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This half-thought-out piece of shit has reminded me that I meant to articulate my awed admiration of Fun Home. Useful information contained within the link: it was named as Time's Book of the Year, an astonishing achievement for a graphic novel and one I've seen reported nowhere until now. The blogger's first couple of reasons why it's received such acclaim are probably pretty valid. Being published by a major house wins you credibility, and autobiography (as with Joe Sacco's reportage) isn't judged by the same standards as other genres in comics. Non-fiction comics in general are given a free pass, automatically taken seriously.
The other reasons should, at best, be ignored. If the book's been a sensation it's because it offers something entirely new, both in subject matter and style. The graphic techniques Bechdel uses aren't enormously innovative, but the storytelling techniques are. The central fact of the story, of a gay father's suicide at the same time his gay daughter comes out, is revealed early on. The book then goes on to analyse it from every angle, to closely observe what little evidence there is - physical, in tapes and annotated books, and through stories and memories and reactions to homosexuality. It's a detective story where all the facts are already in, and the detective only wants to better understand why events unfolded as they did, if the tragedy had a root cause.
sleazenation: One of the things about the book that I still feel ambivalent about is the overpowering array of literary allusions the author invokes to describe various aspects of her relationship with her parents...
Christmas Day round my house, and my partner remarks that all my mother, brother and I did when we'd open our presents was to sit in the same room and silently read. I had to explain that's good as it gets, this is our family in harmony. Maybe we're not quite so literary and artistic as Bechdel's bunch but the idea of a family who only really understand each other through books is not an unfamiliar one to me. The literary allusions were about detecting subtext, a vital life skill in a family with big secrets that doesn't talk. And having discovered your family in books, you explore and understand them through the same medium.
I guess what makes the book the most interesting, and the most problematic, is the level to which Bechdel is revealing her father's sexuality and to what extent she is creating it...
The structure, analysing the same people and the singular event of her father's suicide from different angles, was IMO Bechdel's attempt to build a three-dimensional image of her father. Constructing a hologram from reflected light, then checking it against the reality, the fragments of the real man she once knew, reminded me of high-tech archaeology. There was a feeling of compulsion about the book, as if it gathered momentum as it went on and the project of knowing her father became vital in knowing herself...
I loved this. It's not been widely publicized in the UK - is it unavoidable in the US? Is it in comic shops, or just bookstores? Did anyone else like it as much as I did? |
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