphic novels. I like that the typical barrier that the 'author does not exist' has been broken due to the way that Bechdel is quite literally showing us what her life was like not only through words, but through illustrations as well. Reading Fun Home feel like such an intrusion in comparison to the other works of literature I have been introduced to. It feels as if I have personally stolen Alison Bechdel's  private diary/ pried my way into her inner-most thoughts. I like how different and expressive this writing style is so if anyone has any more recommendations for graphic novels, please throw them my way!      

Gender Reactions in Fun Home

When Alison comes out to her parents, I found it pretty obvious why her dad takes it better than her mother.  Granted, her dad being gay would give more grounds to sympathize with her than most parents.  However, I feel that gender role plays a huge role in Alison's parents separate reactions to her letter.  Even if Bruce were heterosexual he would likely have a similar reaction. Alison will always be his little girl and her sexuality would not change their relationship.  Helen on the other hand, does not just brush it off nearly as easy.  Being the same sex, a mother daughter relationship is going to change drastically.  Helen is now, especially during the seventies/eighties, going to miss out on huge moments in her daughters life.  I'm sure Helen feels she is going to miss out on these sacred experiences, like shopping, her wedding, and even grandchildren.  Helen is at first in denial when she decides to reply to Alison, explicating her doubts "I imagine that, if in the long run, your choice turns out to be a serious one, I could live with it, but I truly hope this does not happen" (77).  Helen seems to be hoping that this is just a phase and she is going to come to her senses.  It seems that Helen will accept this in the future, if she must, but their relationship will be affected by Alison's sexuality forever.  A father and son going through the same thing would likely affect the father son relationship more than the mother and son's relationship.  As human-beings we tend to expect the same interests and life experiences of the same sex, to relate to one another.

Literary Illusions in Fun Home

I think it is interesting that Bechdel uses literary allusions and myths to describe her parents, particularly her father. She states that she does this “because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms” (67). She compares her parents to F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s tumultuous relationship. She also talks about her father’s suicide in relation to what he had been reading in the weeks leading up to his death: A Happy Death by Albert Camus. She says that he had been leaving the book around the house in a “deliberate manner” (27). She highlights a piece of text from the book in one of the panels to provide commentary on her father and her parents’ marriage: “He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage” (28). This deception ultimately led to his suicide.

Bechdel's Life as a Text

Alison Bechdel analyzes the inter-connectivity of her life with literature in Fun Home. We experience this as early as the auto-graphic's first page, as Bechdel sets up the retelling of her life in parallel with the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, showing an image of her "flying" above her father, as Icarus (3). On the next page the first panel reads, "In our particular reenactment of this mythic relationship, it was not me but my father who was to plummet from the sky" (4). On this first page where we see Alison and her father in the Icarus-Daedalus position (playing "airplane"), there is a copy of Anna Karenina on the floor of the panel. This specific inclusion of the novel is a direct nod to the events that would happen to Bruce, Alison's father: while Anna jumps in front of a train to end her life, Bruce (potentially) jumps in front of a bread truck to end his.

While we later witness the sun motif of the Icarus-Daedalus myth, not only in the Sunbeam bread truck but in Alison's premonition dream, Bechdel introduces many other literary references as means of making sense of her own life. She draws connections between her father and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and imagines her mother as Isabel Archer, of Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady (71). Even the scenario in which her parents met, in the performance of The Taming of the Shrew, Bechdel highlights the problematic relationship model that her parents would later embody. With her parents best understood to her as fictional characters --something Alison mentions in the text-- perhaps Bechdel even sees or experiences herself as a literary character or at least byproduct of literature.

Proust and Camus are other strong literary undercurrents throughout Fun Home, which Bechdel employs to make sense of her family life. I am most intrigued by the references to Camus, though, which Charles touched on in his post.

I believe that Alison experiences her life as a text, analyzing it with a critical and well-read eye, with the help of family photographs and literature-- both of which she puts to use to compile an organized, remastered representation of her life that we experience literally translated in this graphic work.


