You should respond to anything that particularly interested you in Fun Home. Here are some questions to get you started thinking. Also, feel free to respond to another student’s post, if you’d prefer.
Title and Overall Structure: Discuss the implications of the book’s title. What does it literally refer to in the text? What are some of the title’s possible other meanings and how do they work in the book? How has Bechdel organized her chapters? What seems to be the relationship between the captions that appear at the top of the panels and the speech balloons that appear within the panels?
Old Father, Old Artificer: Why do you think Bechdel has chosen this phrase to begin Chapter One? Who’s the artificer here and why? How do the references to Daedalus and Icarus fit in? What about imagery of the labyrinth? How are these images revisited at the end of the book?
Sexuality: How is Bruce’s sexuality first raised? (See especially p. 17, p. 20). The center of the book has sometimes been compared to a centerfold (pp. 100-101). Comment on this image. What’s interesting about it? What function does it serve in the book? What about Alison’s depiction of her own sexuality?
Literature: Why all the references to other literary texts within the memoir? Perhaps choose a particular text such as Ulysses or The Great Gatsby and discuss its significance. What do you think about the relationship between art and reality as presented in this book? Maybe talk about how these issues relate to other works we’ve discussed in the class previously.
OCD and the Self: Talk about Alison’s foray into Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which she discusses in Ch. 5. What seems to be the root of this, in her own adult speculating? (See especially p. 138 and her reading of Dr. Spock). What about her diary writing? What begins to happen? What does this seem to say about the relationship between language and reality? About memoir-writing?
What a painfully beautiful book. I read it once in college in English 101 class and I am so pleased I have the chance to revisit it. First and foremost, I think the title of the book is a triple entendre. The first mean is the literal abbreviation of funeral home that her family uses. For a memoir, I think this title sets the reading into the language of Bechdel’s family. I also believe that this title represents a tongue and cheek commentary of Bechdel’s childhood. Especially in the beginning chapters of the book it is clear that Bechdel’s childhood home is not a “fun home” to be in all the time. The last entendre is connection of the phrase “fun home” to a circus, as if Bechdel is trying to suggest that must like a circus, her family are “performers” masking their true identities.
This connection to the third entendre is reinforced by Bruce and his life. On page 16, Bechdel claims that her father, “used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to makes things appear to be what they were not.” Bechdel then connects this statement to the concept of her father being an “ideal husband” to which Bechdel questions on page 17, “but would an ideal husbands and father have sex with teenage boys?” this first note of her father’s sexuality enforced respectively throughout the text not just through the confessions of Bechdel’s parents, but subliminal comments made by Bruce. A strong example is Bruce stating that his jade (Phallic) obelisk “symbolizes life”(29). I think sexuality plays an interesting role on the way femininity and masculinity can bond people (Alison and her father talking about clothing) while also isolating once another (Brian trying to dress a young Alison).
I think Bechdel’s choice to include the literally references and Allusions because novels were the currency between her and her father. Bechdel and her father, both proclaimed avid readers, connected over language. I think it is also a strong choice because to isolate how someone was– characters can help frame an image of a real person. Readers can frame who Bechdel’s father was by who she relates him to and who those characters are or are not. I think this, along with life/death metaphors create a very strong narrative.
I personally think the Icarus/Daedalus image paired with the Ulysses’ Bloom/Stephan comparison was beautifully done and shows the similar but different types of father/child relationships. I thoroughly enjoyed this parallel when it came to the last page. After pages of Joyce comparisons, the book finishes with Bechdel flying waiting to be caught by her father– a powerful image.
There is so much to be said about this book yet, in certain way I also find it hard to comment on– so much is beautifully compounded in to the narrative and yet so much the reader feels like an observer on intimate moment of this family.
This is my second reading of Fun Home, and I enjoyed it even more this time. The last time I read this book I was working in the President’s Office while the College was under fire for its selection of the book for our campus reading program. Reading the book a second time, free from the firestorm and distraction that surrounded my first reading, allowed me to better appreciate its nuances, humor and emotional power.
One of the things I appreciated even more in this reading were Bechdel’s illustrations. Each panel tells its own story alongside the narrator’s story. I tried to imagine reading this book as a straightforward text narrative, and I don’t think it would work as well. The actions and expressions of the drawn characters add a whole other layer of complexity and richness to the novel. Each panel is filled with clues that help color the story – carefully placed books, elaborate house furnishings, facial expressions and body language.
