I really enjoyed looking at Fun Home as a counter-point to the two other memoir related texts we’ve read this semester, Maus and Alan’s War. The dynamic between creator and subject is especially interesting for me in Bechdel’s work. The narrative in Maus is often told in Vladek’s voice. Likewise Alan’s War is exclusively told in Cope’s voice (at least from a verbal perspective). Fun Home differs from these in that the creator, Alison, narrates throughout. Even the visual moments in which Alison is absent from the page (her father writing love letters in the Army, her parents fighting on the honeymoon in Europe, etc.) are framed by her narration.
Experiencing the entire work from Alison’s perspective certainly personalizes the story for me, but also prevents me as the reader from seeing Bruce in any other light than the one Alison herself sees him in. Perhaps Spiegelman and Guibert employ this technique in their creative styles as well, but for whatever reason – it seems more overt in Fun Home.
As a reader, I can’t help but share in Bechdel’s complicated feelings towards her father. It’s difficult to have any positive emotions towards Bruce when you see him at his controlling-worst early on in the text, terrorizing the children for simple mistakes around the house, forcing Alison to wear berets, and even changing her coloring to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Yet there are also moments in the text where the overwhelming emotional response I have towards Bruce is pity for the self-loathing and dishonesty that seem to dominate his life. As the book ends, I find myself semi-endeared to Bruce given his round-about support of Alison and awkward attempts at honesty with her. I don’t think any of these feelings are a stretch on the part of the reader, as it would seem one of Bechdel’s primary motives in Fun Home is to paint a more complex picture of a man who can all too easily be labeled as a bad person, or terrible father.
Changing gears somewhat, another aspect of the text that I really enjoyed was the way Bechdel explores the nature of art and the artist. The various artistic and creative expressions that define the Bechdel household can be described alternately as compulsive, sexually repressive, empowering, and even therapeutic. For Alison’s parents in particular, their respective “arts” of home restoration and acting seem to comprise the few moments of happiness they are given in their otherwise repressed and loveless marriage. And as Freedman examines in her article, art in the form of great literature serves as not only the primary currency in the fractured adult relationship between Alison and her father, but also as a framing device for Alison to better make sense of her own complicated family structure.
John
Agreed, John.
At the end of the book, my primary feeling toward her father is also one of pity…but when I think about some of what i just read, I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with that! Older men trying to seduce underage boys with beer, etc? I’m not sure that’s “all too easy;” those are some pretty bad moves, in my book. I’m not trying to be “holier than thou” here, just point out that I’m a bit conflicted myself by the end of the story–right along with the narrator! Sure, we can blame society’s repressive norms, but if nothing else, I’d say any blame is 50/50. To be fair, I guess Bechdel passes a kind of narrator judgment by showing how distraught her father gets when his son goes missing in NYC…
Above all else, however, it IS her father, so I think she has every right to that last frame, no matter what he did. And I think we have every right to puzzle over and question the narrative she just shared–that was her choice in publishing the book. (chuckle).
Good discussion. Fun Home offers a complicated portrayal of a complicated figure, and it’s difficult not to be conflicted about Bruce.
I also want to piggyback on something John says about the role of art and the artist, which Bechdel addresses both subtly and explicitly through the narrative. It reminds me that one of the literary frames we are invited to see the narrative through is James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The book is all about Bechdel’s coming of age, sexually of course, but also artistically.
I also liked the more personal POV, and for me, it had a really odd effect in places. Although most sections were well done, and the book as whole accumulated a lot of force by the end, there were moments that felt weak. Where the language didn’t seem quite up to the task, or an allusion was over-explicated. Granted, she explains how these artifices are appropriate because they reflect the frigidity of her relationships. I did like how literature was one of the only contexts that really connected her to her father, and the allusions reflect that. But if they were more skillfully implemented, she wouldn’t have to tell us why it’s all so appropriate and ironic.
Now, considering the close perspective and rationalizing tone throughout the book, I look back on a scene like the second page, where she spells out the Icarus allusion…while I love the reference (Latin majors=suckers for allusions) and how it contrasts with the imagery of her playing airplane, the overdramatic, explanatory bit beats it to death. In retrospect, with what I know about the link between her and her father’s erotic journeys and the complexity of her relationship, I can see in this stilted passage her struggle to get it right, to characterize this crazy thing and foreshadow what’s to come. What struck me her failure to make this allusion click is, of course, strikingly appropriate to the Icarus story.
Like Professor Sample, I picked up on various images/allusions that reflected a thematic focus Bechdel’s own artistic development—frames of her drawing, her literary education, etc. It’s funny, but when certain things didn’t work so well for me, I felt sympathetic, and not even to the writer, but to Alison Bechdel the character! I’m rooting for her not just to deal with her father’s death, her discoveries about his sexual past and her sexual future, but also for her to grow into the person who eventually wrote the book. Interesting.