P.s. I can't help but wonder if Bruce would be pleased to know that the story of his life in connection to her daughter would become a book on the shelves of other libraries. Less-lavishly furnished libraries, maybe, but libraries all the same.

Innate Homosexualtiy: Fact or Fiction?

It is no secret that Alison Bechdel is a lesbian and her father is gay.  However, what I find the most intriguing is whether or not homosexuality was an innate aspect in their lives, or was it something that they learned about themselves along the way.  The text hints to both reasons.  Bechdel states, "In Cannes, I argued compellingly for the right to exchange my tank suit for a pair of shorts" (73).  It seems as though that Bechdel was aware of her masculine tendencies from a young age.  In fact, she even says that she noticed these homosexual feelings at the age of four or five when her and her father went into the diner and she saw a rather "butchy" looking female.  She had decided that this masculine image was what she felt defined her.  But can we say that she was born with this homosexual trait?  It is not scientifically proven that homosexuals possess a specific gene that straight people do not, or vise versa.  I would argue that the influences on Bechdel's life played an important role in her sexuality.  The more her father pushes her to be a "girl," the more she veers away towards a more masculine personality.  This persuasion of her father's could be a benefactor in her decision of homosexuality.  She may be unconsciously rebelling her father's wishes, or compensating for his lack of masculinity (i.e., because he was gay as well and possessed more feminine tendencies).  She states, "while I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him . . . he was attempting to express something feminine through me" (98).  My Ultimate question, and potential paper topic, would be is homosexuality something people are born with, or born into?

Fun Home of Gatsby

While reading the most recent chapters of Fun Home, I noticed that Bechdel referenced her father's love for the novel, "The Great Gatsby". It is not so much a love for Gatsby as it is a love for F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I began to pick up on the allusions to The Great Gatsby that I felt were embedded in the chapter. There is a well known theory that the narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carroway is secretly in love with the character of Jay Gatsby, a significantly older man. The reverse happens in Fun Home. The father is in love with much younger men.On pg. 84, we are shown an illustration of the father with a young Allison sitting in a giant library which was the father's prized room in the house which reminds me of the Great Gatsby because Gatsby gifts Daisy with her own private library in an attempt to win her over. The relationship between Bechdel's parents reminds me of the relationship between Daisy and Tom in the novel. There was no love, no affection towards each other, and both sets of partners found what they wanted in a partner through extramarital affairs although it is not explicitly stated if Bechdel's mother had affairs like her father did. I also found it slightly ironic that the father is obsessed with gardening and the protagonist in the Great Gatsby is named Daisy.

There were a lot of great pieces brought to light or referenced to in the two chapters. Were there any allusions that anyone else found?

What's so Fun?

After reading Jessica’s post about the title of the graphic novel, I began speculating on the issue. On page 36, Bechdel states that they call the funeral home the “fun home”. This is an obvious shortening of the word funeral to fun, first of all, but that leads to the question of why is this relevant. I thought that this was one of the many uses of symbolism that Bechdel employs. She is trying to symbolize the idea that death is perpetually present, from having the funeral home or from her father’s death spurring the events of the book. Branching off of the idea of her dad’s death, I thought that perhaps Bechdel was trying to employ irony in the idea that she wanted her house to be a fun home in that it was an enjoyable place to be. Instead, with her father’s death, her house became the fun home because the idea of his death was always hanging over his head. Did anyone else see an abundance of symbolism?

It's about equality #FreetheNipple

While reading about Alison's struggles to wear clothes "meant" for men (particularly on page 73), I couldn't help but relate it to the Free the Nipple campaign that is occurring in our society right now. In case you aren't aware, the campaign is an equality movement focused on addressing the double standards of female breasts censorship. Just as Alison should have the freedom to wear whatever she wants without feeling ashamed, my breast shouldn't be over sexualized to the point of censorship, especially not when a man's nipple can be displayed freely. Here is a video discussing the movement in more detail, if you are interested: #FreetheNipple

Fun Home the Musical

As someone that usually reads comic books, I was really interested in finding more out about this book. Apparently a musical has been produced about the book. I wanted to share the link with you guys. It looks hilarious.

