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Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home

posted by Matt Knicl at 5:35 pm.

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Putting The “Fun” In “Funeral”

There’s a lot to be said in support for the coming-of-age narrative. As many do, they have first-person narrators, an arresting technique - the reader “comes along” with the narrator. The story is an oral tale, and we are listening as they speak. It is hard to discern who the narrator is in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. In many English classes, one is asked to never assume the writer and speaker are the same, but with a character named after the author, as well as author information that calls Bechdel an “archivist of her own life” it is safe to assume that this is the true life story of Bechdel.

Image courety Houghton Mifflin

Fun Home is the story of Bechdel’s father, a gay man living precariously in the closet, who she believes killed himself by jumping in front of a truck. The story shifts also to talk about Bechdel herself, from her coming out as a lesbian to her OCD childhood ticks. Family vacations and early work become the playground for Bechdel’s story, and we are moved through time, so instead of one big story about her sexuality and her father’s death, the narrative is compartmentalized to focus on specific aspects of her life.

The most fascinating aspect of Fun Home for me was Bechdel’s relation to fiction and reality. Throughout the text, she compares parts of her life to famous literature, and even brings in Wind in the Willows and The Addams Family. What is astounding about this project is how she is able to look back on her life as though it were a novel, and analyzing the “characters” of her “story”, she can make meaningful connections and observations with them.

The fundamental reasoning behind English and other artistic studies is the focus on human behavior and what about art speaks to the human condition (a gross oversimplification, but textbookly accurate). Those who study the arts look at the given information of a character or event and work to understand the bigger scope. But some academics forget to look away from the text more often than not and see the bigger picture - the study of our world and the people in it. When Bechdel looks at the characters in her life in this critical lens, she is using the skills she learned in college in a practical, meaningful way.

There is a lot going in this book, and while I grabbed on to one thing I noticed, I feel like the way the story is narrated you’ll grasp onto something, too. These childhood revisitations are somewhat universal and you’ll see yourself in Alsion Bechdel, if only just a little bit.

Matt Knicl: My name is Matt Knicl. I'm a U of I alumn and one of those unemployed English majors Garrison Keillor likes to make fun of. I've been reading comics since high school and one day I would like to write them. My goal is to expose readers to what is out there in the world of comics and using my English powers, show what is worth reading or not. I can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com.