1) On the front of my copy is a quote from Entertainment Weekly "A splendid autobiography... refreshingly open and generous."I think this is especially true considering how open Bechdel is being with the world. There are a lot of very revealing things in this story, potentially humiliating and certainly not things most people would ever tell anyone. Mainly the book exposes Bechdel's father as a man (teacher) who preyed on teenagers (his students), which is just a huge taboo and not something Bechdel ever had to expose. She chose to tell the world, why do you think that is? Also consider the other parts of the story that were very open/generally things people keep to themselves. How does the graphic medium expose certain things even more than say a novel form of autobiography? Also, could Bechdel have written a worthwhile autobiography without some of the information she exposes, for example her first period (something not included in Persepolis)?
2) "He did hurtle into the sea, of course. But in the tricky reverse narration that impels our entwined stories, he was there to catch me when I leapt." These last lines in Fun Home are fairly ambiguous, at least to me. Bechdel is employing a metaphor/allusion to Ulysses, and also concluding her story, also referring literally to the panel where she is leaping into her father's arms, etc. What do you think Bechdel means by "tricky reverse narration" and "entwined stories?" Also consider how often the book shifts in time as well as how often the book shifts in focus on Bruce or Allison. Would an entwined story with tricky reverse narration work to the same effect in a novel? How does the graphic form make this less tricky for us readers? Also just what do these last lines mean to you, what's Bechdel saying here?
3) Lastly, I'd like to consider page 226, a quote from the panel that shows some of Ulysses. "But worst of all, Mr. Power said, is the man who takes his own life...They say a man who does it is a coward." Bechdel has been talking about her father's suicide this entire time, so why does she just now (at the very end) include this perspective? How do you think Bechdel really feels about her father? How does she seem to be trying to make you, the reader, feel about him? For the first half of the book he seemed generally hostile towards her and her masculinity, but towards the end he is trying to take her to a gay bar and bond with her. She obviously has some conflicted feelings, but buried under all the Joyce and Proust and Fitzgerald, can it be determined how she really views him by the end of the story?
3.5) There are a ton of panels dedicated to excerpts from books or from her journals or someone's letters. How does the graphic medium work in her favor regarding this, even though those are so text heavy that it seems counter-intuitive?
Addressing the first question:
ReplyDeleteThe degree of detachment of this book was almost painful to witness. I think Bechdel acknowledges this-- that her upbringing let her to this anesthetic quality (paralleled next to the morgue) of moving about life and motions that utterly suppressed emotions, leading her to read her life, her father's life, the story of her house and the dreaded series of circles in the same way that we sit around trying to interpret literature-- the care and meticulousness. The visual trickery of the house analogous with her father's underground affairs. The focus on a false surface that must be picked apart and dissected in order to get to the root meaning.
This girl is severely detached, and I think that this novel is the testimony of trying to solve her life like it was a poem laid out on paper, almost voided or watching from the outside of the experience-- and this is evident in the shut off way she was forced to live without meaningful connection to either of her parents in that lonely house of generous, but also a autistic colony (somewhere around the 130 mark?) because each person in relation to them didn't matter, only themselves to themselves.
I think this severe detachment is what leads her to this sort of apathetic honesty in the way that she reveals intimate things that may be embarrassing-- things about how she handled the development of her father, to even her father's affairs and suicide without a lot of emotionally invested judgment or mediation, other than a sort of scientific approach (which is a strange juxtaposition, considering the MASSIVE amounts of text and excerpts from literature we see here) in which every and ALL available context is laid bare, and like a math problem, or an apathetic literati, is dissected and classed, meanings created, themes emerging as if they were orchestrated that way-- as if it were all the tragic great novel from Fitzgerald or something. I never really got the feeling like she was laying raw in a way that was vulnerable, but rather as a stranger bewildered by the state of affairs.
And the way she voices her own biography speaks a lot to her development and upbringing. At the end of the day, after all, people are not characters in books. Yet examining her life as a text gave meaning that she didn't feel emotionally living through everything. I think as readers it feels very jarring in a sense because it cuts so personally with little censorship either in content (e.g. what she reveals) or in text (e.g. the events and objects are interpreted, yet in a way that explains and doesn't really condemn or lament.)