The term “old artificer” seems to fit Bruce. For one, he is adept at building, fixing and decorating things. But the term also works on another level because Bruce has cleverly and secretly crafted and curated a second life as a closeted gay man. He has outwardly made himself into a husband, a doting father and successful businessman, but these are mere props. “He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not,” Bechdel writes (16).
Regarding Bruce’s sexuality, he seems to support Alison’s lesbianism through his words and actions later in the book. On one hand, he may be happy that she can live openly as the person she is. But he may also feel resentment that he has never been able to be truthful about his identity. My favorite scene in the book is when Alison and her father go to the movies, and she gets him to open up about his lifestyle. T. There is a spark of a connection between them. Emboldened, Bruce takes Alison to a topless/gay bar. The sentiment is powerful: he is publicly owning his identity and simultaneously acknowledging hers. Alison builds up the moment as a breakthrough of sorts. But when the bouncer turns them away, they are again left to feel as if they don’t belong.
Like Ron, I found myself very glad to be re-reading this book far removed from the campus controversy – I think I was able to pay more attention to the story itself. In particular, the whole brouhaha had everyone focused on the 2-3 pages that directly depict nudity or sexuality; on this read, I was much more attuned to how the images and text play off each other throughout the story. Why a graphic novel, instead of a more traditional form? There’s humor in the drawings, certainly, and the play on the subtitle (“tragicomic”), but also they reinforce that not everything can be adequately conveyed in words. Being able to see the diary pages, for example, is more evocative than the text descriptions: the transition from factual recounting, to the uncertainty contained in the very small “I think” insertions, to the caret-like symbols, first between sentences, ultimately over whole pages. We see in these pages an uncertainty that first creeps in, and ultimately overwhelmed, almost erases, the writer. We also see the narrator as a child in these writings first-hand (I particularly liked how many things were described as “horrid”), rather than in her self-reflections. In other parts of the story, while the text focuses on the overarching narrative, the images depict a few moments in a day – the mother rehearsing a play, the siblings playing. These juxtapositions felt like the contrast between the moments of day-to-day vs the meanings we extract from them years later, looking back. And of course, there were so many visual cues in the drawings, keeping us in the right decade; with a few exceptions, the text provides little reference to when the story occurs. Perhaps this makes the story itself feel more timeless or out of place in time? The central themes – self-discovery, struggling to understand and connect with who your parents are as people – are certainly not restricted to a child of any particular decade.
When I read queer-lit I can’t avoid noticing the gap between the conditions of queer people and the conditions of hetero women: the former have improved a lot while the latter are still 200 years backward. Of course, this is not a competition and I’m not jealous. On the contrary, I’m glad for them. It’s just something that I find very curious. It must be, as Simone de Beauvoir suggests, because hetero women compete with one another instead of teaming up, but I don’t want to go afield.
This is another novel that I have really enjoyed reading. I’m very fond of both graphic novels and memoirs, and it hooked me to the point that I read it all in one sitting.
I appreciated her honesty. This is both a coming-of-age story and a coming out one. What I found impressive is the way she recounts her discovery. Instead of showing either a revengeful or a shameful tone, it has the innocent one of a child who explores life free of any prejudice, which is sadly something that, in her father’s time, shouldn’t have happened so smoothly. In fact, it’s not given to us readers —nor to the author— to know if the nature of his death was really suicidal and, if this is the case, if that happened because “a lifetime spent hiding one’s erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.” (230). Her father and the relationship she established with him over the years is interesting also. I found him a charming and sympathetic character, although questionable in many aspects. He was a bookish, intellectual, perfectionist, and arty type, with a taste for antiquity. The new gothic house was brilliant. He slept with men recruited with the excuse to help him with the garden or various other tasks and embalmed cadavers, gaping their belly with the same aplomb he could use to stuff a Thanksgiving turkey. Saying that he was an anti-child type is an understatement. Allison definitely spent a pretty troubled and anaffective childhood, and she learnt to love him only in her first adulthood. The image that will mostly stick with me about this memoir is the one of her standing close to a naked cadaver with a hole in his belly. I loved the fact that literature served the role of ice breaker between the two of them and it turned out to be the only effective aid to bring them close. Which is ultimately what literature is supposed to serve for: to bring people close, and to create empathy and understanding.
Despite the anaffectivity that he showed during her childhood, I still found him a sympathetic character. For example, in an attempt to protect her when suggesting to keep her options open, on page 230, he says, “Taking sides is rather heroic, and I am not a hero.” I found this statement very relatable. I felt sorry for him. It must feel very uncomfortable to operate in a life in which you play a role that doesn’t fit your true self, for example having a family. Although the clumsy and abashed talk that they had during Alison’s break while coming back from the movie, I felt a sense of relief for him for finally finding somebody he could share what he had been forced to keep for himself for all his life. It really amazes me how people can be so bottled up. I would explode.
