Alison Bechdel is the well known creator and cartoonist of the lesbian oriented comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. Though it’s no longer in syndication, older strips pop up here, there and everywhere from time to time. Several books have been published containing collections of the strips. If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you know that I’m not a huge fan of comic books. On the other hand, I do read and follow many different comic strips. I’ve enjoyed Alison’s work many times over the past several years.
A fellow blogger and occasional guest contributor Joe Palmer, editor of GayLeague.com an LGBT comic fan site, turned me on to a wide world of gay, lesbian and transgendered themed comic books and graphic novels that I didn’t even know existed. Because of his influence, it was with great interest a month or so ago, that I picked up Alison’s book; an autobiographic graphic memoir titled Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
In Fun Home – the family ran a funeral home while she was growing up and that’s what they called it – Alison chronicles her life in both words and the skillful cartoon art she’s so well known for. She grew up in rural Pennsylvania, very much in the shadow of her father. She was heavily influenced by both his life and his death. The book, taken from her memory and from journals she had kept since age 10, attempts to resolve the complex puzzle that was her father and, at the same time, give the reader a feel for how Alison the artist, came to be who she is.
Though an autobiography, the book is done as a graphic novel. Given it’s subject matter and any experience the reader has with other graphic novels, you would expect it to be dark and brooding but it is not. Bechdels’ art is so realistic and lifelike that you almost forget you’re reading cartoons.
Bechdel’s upbringing was fun; she readily admits that, but it was far different from the average. Hers was not an emotionally connected family. Her father was a part time funeral director, a high school teacher of English and English Literature and a closeted gay man with a great flair for the decorative arts. Her mother was a teacher and a theater performer. Given their professions and their influence, Alison grew up with art and literature as strong influences in her life. Throughout her book as she makes reference to events that happened, she relates them to passages and concepts gleaned from literature and mythology. These references may dissuade a reader who is not very well read but, for those that are even minimally educated in the classics of literature and mythology, they truly do add to the ability to understand her points. I’ve read reviews that attacked Bechdel for taking an elitist attitude with this work by making the literary references that she does. She writes as she lived – and still lives – referencing what she knows. I would submit that she assumes nothing about the sophistication of the reader and just hopes they will enjoy the overall story.
There is a great, short video on Amazon.com that shows Alison live, as she was drawing the illustrations for the book where she walks the viewer through how she goes about the craft of drawing. It’s illuminating just to see her process. Even more interesting for me was to note her surroundings. She’s a woman consumed by books. In the small corner of her world that we see, presumably her studio, there are hundreds of books.
This is a coming out as a lesbian story, true. It’s a coming to terms with the faults of your parents story, also true. Third, it’s a graphic novel filled with light cartoons that offer amazing insight. But, this is not a book for children, nor even for most teenagers. Most readers under age 30 will not understand the literary references and, though not pornographic or illicit by any nature, there are some themes that are not appropriate for children, even those who are struggling with their sexual identities. Besides her own coming out and her relationship with her parents, the author speaks of her fathers trial that was a result of his interest in have sex with boys and his subsequent suspected suicide not long after that trial and after her coming out.
I very much enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys great writing and great art in any form.
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