Fantastic post. I think it must be said that outside of her own descriptions of her family and her own life, Bechdel's character comes through most clearly from the writing style she employs throughout Fun Home. The references, her tone, the events she finds important (particularly her interest in her previous diary-keeping habits), it all seems to illustrate Bechdel much more than any direct statement she might make about herself. It's so ironic that for all of the focus on and references to literature that she takes such a clinical perspective on her family. I find myself wondering if it's only within the context of family that she has such a strong sense of detachment.
DeleteI agree that Fun Home had a detached quality to it and I think it's really insightful to notice that Bechdel goes into this topic when describing her childhood. I think that there is definitely support for this idea because of scenes such as when Bechdel talks about how growing up in her home was like living in an artist colony, where everyone worked on their own creative outlet without interacting much. Very interesting!
DeleteFun Home
ReplyDeleteBechdel is so forward in her desire to open her life up. She sort of exposes her family for every major incident no matter what size. Her father, being secretly interested in the same sex as well as meeting with younger men, was sort of the driving force in this story. We are given an awesome look into her early life, but her life would have little importance without the connections with her father. If she weren’t willing to share this side of her story, we would lose out on a whole side to her. So many comparisons were made in her life to her fathers, and this realization lead to her accepting her father for who he was and even accepting her own childhood that she often deems as complicated. Graphic novels like these are very open in their interpretation of events. Fun Home chooses to feature every little encounter that being sexual and or non sexual. It chooses to show things that would usually be looked over. Bechdel’s exploration of her sexuality wouldn’t be so impactful on her character development if it wasn’t so graphic and precise. I feel like she has enough going on in her life that losing something like her period wouldn’t make a big change. I still appreciate seeing this personal part of her life. This time exposed the way she saw herself and her internal fears.
I feel that Fun Home is like a cobweb layered over multiple other cobwebs equally one super strong net that not find could destroy. Her family is so complex and the way they are described is amazing. I can really see who her parents were and how they evolved with Bechdel herself. I can see her father’s past and how he developed into the man he was before he died and I can see her mother who seemed to pull back into this emotionless state. Entwined stories could make reference to the multiple life stories that make up Bechdel’s own, or it can mean the many stories she uses to compare to her own. One, for example, is the comparison to Gatsby and her father from The Great Gatsby; the way they started from the bottom and made themselves into someone with vast riches, that being her father’s complex and beautiful home. I feel like a story with tricky reverse narration like this would be harder to show without the use of images randomly scattered throughout this novel that pull from the overall storyline. The backtracking of events and personal history she didn’t see herself, for example. It would be harder to describe with a written word. The use of repeated images bringing back and similar idea from another point sparks a returned idea. The last makes reference to her father’s life compared to hers. He jumped into a life before being able to explore and accept who he was. Bechdel and her father’s conversations later in life made it easier for her to accept herself.
I think Bechdel choosing to bring up the quote from Ulysses is definitely making reference to her father. He gave up his life before he was able to make it better for himself. Towards the end of the novel, Bechdel goes on to talk about what his life, or hers, would be like if he hadn’t committed suicide. She is saying that he gave up trying to do something he never really gave a chance to. Bechdel saw so much more of the world than her father. She understood what she wanted and that seems to be what she wanted for her father as well. The novel sort of moves like a rollercoaster in reference to him. The beginning left us with a low concept of his character, while later in the novel, Bechdel chooses to place him in a more caring tone. By the end of the novel, we see that Bechdel views her father with understanding. He’s been lying to himself for a long time and her later friendship with him gave her the final images of who he truly was as a person. She feels that he was in a sort of acceptance when he began seeing that she was somewhat like him.
As we’ve discussed throughout the class, one of the defining characteristics of comics is their blending of verbal and visual representation. This affords comics the same emotional expression as traditional graphic arts, as well as the semantic or narrative depth of literature. Bechdel’s story is one of great complexity and introspection, focusing on numerous little details and anecdotes that formed her childhood. Without her ongoing commentary, connecting her story with tales found in western culture’s canon, it would be impossible to fully comprehend her own perspective on the events. But with so personal a story, I think that Bechdel found considerable value in the visual element of her story, with it at least as important as her ongoing narrative. Complete control of the story’s graphical representation allows her to create a healthy distance between us, her audience, and her actual life. Visual representation, a highly emotional and subconscious form of artistic expression, seems to give Bechdel the right environment for her to feel comfortable with describing and revealing her personal story.