Even from an artisanal point of view, I found both the writing and the graphics superb, remarkable, and really inspirational. I think she has really done a great job.
This was my first reading of A Fun Home, and first time reading a graphic novel. At first, it took some getting-used-to; I found the form distracting, jumping from the narrative through-line to the illustrated panels. Eventually, it became more natural, and I agree with Ron and Melissa that the illustrations contribute significantly to the narrative. It was almost like watching a play with a voice-over. Bechdel’s talents in illustration and writing are impressive and the combination is highly effective.
Melissa mentioned a timelessness to the story and I get that, but for me the societal references – Nixon’s resignation, watching the Brady Bunch and Sonny and Cher on tv – are so vivid (I’m about the same age as Bechdel) and placed me right on the living room floor in 1973-74 and then, in the late 70s, early 80s. I couldn’t help but reflect on the difference in our world views at similar ages.
Bechdel’s father is a complex character: while I feel sympathy for him as the victim of an intolerant and restrictive society, I also found him offensive and cruel in his treatment of the children when they were young (they didn’t ask for any of this) and in his blatant infidelity and lies to his wife. Yes, he was struggling, but his choices throughout that struggle were harmful and reckless to others. The first mention of his sexuality is jarring: especially considering they’re his daughter’s words: “But would an idea husband and father have sex with teenage boys?” (p. 17) At this early stage of the book, I would not have predicted the bonding Bechdel and her father form during her teen years and especially while she’s at college. The connection through books is beautiful, and Bechdel’s interweaving of Ulysses and Icarus and Daedalus are sophisticated and rich, including the final “scene” or illustration when Bechdel asks (heartwrenchingly), “What if Icarus hadn’t hurtled into the sea? What if he’d inherited his father’s inventive bent? What might he have wrought?” (p. 231), then shows her father catching him as she jumps off the diving board. So — what might (he/she) have wrought? A beautiful book like Bechdel’s.
Like Lennie, this was my first time reading a graphic novel, so the format definitely took some getting used to at the beginning. As I continued to read, though, I found Bruce and Alison to be complex characters that perfectly captured the feelings of denial, pain, and confusion, and the immensely powerful hold that discovering sexuality can have on a person’s well-being. One part of the novel that stuck out to me was whenever Alison says, “Dad’s death was not a new catastrophe but an old one that had been unfolding very slowly for a long time.” (pg. 83) I found this statement to directly correlate with the way that Alison talked about her parents’ marriage and the ways in which her mom and dad interacted with each other. While Bruce may have not been physically dead yet, in the eyes of Alison’s mother, he was already dead to her long before because of his secret affairs with men and emotional disconnection from her and their marriage. In a sense, this seems to be one reason why the depiction of grief is so nonchalant throughout the story; the family, specifically Alison’s mother, was grieving Bruce long before his physical death.
I found the heavy presence of books throughout the novel to be interesting as well. It is clear that both Bruce and Alison find themselves buried in books and fictional stories as a way to escape their own realities along with the shame and anxiety both felt because of their hidden identities. I particularly liked the way Alison loops in Ulysses and the relationship between Stephen and Bloom. Joyce uses these two characters as mirrors of each other, just like Alison and her father. Bruce even says that Bloom is Stephen’s “spiritual father;” while he is Alison’s actual father, he is also a part of her spiritually and emotionally due to their hidden similarities. The progression that occurs throughout the novel regarding Alison’s relationship with her father can ultimately be attributed to books- they are the driving force behind their developed connection, aside from their shared secrets.
I also liked the symbolism of the Lilac. Alison says, “If my father had a favorite flower, it was the Lilac. A tragic botanical specimen invariably beginning to fade even before reaching its peak.” (pg. 92) Bruce clearly has an affliction for tragedy, but more than that, he is the Lilac. He is a specimen who throughout Alison’s story is fading, never being able to reach his “peak” and shine as his true self. While I agree with Lennie that Bruce’s treatment of his children while they were young was cruel, I believe that he was so hard on Alison because he saw himself in her. Specifically, though, I think that he was semi-jealous of her because of the way she was pushing her limits to try to be her true self, something that Bruce never felt he could do. This is why as she got older, their relationship was able to grow. His jealousy ultimately turned to empathy and a feeling of gratitude for being able to have a companion that shared his secrets.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I am glad I picked it as my “pick” for the semester. I have never officially read a graphic novel like this, so I don’t have a lot to compare it to – but it feels deep, elevated, heavy, beautiful, and insightful all at the same time.
