I was glad that the first reader brought up Bechdel’s ponderings about her own objectivity in characterizing her dad, and how much of his identity is just her wishful thinking. One of the reasons I think I like this novel so much is that it doesn’t fall into the trap that many books dealing with sexuality do; excessive labeling with no thought about the labels themselves. So often, a character will decide that he or she is “gay,” with no real explanation of what they are actually naming in themselves. I’m of the opinion that human sexuality is way too complex to be accurately described by the terms “gay,” “straight,” or “bisexual,” and so most authors who use these terms are inherently problematic to me.

And at first, I felt like Fun Home was veering in that same direction. Alison of the story, in fact, discovers the label before she even has the experiences normally associated with it: “a revelation not of the flesh, but of the mind” (pg 74). But there’s a difference here; Bechdel is not, as an author, saying that lesbians are actually a discrete  class of people, not suggesting that there was anything that truly seperated her from others, but simply portraying how she self-identified and how it helped her find belonging.

The reason I suspect that the Bechdel of today has a more complex view of sexuality is that she puts it in her book, but she lets this theory come from her fathers’ mouth, not hers. At one point, he asks, “Do you have to put a label on yourself?” (pg 211) Alison doesn’t seem to gain much from his words when he says them, but they’ve obviously stuck with Bechdel the author, shown in the later musing that the first reader noted: she recognizes that she may have been hasty “to claim him as ‘gay’ in the way I am ‘gay,’ as opposed to bisexual or some other category” (pg 230).

Although gay men and lesbians are largely portrayed in this book as true communities, seperate from the mainstream and with certain easy-to-identify characteristics, I appreciated that there are some glimpses of the idea that this is not the way things always are, or have to be. I also appreciated that Bechdel recognized those ideas were not hers at the time the story, and therefore attributes them appropriately to her father.

A lot of the first reader posts discussed the incorporation of texts and images and how they mostly seem to blur or skew themselves, as well as the incorporation of the clear images of brands or photographs. Jessica pointed out in her first reader post that McCloud wrote “the more defined the artwork, the less relatable to the reader,” which was definitely the case for me while reading. It was a little unnerving to me to see these things that seemed so out realistic and out of place in a world that was clearly full of anguish. The mixed media artwork reminded me a lot of zine art as well, and usually I would think of the blurriness of the artwork as a soft thing, but here there is a significant harshness or crudeness (not only in the content) to it. The yellow hues remind me a lot of acid as well, which I think mirrors the deterioration of Omar’s mental state. I found that the distorted images drew me in more and had me paying more attention to the detail in those pages, while the clear images of brands or photographs jolted me out of the graphic novel, even though those distortions didn’t really have a lot of detail to begin with.

It was definitely a completely different experience than any graphic novel that I’ve read. I was frustrated and annoyed reading it the first time, but after the second time, I found myself really enjoying it and understanding that the things that I found annoying were…kind of the point?

The book may seem strange in many ways, but to me it’s a complete reflection of how disturbing and dark real life can be. Life isn’t four neatly drawn panels on a page; it’s gritty, raw, and completely disconnected. Santiago did an excellent job displaying that for us here, taking us to the deep recesses of Omar’s thoughts, thoughts that any person could have at any given time. It’s the darkness itself that provides us with an interesting story where, because without it Omar is simply just another uncommitted individual with normal human tendencies. We read this novel because we want to see Omar spiral (no relation to Uzumaki) into oblivion, we want to see him hit rock bottom, because that’s where the drama is and that is what’s entertaining. If this novel had been neatly drawn like American Born Chinese, there would be a completely different opinion on it. But through Santiago’s dark and disturbing style, he provides us with something so much more, because in all honesty not a whole lot happens in terms of actual story. The fact that Santiago blended these dark images with the subliminal enhances its more realistic approach and kept us in reality when at times it seemed we were drifting further and further away from it. It is my opinion that this book is the closest to reality that we’ve read yet and really causes one to reflect on his or her life. Even that alone says a lot about this novel.