Ian S. Brundige
Fun Home Reflection
Fun Home is dense in every way. For a graphic novel it leans into both the graphics and the novel with detailed first-person narration from Alison Bechdel throughout the entire book and images in a variety of styles to distinguish multiple media: photography, film, dreams, maps, books, Bechdel’s own life. With panels of full text some pages become very text heavy and with minimal speech bubbles or sound marks within the pictures the graphics and text often feel separate, connected only by their shared blue tint. The storytelling, both visually and verbally, builds on itself repeatedly referencing the story of her father's death in each chapter as more details about the incident and her relationship with her parents (specifically her closeted father) are revealed.
While her father's death is established in the second chapter (and alluded in the first chapter with the story of Icarus) the entire graphic novel goes on to explore the event. Bechdel goes as far as to repeat not only certain motifs and themes but exact scenes, showing a slightly different perspective/point of view each time. For example,her father’s funeral or him walking across the street before getting hit by the truck. In one panel we see his point of view as if there were a snake and later we see the bread truck.
I enjoyed Bechdel’s voice the most, her internal dialogue about her own writing, learning, and autobiographical process. The acknowledgment of memory’s limitation in conjunction with her own subjectivity and emotions towards her father is refreshing and makes her feel like a more real narrator. She has a confident self-aware town in spite of, or maybe because of, the inclusion of the small phrase “I think” when journaling as a child. Revealing more details and moments throughout her life like her time in her father’s English class and obsessive compulsive order Bechdel manages to capture the infinity of a human by providing a wide breadth of vignettes that work together to compose a personal memoir within the context of a nation in turmoil.
She does by not only featuring her own writing, but also current events, letters from her father, excerpts from books that she references and is reading throughout the story. The list of allusions and direct references is long including: Ulysses, Earthly Paradise, Icarus, Watergate, the plays her mother is in. I specifically appreciated the use of dictionary entries as I found myself also looking up many of the words Bechdel uses in her own narration. The complexity of references and writing encouraged me to look up things and be curious in the way Bechdel seems to be. It is in many ways a literary love letter tied up in a coming of age story and two coming out stories. With so much to accomplish Bechdel is largely successful due to her development and repetition of theme and imagery connecting the first panels of the book to final panels. As her father lifts her up like an airplane in the beginning and she jumps off a diving into his arms at the end Icarus flying too close to the sun and the relationship of a father and son (lesbian daughter) becomes an analogy for the whole story.