Something I have not touched on yet in my own writing is the title: Fun Home.
I also took is at a double-entendre (or Triple, I believe Eleanor stated).
1) Fun Home being short for funeral. I was surprised how little the actual funeral home played into the story, which is why the title first had me wondering about its choice.
2)Critics stated the use of “fun home” as the title can refer to the carnival side-shows or fun-house mirrors. Their depiction of the family to outsiders was a distorted one and even how they understood their own family members (mainly Bruce and Alison) was also a distorted reality.
3) a literal “fun” home. From the jump in the memoir – the reader is made very clear that the home was not fun or funny. Bechdel lays this out with showing us the emotional and verbal abuse in the household and Bruce’s obsession over the style/décor of the house. The use of “fun” is in satire.
I think what I am liking most about reading, and now re-reading it, and researching, and writing about Fun Home is that the story is a lot about Alison trying to find truth or answers – answers to her father’s death; her father’s sexuality; her own sexual identity; In the end, I read as a happy/hopeful one, Alison has no answers. There’s never a clear declaration from her father about his sexual identity. She expects some big revelation when she comes out and he shares his history with her, but there is none. There is no clarity about her father’s death.
This memoir is true to life, in that we don’t always get answers or the answer we’re looking for.
Woah, this book was intense.
I agree with Lennie where she said, “I feel sympathy for him as the victim of an intolerant and restrictive society, I also found him offensive and cruel in his treatment of the children.” I was proud of Alison as despite having the definition of an abusive father, she still came into her own through her own power. So insanely courageous. And then, amidst all my pride in her, I was so resentful when she “took her father back.”
It felt so out of character and a little sickening for me when she begins to bond with Bruce near the end of the book. The man abused her, her siblings, and her mother. He was a predator of children. He was a punishing and exacting man. While I appreciate the pain of having to live a lie all his life, Bruce is not a good man.
I was so frustrated in Allison. After finding out her father is not just an abuser to the family, but of minors, she then bonds with him?! It is not as if she has solely found out her father is queer. It is not like herself where she figured out she was queer and then went on to date adult women. He is taking advantage of his position as a teacher.
I don’t think I’m very good at reading these, I might be taking this entirely too literal. But I just couldn’t push past the abuse of the students.
This is also my first time reading a graphic novel! I found the format distracting and tricky to follow if I wasn’t paying close attention. Maybe it was just my lack of experience with the format but I kept getting hung-up on reading everything in the “proper” order that I struggled to appreciate the narrative or firmly understand the timeline.
I was fascinated by the psychological overtones of the story, the evidence of neglect, abandonment, and self-revilement were troubling but created a narrative that kept me invested and attentive; I worried about the characters and that worry was the most interesting part of the book for me.
The chapter/year Alison was dealing with rampant OCD and the “definition” Alison reads that describes it as “feeling like you ought to” was what first started my investment with the novel (138). Alison doesn’t feel like she “ought” to do something, she has a “dark fear of annihilation” hanging over her should she not do something (139). The intense level of anxiety, of utter destruction that would happen if she were to miscount or forget a ritual speaks to a number of possible stressors she is experiencing. And as I read I find myself agreeing more and more with the tragedy element of Fun House, it’s a story of children who have had absent yet “present” parents while growing up. it’s a story of how we may assume the child is fine if they’re not acting out, but how societally, especially with girls, will often ignore quietness as a possible symptom of anxiety or depression.
After her father’s death Alison notes that she wants to hold onto the possibility that it was her coming out that caused her father’s suicide that she is “reluctant to let go of that last, tenuous bond” (86). Feeling so isolated from your parents during adolescence that you hold on to the possibility of involvement in their death, just to have a singular connection to them? That is Tragic. And that is absolutely a sign to read her earlier biographical accounts with concern.
This was my first reading of Fun Home and I immensely enjoyed it. I think Bechdel uses literature within the narrative to help Allison and her parents distance themselves from one another emotionally even in their attempt to connect. As she states, each family member’s creativity was obsessively pursued, but isolated. Her mother’s acting and piano playing were remote activities and any emotion they evoked were not allowed to be expressed at home. Yet, much like Allison talking with her father about literature rather than the similarities in their lives, she and her mother spend time together running lines.
I don’t know why I found this theme of creative isolation so compelling— I think I tend to think of creativity and art as explicitly connective. Art is a way of emotionally engaging with other people’s thoughts and emotions. Yet in the Bechdel house, art was used as a way to distance emotional intimacy through the lens of artifice.