As often as we see books become movies, I find it strange that a graphic novel turned into a musical. The graphic novel touches on some dark subjects like child abuse. Do you think it was purposely turned into a musical because a regular film would be too hard to pull of the tragicomedy?


Fun Home Musical

Title of Fun Home

            After reading first two assigned readings in Fun Home, written by Alison Bechdel, I have found myself interested in the title of this graphic novel. She tells us that she and her brother nick-named the family funeral home business, “fun home” (36). Although the siblings were given duties to fulfill while at the fun home, they found ways to entertain themselves, such as the “folding-chair trolley” (37). I understand the meaning behind that reasoning for the title, but before reading that section, I wondered, “Why is this book titled Fun Home?” It didn’t necessarily seem like fun to me at all, and as we have read, this family has had their fair share of things go wrong in their lives. Alison even describes their family as “a sham” (17).  Their life, although it seems like they had a few good memories, for the most part, it seems like they have had a pretty rough. The father was having an affair with men, he was killed after being hit by a car, and the entire family seems distant from each other. I just found “Fun Home” to be an interesting title that does not necessarily connect to the novel as a whole, but more to just the particular section that discusses the funeral home. 

Fun Home: Living with Abuse

In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel pulls her readers into a few funny, sad, and confusing moments of her life. Ironically enough, the sad moments between the Bechdel children/Mrs. Bechdel and Mr. Bechdel strike me the most. Alison Bechdel’s father seems to be a very harsh and lost man who uses his wife and children as an outlet for the frustration and confusion within his own life. As Bechdel recalls an argument between her mother and father, her father yells to her mother, “You’re the one with the problem, you crazy b*tch” (70). Not only is Bechdel’s father’s comment degrading, but it is also abusive towards her mother. The next caption involves ripped pages and Bechdel’s mother nervously yelling, “Those are library books!” in which Mr. Bechdel vengefully replies, “Good. Take that back to the f*cking library” (70). Alison Bechdel clearly contrasts her mother’s comments from her father’s spiteful personal attacks which involve profanity. These arguments which the Bechdel children hear between their mother and father are also considerably mentally disturbing. The ways that the children hear their father degrade their mother can, and may have, created a number of psychological problems for the children. I would argue that Mr. Bechdel is mentally abusive—although unaware—towards his wife and children. Do you all agree or disagree that Mr. Bechdel was mentally abusive towards his family? Could he have been physically abusive?

David's Mother

Sedaris' "Go Carolina" looked at social constructions, education, and conformation.  This writing gives the reader a lot of information, with a dash of humor to help it be understood.  I decided to look at David's interactions with his mother.  The first time we see David talk to his mother, he is complaining to her about his speech therapist.  His mother responds saying "I'm sure she's not that bad. Giver her a break.  The girl's just trying to do her job" (9).  Although his mother does not side with David's complaints of the therapist, I imagine this being a comfortable, teasing scene between David and his mother.  This thought is strengthened by the fact that David continues to rely in his mother.  The easy-going interactions between David and his mother contrast with the interactions between David and the therapist.  The therapist is manipulative, and does not seem to care much for David.  At his last therapy session, Miss Samson is able to trick David into making a s sound, and she reacts not as the reader would expect her to act: "She laughed much more than she needed to and was still at it when she signed the form recommending me for the following year's speech therapy program" (15).  This would have been devastating for a child, and not highly constructive toward his therapy.  When David relays the story to his mother, she laughs just as Miss Samson had, saying to her son "you've got to admit that you really are a sucker" (15).  David ends on a note of humor: "I agreed but, because none of my speech classes ever made a difference, I still prefer to use the word chump" (15).  David acknowledges that he agreed with his mother, and ends recalling that his speech therapy was unsuccessful.  I imagine that his mother was who David trusted, and that although she supported his therapy, her support was not in the interest of changing her son.  She displays the same humorous personality as her son in "Go Carolina."