ReplyDelete1. I agree that Fun Home is honest. I might be reading too much into it here, but I feel like Bechdel’s attempt at transparency is sort of the opposite of her father keeping his sexuality and other things secret. It definitely seems to me that Bechdel places importance on the truth (the complete truth) of a story, especially when she re-reads her diary entries from the past and mentions various lies of omission. I don’t know think Fun Home would have been as successful without such honesty, but it’s hard to say. I think it definitely added to the story.
ReplyDelete2. I really liked the way Bechdel continually used analogies to tell her story. However, like with this last part I did get a little confused at times, particularly if I hadn’t read the story she was talking about (e.g. I have not read Colette’s autobiography or In Search of Lost Time). However, the analogies she chooses reveal a lot about her, her upbringing, etc. Specifically for the last lines of Fun Home, I interpreted this as Bechdel comparing herself to Icarus (and her father to his father) and the “tricky reverse narration” means that the story itself was similar, but in this re-telling the father caught her (Icarus) and then he was the one to die (plummet into the sea). I see her story is intertwined with her father’s not only because they are both gay (or she definitely says she is, he might be), but also in the way they connect through literature. And I thought it was really great the the comic begins with her playing airplane with her father and talking about the myth of Icarus, and then ends it on the same note.
3. I don’t think Bechdel was revealing that she felt her father was a coward for committing suicide. She also points out early on that in “A Happy Death,” Camus says that suicide is illogical. However, it is interesting to me that her father’s favorite book (“Ulysses”) and “A Happy Death,” which he was reading, both present suicide in a negative light - as cowardly and illogical. And then he proceeds to commit suicide (or it appears he did).
4. I liked the way Bechdel included writing by her father, herself, etc. and I think it blended in really well with the text. I also thought the way she provided illustrations of the photos she found was well done and a better choice for this comic than including the photos themselves.
1) It's hard to determine who is the main character in Fun Home. Obviously, it is a coming of age story for Alison, the author, but she herself admits towards the end that she is telling her father's story. Alison's story is ultimately about coming to accept yourself for who you are, including everything that you don't like about yourself. This includes accepting her father and all of his demons. The (sometimes brutal) honesty of the book helps to hammer that message home. It also gives a strong argument to the fact that a lot of a person's personality is actually in their DNA, not learned through society. You can't escape yourself.
ReplyDelete2) Tragically, it was when Alison fully accepted herself that her father fully rejected himself. From what little information he eventually gives to her, we can tell that their lives and realizations about themselves came at about the same time in their development. However, Alison chooses to live a life that is honest to herself, and her father builds his life on lies. When Alison comes out, his life starts to crumble around him and he is left with nothing but shame. I interpret these final pages to say that once he realized that he has been wasting his life away, he just decides to end it and that is tragic.
3) The change in how Alison's father treats her as she grows proves that he has been struggling with his true self for quite some time. I'm sure that when he first had kids, he didn't want them to have the same homosexual desires that he has, and experience the same shame that he had to. His actions were trying to shape her into a perfect heterosexual girl, but it actually ended up pushing her closer to her homosexual tendencies. Once he sees that she has accepted herself, the way that he never could, he treats her with respect, although I can also sense a bit of jealousy. It's perhaps this jealousy and resentment that drives him to commit suicide, but we'll never know for sure.
I think this piece was done in such a way that it is so distancing that she felt no remorse throwing her father under the bus. While I do not think it is a poor story by any stretch I do not gravitate towards the author. I question her motives and methods for telling this story in such a way. She seems candid and forthwith but something feels so off about the style of the narrative. To commit on paper a novel only to discredit ones father in postmortem seems to be more so a coping tool than anything else. Her diving into her fathers death and constant struggle to justify it through his literature as a means to show intent is off putting. Wrapping it up in a philosophical bow with the comparison to Icarus. Bechdel is a phenomenal writer with exceptional literary talent, but I do not agree with the story. Even solid planning in the style the auto-biography is written was well thought out. I may not agree with the apparent motives of the story, but it certainly was an interesting one.
