Why is it that for a 21st century memoir to succeed, people have to have parental issues. Specifically, it seems all the “classic” memoris written by folks like Sedaris, Eggers, and Burroughs all come from crazy homes and suffer from some serious daddy issues. It’s like they don’t realize that 90 percent of the U.S. population has some kind of daddy issue or another.
Other people this semester have talked about how they’ve had a hard time relating to one or another character, and this week I think I’ve found mine. It’s not that I didn’t like Fun Home, I felt as a narrative it did a lot with artistic attention to detail, storytelling, and and weaving in other stories (as we see strong parallels between this and Ulysses, especially in the end). But the characters seemed largely flat and inaccessible. In fact I felt that Alison and her father, the foci of this text, were completely desensitized to emotions and showed very little development or progress throughout the text. Even when they share their experiences of homosexuality (or more importantly, her father shares his, and she just listens), little seems to develop and by the end I feel I’m left with the same awkward, uncertain, book-nerd girl we started with, and the same unreachable, distant, secret-keeping father.
One diary entry in particular seemed to epitomize the desensitization to emotion in Fun Home. In one diary entry, Alison writes: “We watched cartoons. Dad showed us the dead people. They were cut up and stuff. mother took John to a party. we didn’t go to church. John + I looked at the Sears catalog. Dad had the funeral today. Mother went to the funeral home. :-)” (148). A smiley face. She ends an entry about seeing dead people, including a kid her own age, with a smiley face. The same way Alison is detached from, and desensitized to death by a family that runs a funeral home, her emotionless family, and emotionless narrator, desensitize us to anything that resembles emotion. Even in the wake of her father’s death, she only cries for two minutes (46).
It should be noted that Bechdel, herself, does point out her inability to grieve. She writes about how after her father’s death, she would tell of it matter-of-factly, “eager to detect in my listener the flinch of grief that eluded me” (45).
In another way, as Lars mentioned on twitter, the whole story is told with allusions to other works of literature, almost as a way for Bechdel to distance herself from the actual tumultuous events in her life, and understand them through literature. While this approach has some merits, I felt that every parallel between her life and another person’s written one (fictional or factual) was a way for her to distance herself even further from emotions. And this made it hard for me to really feel connected or engaged by Fun Home. The characters remain too static, and avoid any serious self-reflection at all costs. When Bechdel self reflects, I feel she’s trying to make sense of a history recorded as a 10 to 14 year old in light of her adult self. This type of if-I-knew-then-what-I-know-now thinking is cliche for a reason, since we can dwell on the past all we please, but remain powerless to change anything but the present. In Fun Home Bechdel seems more interested in an unchangeable past than taking a look at the present person she’s become. This and the lack of emotion make it hard for me to connect to any of the characters in any kind of meaningful way. Not like Jake, or Brett, or Darl, or Daedalus, or Leopold, the modern fictional characters she writes about and relates to, but whom couldn’t be more different in their presentation as characters. Maybe in the end, this is Bechdel’s point: these modern characters still lived in an age of change. Perhaps now, as in 2006 when the text was published, characters are meant to reflect their modern equivalents, people who change even less than their modern lit counterparts (many of the above change very little, but still develop and show emotions as the texts progress), and remain the same uncertain, book-nerdy, timid girls and secret-keeping men throughout their lives. I’d just like to think that’s not the case.
“It should be noted that Bechdel, herself, does point out her inability to grieve.” Yes–and I think that was one of the biggest points of the book, actually…and as such, would take mild issue with your claiming there was no character development! I can’t help but wonder if you wouldn’t have a stronger case for “unsympathetic,” tho I find that label a trifle arbitrary (spoken as someone who found most of the characters in Watchmen, Sandman, etc. unsympathetic and–yes–rather static). Regardless, I do think you’re right in that the characters are pretty “cold;” I just think that’s the point and that Bechdel does a lot to explore and develop that.
Anyway, I completely agree re. the literature allusions. As I commented on Kelley’s post, I found that tremendously off putting at times.
…even as I respected her literary prowess!
I thought of more as if we were at a viewing while reading the graphic novel. She was weirdly coming to terms with her father after his death, as seen because that when she chose to write the book, but the weird distance she puts us away from her life isn’t anything new to her as you point out that she points out in her diary entries.