A Gratifying Assumption

Fun Home is an extremely interesting piece in which Alison Bechdel candidly shares the complexities of her family life and specifically issues dealing with her father. There is so much to talk about here, but something that struck me and which I am quite curious about in this novel is Alison’s certainty that her father did in fact commit suicide. That may very well be the case, but I think the argument could be made that Alison wants to believe he killed himself without real evidence of it being so.  In making that argument, I have to ask why she would prefer to accept that his death was suicide rather than a tragic accident. Is Alison comforted, because it was what he wanted? Or does she feel gratified that he realized what a lousy husband and father he had been? I am more inclined toward the latter based on the text so far. Much of what I’ve read suggests that Alison did not like her father, but there are comments here and there that seem something like love. Lines such as, “Was he a good father? I want to say ‘At least he stuck around.’ But of course, he didn’t.” (28) make me wonder what Alison is trying to say. If his only good quality was that he “stuck around”, why would she care that he was gone? This line suggests to the reader that he ruined the only good characteristic he had going for him, but that only makes sense if she wanted him there. This leads to my larger question which may perhaps be difficult to answer, is Alison glad that her father is dead? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

A Fraudulent Foundation

It's quite clear from the beginning of Fun Home that Bechdel's father lacks the confidence to be who he really is. His insecurities were most clear to me when one of Bechdel's brothers makes a comment about Bruce's tie over the breakfast table. He immediately runs upstairs to change it, despite the fact that they are running late (18-19). Bruce is so concerned with his outward appearance and how others perceive him and his life, that he creates a completely fraudulent world for himself. I believe it's this disconnection with the truth that prompts him to end his life. While in The Awakening, Edna commits suicide to avoid living a fictitious life, Bruce commits suicide to escape from the lies he so skillfully created. The constraints of living in a small town kept Bruce from discovering and embracing who he was. Instead, he kept his true self hidden, shunned it and constantly pushed it to the side, pretending to be someone he wasn't. The stress of this is evident in the way he interacts with his children. We see him punish Bechdel for a vase being close to the edge of a table. As she receives her punishment Bechdel exclaims, "But I didn't do anything!" (18). He can't handle his seemingly perfect world to be off in the slightest, because of a fear that the lies it was built on could easily come crashing down.

The Absurd in Alison Bechel's Fun Home

In Fun Home, Bechdel’s father is described as an artificer, an inventor of faux reality: “He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear what they are not” (16). Thus the father and daughter are cast outside the heteronormative family structure; however, the appearance of a typical procreative family is maintained. But everything about this dysfunctional family’s interaction is atypical of a nuclear family. There is something absurd about them and their awkward, often cold, social interactions. 

Similarly, there is little about Bechdel’s graphic autobiographical novel that is typical. The story does not follow the typical structure of linear narrative. The reader moves between retrospective perspective and the present and attempts to grasp strands of narrative and reassemble them in a way that makes seems of the absurd. 

The father reads Camus, an existentialist philosopher, and demonstrates a morbid fascination with his death in an auto accident. Camus’ philosophy was concerned with the absurd, particularly the absurdity of death: “The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd” (47). What could be more absurd than Mr. Bechdel’s life? When he is killed by a bread truck, the question arises, was it suicide or an accident?  

Fun Home with a Fun House

I have read Fun Home before, so I will do my best to post without giving anything away. I find the topic of Alison’s house interesting, because her father goes to great lengths to make the house beautiful, but her family is not close. Bechdel says at one point: “That our house was not a real home at all but the simulacrum of one, a museum” (Bechdel 17). I believe that Alison Bechdel’s home is an example of her father playing pretend: “He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they are not” (Bechdel 16). Bruce Bechdel is hiding from his true-self and playing the role of the perfect father. Alison’s house can never be a true home, because Alison and her father are trapped in defying gender roles. Moreover, this gigantic mansion is cold and separates Alison’s family from one other. I believe a house can never truly become a home without a connected family. Is this huge house a place for Bruce to hide from his problems?