ReplyDeleteIt's really interesting to here different perspectives on this story, because reading it I felt that Bechdel was trying to come to grips with her father passing away and trying to find a connection between the two of them. I didn't really think that she was discrediting him in postmortem, but it's intriguing to look at it both ways.
Delete1. There is a sort of freedom in airing out the painful memories that a person has. It helps when your memories can be helpful to someone who might be suffering through a lot of the same things. Words can describe something without actually declaring them outright, where in a visual medium like comics, while it does happen, the likelihood of seeing something in a direct or close to direct representation is much higher. She probably could have written the story without including the event of her first period, but it would be insight into the character that the events surrounding it provided.
ReplyDelete2. I would say that the final line of the book refers to the changing views that are provided us by the flow of the story. We find out about the death of her father around halfway in. At that point we are led to believe that this was a largely emotionless situation for her. After reading the second half, which is out of sequence with the first, we see some underlying feelings of connection to her father. Toward the end, we see them playing heart and soul together, and even though that is out of character we are exposed to more and more of a connection to her father, which I feel fits that statement that he was there to catch her when she leapt.
3. Maybe I’m missing the point, but it seems that she is trying to describe her own feelings more than attempting to make us have feelings about him. She makes several statements throughout the book about her dislike for reading too much into stories and their meaning.
1. I think the reason the story is so captivating is because she DOES go into those taboo details of her life. Those details were crucial in the storytelling plot. Of course she could of eliminated them but it all adds to her young life development. Her time of writing in her journal every day and the time she stopped writing all corelates with her period and her OCD.
ReplyDelete2. The story switches time a lot and the medium of the comic book was one of the best ways to keep the reader not confused with the timeline. Just like watching a film, the frames flash back to scenes we have seen before. The characters are younger and it’s a familiar setting that we know. That is why Bechdel was able to successfully keep us inline with the jumping timeline. I was never confused. To accomplish this effectively in a novel format, you have to use even more words to explain what the author is referencing now. So Using visuals is the best way to achieve a jumping timeline effectively.
3. It’s a time for Alison to reflect on her fathers feelings. Basically all throughout the book she is kind of hostile toward him. She wants us, the readers, to see the strange tendencies Bruce had. But the ending was to show, even after all the strange things, he was always there for her when she needed him (in their own unique way).
3.5 The reason the inverted text within the frames are successful is you can show the visual of what the handwritten notes were like. Instead of using extra text to describe what type of letter it was, we get to see it instead. There isn’t a distraction between us reading the story and the letters’ content. It more seamless doing it this way.
I agree with you about Bechdel's honest writing style making this a more captivating story. Originally I thought that if she hadn't included certain details (e.g. her first period) I wouldn't have known they were missing, but I think the story on the whole would have had a lot less authenticity and come across that way as a result.
DeleteThe graphic medium exposes peoples perspectives on their own misunderstandings. Many of us wouldn’t have dreamed of telling our own stories including details about our sexuality or something as benign as our first period, but Bechdel was giving her own experience in realizing her sexual identity and her own experience with coming to realize that her father was a closeted homosexual. Our experiences with such things are different, so we’d very likely misunderstand her perspective. In Fun Home she’s also describing the effects of small town living on someone who is a homosexual. My perspective is different from her, I’m not a homosexual, but I am from a very small town about 100 miles from where Bechdel was raised. I know all of the stereotypes she describes, I know what that stigma is for someone who is different, but no one would no one would know that if I hadn’t admitted it. But that’s just my perspective and my misunderstandings I draw from Fun Home are not the same as Dr. Glaser’s or someone else in the class. In written prose, that’s different. Many to most people would draw the same interpretations. Look at Nabokov’s Lolita in the 1950’s. Many readers were appalled by his narrator, Humbert Humbert, and his lack of thinking that what he was doing to Delores Hale was wrong. The graphic medium allows for more open interpretations.
