Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was named one of Time magazine's 10 best books of the year in 2006. Prior to the publication of her graphic novel-cum-memoir, Bechdel was best known for her comic strip, "Dykes to Watch Out For," which was syndicated in a number of alternative publications throughout the country. In Fun Home, Bechdel persists in exploring some of the themes she first examined in her strips, particularly gender and sexual orientation, as well as the trials and tribulations of a smart and witty young woman in America. However, Bechdel's memoir is an even more personal and poignant account--both of growing up as a lesbian and simply growing up. Bechdel's book asks us to look at the future of contemporary American literature. Will the "great American novel" be something other than a novel? Have we moved past the genre of the novel onto more hybrid literary forms?
I don't think we will ever "outgrow" the novel, just as I don't think we will ever "outgrow" the poem. But perhaps the novel is moving to where the poem has been sitting for the past thirty years--that is, something that's read mostly by academics.
ReplyDeleteAs academics,wWe shouldn't be afraid of (or shun) graphic novels; rather we should utilize and embrace them for all they have to offer. They can be a powerful medium for social change and provocative thought, as Bechdel's work has shown us.
It's interesting to me how "novelized" Bechdel's memoir seems. I realize all memoirs display an organization and attention to pacing/plot that novelists also employ; however, there seems in Bechdel's memoir to be a very specific attention paid to narrative structure that feels to me novelistic.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, though this book is about "real life," it isn't rendered like real life. Rather, there's an obsessive crafting process that's happened here (over 7 years, no less) that results in certain resonances and connections that might not otherwise be there if the story was simply told "straight" so to speak.
Plus, the crafting is totally self-reflective...Bechdel constantly reminds us that she's pushing all these elements together for the sake of the story (for the sake of her understanding the story of her father, really).
In this way, when we're reading we're aware of the "novelistic" moves more than we might be with a typical memoir. I find Bechdel's willingness to explore how she's making real life into a story really interesting.
Just as I was glad when 'Harry Potter' got young people reading more... I'm glad that comics are getting more press, and with that, there seems to be an increase in the number of 'conventionally literate' comics coming out- by which I mean, comics that read more like novels, only with pictures. (I'm not one to bash classic comics myself... but they're not all brilliant.) So, if people will read comics that discuss, say, a life story, then maybe they can be persuaded to read novels that do the same....?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ruth that the memoir reads like a novel, but again, I was struck with how images can transcend the written word. If reading is a sort of voyeurism, then reading a graphic narrative is voyeurism times two, and reading a graphic memoir is voyeurism times three. I’ve always thought the memoir odd and extremely voyeuristic, but the writer is still allotted a certain amount of distance with words; that’s not the case with Fun Home. We read Bechdel’s interpretation of personal history and see the world she remembers, witnessing (borrowing from the Cvetkovich essay) intimate moments. We’re made privy to masturbation and a semi-nude photo of Roy. There’s something deeply personal about memoir in visual form that we don’t have access to in pure text, and even if Bechdel struggles with the “truthfulness” of written experience, this memoir feels very honest. We’re literally looking through a window into someone else’s life.
ReplyDeleteBefore this quarter, I’d never heard of Alison Bechdel or Fun Home, but, now, count me as a big fan. I found the book moving, funny, smart, illuminating, and relentlessly honest. Bechdel’s obsessive cataloging of her own life is at once familiar and overwhelming. Of particular interest to me was her methodology of adolescent journaling. In reconstructing her journal entries, she’s really messing around with genre. Think about it: Sequential art and narrative compiled in the form of graphic memoir reconstructing a past through the documentation of journal entries that are, in themselves, already a reconstruction of past events. We are many, many removes away from whatever “really happened,” yet, thanks to Bechdel’s careful hand, we feel very close to where the action is. I’m not sure that I can explain this.
ReplyDeleteOne of the journal entries even appears to be a facsimile of the original in close-up (143), as opposed to the others, all of which are stylized, written in a “child’s hand,” but with the clarity necessary to make reading easy. I was fascinated by this aspect of the book and by Bechdel’s incorporation of “found objects” into the text. Rather than paste the images of photographs or passports into the book, however, these images were first transposed into Bechdel’s stylized/drawn world. This makes the objects at once more harmonious with the surrounding reconstructions (how jarring would it be to come across, say, a color photo in the midst of all of that gray/black/blue?) and immediately falsified.
I thought a lot, finishing Fun Home, about something that Andy said in class last week. One of his critiques of Black Hole was that Burns failed, at times, to use the artwork, panels, and gutters to tell a story that wasn’t already being told by the narration, and vice versa. I can see Andy’s point. Sometimes, Burns’s characters expressed thought bubbles that were already obvious by the expression on the characters’ faces (as when Christa undresses and inadvertently reveals that she has The Bug). At other times, narration had to be employed where the characters’ blank, open-mouthed faces revealed nothing. Bechdel, however, makes great use of space, paneling, and talking heads. On pages 220-221, for example, she fits 24 panels onto the two-page spread. The reader feels as compressed and claustrophobic as Bechdel must have felt in the car with her father. Also, Bechdel’s expression changes and shifts while her father’s remains impassive. Only his hand moves, as in panel number nine, as though he realizes that he’s just said too much. It’s the best kind of showing without telling.
-Jamie
If anyone is interested, there is a less literary version of Bechdel out there: Jeffrey Brown. He recently came out with an entire book of cartoon drawings of his cats doing various things, called "Cat Crawling Out of Paper Bag." A life, with little in it, documented in excruciating detail. He also put out "Clumsy," which documents his failed relationships, and then, when a lot of fans complained about how wimpy he was in the book, he put out a tiny "edit," which took scenes from "Clumsy," and made himself more "masculine" in them (it's called "Be a Man").
ReplyDeleteFascinated by the "after postmodernism" part of the title - could you expand on that at all? I've been writing on the retreat of postmodernism myself, and its possible successor.
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