ReplyDeleteSo, after learning that her father was a homosexual Bechdel started seeing the similarities and explanations to her father’s behavior growing up, she saw him in a different light. The entire book is a memoir about her father and growing up with him. She was confused as a young girl, and as it turned out her father was as confused as she was. The time shifts work with the theme of the story because she is remembering her childhood and she’s remembering how her father wasn’t like other fathers. He was into architecture and fixing up his home to its decorative splendor, where other dads would come in from work and sit and watch baseball and drink beer, her father didn’t do that. If she had chosen to use prose, rather than graphic novel, than we’d dislike her father for ignoring his children at times, being fashionable and preferring the company of high school boys compared to women. She’s trying to say that she understands her father better.
No matter what, across time and distance: a parent loves their child for who they are. Fun Home isn’t just about her father’s suicide but about her own confusion growing up. When he’s trying to bond with her, at least how I see it, he’s finally able to understand his daughter because he knows how she’s feeling. When she was growing up he did things that he thought he was supposed to do with a young daughter—tell her to wear skirts and act like a lady so that she’d be well taken care of, but she didn’t want that, so she was being defiant toward him. She obvious had conflicting feelings, but I don’t think she believes her father’s death was suicide because she doesn’t really think he’s a coward.
She is well read, this use of excerpts from the text helps tell her story. It drives home the point of her father’s influence on her growing.
1. I am writing to the period part of the question. It is VERY important that she tells us her pain about sharing her first period or that she later shared that she had already had (months of) periods. She doesn't want to grow up, and she doesn't want to be a woman - the first period is considered when a girl becomes a young woman. Especially during the time period that she grew up, it was a monumental event.
ReplyDeleteReference Judy Blume - Are You There God It's Me Margaret? Also from the same time period. It is a coming of age sign, and this book is a coming of age story.
2. I read an autobiography once and was fortunate enough to know the author to discuss the work with him. It was a painful book with no clear cut - this is what I learned moment and so I asked him about the book. He said, "I wrote the book I had to write." He had to let all those negative feelings go in print to move on. I don't know if that is what happened here, but it seems a valid place to consider it. We don't really know how Bechdel feels about her father, but we know that is was a complicated relationship.
3. I believe that Bechdel does feel that her father was a coward, not because of his suicide, but because he lived his life as a lie and in shadows. I think she feels that he should have been honest with his family about who he was. I also think her choice to reveal that at the end was not just a good choice but a must. If we knew that in the beginning like we did about the "sex with teenage boys," we would have read the book with an entirely different attitude. As it was we often questioned in the first half of the book if we had actually read that frame or assumed it. All of Bechdel's feelings are hinted at and at the same time ambiguous.
4. Graphics worked well with this story as often the frame picture told one story and the words the exact opposite.
1) I think the no-punches-pulled way in which this narrative is told is one of the biggest appeals for me. If this had been a cliche story about a girl struggling with the death of her perfect father, it would have been vapid and unnecessary. This story is great because of the way it weaves together so many experiences in to one: the experience of discovering ones gender identity, the pain of struggling with sexuality, the pain of being raised by a narcissist, the pain of still loving that narcissist -- this story needed to include all the ugly bits about her father's abuses and her own physical development. They make the story what it is. They make the story whole.
ReplyDeleteBechdel told the world something that she struggled with herself. Writing, art, Comics, these pastimes also serve to many as way to deal with a reality that can be overwhelming at times. The harsh lens of reality is one of the reasons this book is as amazing as it is. The use of the comic form allowed to show a more physical interpretation of her struggles, and allows us to see the type of man she wanted her father to be, and to compare it to the true flawed person he was. I don't understand the question of if taking out some of her choices of information would have made the autobiography any more or less worthwhile. The information that is presented is more of a way for her to express her life. Her period was a crossroads for Bechdel. As a child she idolized male existence and thought of herself more as a boy than a girl. It stands to reason that her period made her have to focus more on who she is on the outside rather than on the inside.
ReplyDeleteEntwined narratives work perfectly well in novel form. Many of the books we read are told from different point of views and follow different main characters. Even in books where we follow one perspective authors are responsible for making supporting characters be as well fleshed out as possible. Many of the best books carry intertwined stories. Lord of the Rings follows several characters each one goes their separate ways, but these stories form a greater narrative that completes the story. The reverse narrative also works just as well in book form. The comic' makes it easier to follow the timeline as we can date the events by how old Bechdel and her siblings are at the time. My interpretation to Bechdel's quote was that her father was a flawed man, one who did terrible things. He fell to his own machinations. His shattered mentality, the loss of his marriage and the force of him coming to terms with who he was led his suicide. Though he was the man who did those things, he was also the one who was there for his daughter when she needed him in college. They bonded over literature. He was her father and he was there for some of her dark times. Bechdel felt that her father was a coward who couldn't face himself. He lived in a false construct of his own design. Like Daedalus, he built his own labyrinth and lived inside of the lie that was his family and home. The most interesting transition was to that of her father to Icarus. The loss of his wife and the stark realization of his construct collapsing led to him to orchestrate his own demise. The lies that her father made, the shame and self-loathing that her father held painted the image of a coward in her mind. Yet she could do nothing but still love her father. It is this reason that she wanted to cling onto the last tie that she held of him. That she believed her revelation to her father that she was a lesbian killed him. The literature that she quotes and mentions throughout the story work well to enhance the narrative as it allows you to understand the connection between Bechdel and her father.
1) Bechdel does reveal a lot in this comic and it's a lot of embarrassing information, but I think it's mainly necessary to help her guide her story along. Plus I think it also makes the story feel a whole lot more open, even if some of the embarrassing points aren't totally crucial to the story. I think she did have to expose her father for who he was in this story since it's really a story about him told by her.
ReplyDelete2) What I took from "tricky reverse narration" and "entwined stories" was that in one way her father was building her wings made with wax so she was being destined to fail herself and discover her sexuality, but he was also unlike the story where it's the son's fault for flying too high and dooming himself. Bechdel does go live life the way she wants to, but her father is able to help her back to reality as opposed to being helpless and letting her fall into the sea. Allusion heavy.
3) Well I think the story was structured to teach us about her father in the cold hard facts way that makes us understand the end before the means. We come to our own conclusions, considering him to be a suppressed gay jerk to his family, and commit suicide leaving them. Once we've gotten that clear impression then the story's goal is to make us feel for him, and understand his impact on Bechdel's life in a positive light. I think she does really care about her father. She was just getting to really understand him as he died, and it took her a while to get over the bad and appreciate it. She must care about him to dedicate years to making this comic about him.
3.5) Well I agree and disagree that it's counter intuitive. I'll be the first to call out a comic that won't let the words and pictures work together but apart from each other. This comic in particular is the most novel-like comic I've ever read in the sense that it's written in a way that the images are just arbitrary. There's a great bit in Making Comics where Scott McCloud makes fun of this idea by drawing himself saying "there's a watermelon on my head!" as one appears. Then when it's gone he looks sad and says "now it's gone..." but in a narration box it also says "Scott said sadly". The images didn't need the text, or the text didn't need the words. So in Fun Home, it's really just fluff. But it helps tell the story. Pictures are great fluff. But they're still fluff.
(Sorry I'm late! My computer had to get repaired AGAIN! I'm really behind on everything. I'm sorry again!)
ReplyDeleteIt was honestly a bit of a shock to me some of the things she revealed, especially considering like you said, these things are seen as taboo, things that aren’t generally exposed out in the open like that, but then again I think, that’s probably why she did just that. To keep the readers on their feet, to shock them and do what most authors don’t do, taking a brutally honest approach to things that many people tend to hide, disguise, ignore or dismiss. I think the graphic medium gives the author much more space to express and tell their story. I think she could have written a worthwhile biography, but I would still prefer the graphic medium.
Tricky reverse narration? Confusing the reader with reversing the narrators? I don’t really know. Entwined stories would be easier to interpret, stories that don’t necessarily have much in common but are entwined and made one, leaving a great impact on the reader, giving you more to think about, more to digest and doing it in a creative manner. I think because it is a graphic novel it is less tricky because we can follow along with the graphics, whereas if it was just words, a regular novel, we would have to read and reread to see which narrator is narrating and when.
I think some people like to leave things for the last for many reasons, as they say leave the last for best, or maybe she left it for the end because it was the hardest memory for her to recall, or maybe she just thought because he ended his life in that way, that should be the end of her story. It is only natural for someone to have mixed feelings about their parents, especially if the first half of their lives their parents did everything in their power to make you resent them. Maybe she wanted the readers to sympathize with her, or resent him, or give her side of the story and let the readers choose who they sympathize with.