Bechdel's chapter 5, "The Canary-Colored Caravan of Death", starts with images of radiance, the sunset and rise and her father sunbathing, and a meditation on why her father stayed in Beech Creek, a stifling, inhibiting place. On page 129 Bechdel starts to write and to draw or paint. Her child character writes a poem, her father adds lines to it, and she plunks down a "muddy watercolor sunset" to illustrate it. Bechdel adds other panels where we see her child’s art start to grow but always in the shadow of her parents' more consummate abilities.
On page 135, she inexplicably starts talking about her "obsessive-compulsive disorder". This after describing their house to be "like an artists' colony." The descriptions of her OCD go on for several panel/pages and then she discovers Dr. Spock and she starts to put it together. Bechdel uses her childhood OCD and Dr. Spock like she used the myth of Daedalus and Camus and later James Joyce: as an alternative narrative that is superimposed on her family life. You see this covertly in how she describes her OCD but then more overtly when she returns on page 139 to her parents. Her father has just come home late for dinner and her parents quarrel.
This missed-dinner drama happens inside the panels on the page while her child character is absorbed in reading Dr. Spock and it finishes up with her returning to the "artist colony" motif, a two page column panel (at the bottom of the page) of their home shown from the outside, and a revision of that characterization by referring to their house as an "autistic colony". This play on words arrives in perfect logical fashion by way of her own recollections of her OCD as a symptom of the dysfunctional family life and is demonstrated in miniature by the short scene of her father coming home late dinner and her mother's anger. We suddenly understand why she's been telling us about her OCD. It is reaction to her family life but she does not say it outright but shows it happening all around her while she is trying to discover its (the OCD) roots while at the same time (as writer) knowing all about it.
The writer/artist Bechdel is a character in her own memoir by being the puppet master leading us down paths where we are told to pay attention to one thing while she is subtly showing us something else. It's like she is a tour guide in a museum. We listen to her talk to us about the paintings but behind our backs the paintings are acting out a drama all their own. She knows this but doesn't let on. We are both captive of her narrative and privy to her narrative machinations.
How can we describe this technique for use in our own memoirs? Bechdel wants us to see how she gets to the idea that the house she grew up in was like an artists' colony. A benign sort of characterization that we might, if we were writing it, let stand. But she doesn't let it stand because it is more complicated than that. She knows that artists are motivated as much by compulsion as by inspiration. And that indeed, their inspiration often comes from their compulsions. So how to argue this without making an argument, by instead dramatizing it so we see what she is talking about. The best way is to show us the home as artist colony and then segue into the compulsion, work with what is going on with the compulsion and slowly bring the home as artist colony idea back in again but differently, as an autistic colony. That way, what was posited (home as artist colony) is now by way of an alternative narrative (OCD) transformed into something different (autistic colony): a result of considering the alternative narrative that at first appears out of the blue but slowly starts to make sense and is finally something that seems necessary in order to understand the deeper meaning of what home-as-artist-colony can be.
In its simplest form: She takes an idea, pushes it through an alternative narrative, and comes out with a more complicated picture of what that idea means. Try this technique; it will be revelatory for your own first impressions of what something means.
Great Elephant Lord Ganesh help you if you aren't familiar with all the mid-portions of Greek myth for the final chapter, loaded as it was with Telemachi and Icarans and Cyclopes. As avidly-reading English majors we were pro'ly all previously acquainted, but sheesh, that section would've been unintelligible to the uninitiated. "Fun Home" in general requires that you live in a societal and mental space deeply entrenched in a classical Western cultural background, regardless of its easy pictorial representation. I'm just trying to imagine a Maori warrior or Kalahari Bushman attempting to decipher the words and images presented. It would be so very foreign. ...Sorry, that was REALLY tangential. By the time I've gotten to the indigenous peoples of the Kalahari desert in any conversation, I know I've gone too far. The point stands, though; I've only brushed shoulders with Ulysses in Academe, and Bechdel made me firmly aware of this fact. Thankfully, I'm on good terms with Odysseus, so I made it through, even pickin' up on that Lotus Eaters plot-drop! [Pats back].
ReplyDeleteThe Antihero's Journey, our final ride with Alison Bechdel, houses the most interesting and weighty-worded concept in the entire book: that of apparent parentage. Bechdel not only makes her father Icarus with the clipped passages of the last few pages, but equates herself with him. "Consubstantial," she says, "One-in-being." They are *both* Icarus, the difference being, she continues to fly. I say that they are both Icarus, for Ali cannot be Daedalus to her father; she is a creation of his, both biologically and intellectually. And while that sets her father up as the architect and master-builder he is not her Daedalus either. They exist as an Icaran pair, a what-if of Daedalic Dioscuri, one succeeding where the other falls.
Also, Joan was wearing a Ramones t-shirt(!).
Also also, I can't believe I only realized at the end of the book that she was the one who created the "famous" Bechdel Test for gender bias in media! "Fun Home" passes, in case anyone was wondering.
Quite honestly, I enjoyed the beginning part of the book we read, compared to the second part. To me, the ending took me quite some time to get back into. Don’t get fooled, though, I did enjoy the final wrap up. It was actually overwhelming with the references to various characters. This is a great practice to get into as a writer; it enriches the work, it gives the writer and reader something to build off of, and ultimately it can create dynamics that can really make the work. However, personally for myself it didn’t quite work because I caught myself brushing up on my Greek mythology. With that aside, my favorite passages include her epiphany moments with her father.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the novel, we get the other side of the contrast. In the beginning of the book, she’s rather quite harsh to her parents. Almost as a front to show to herself that she’s tough and wanted to prove to her readers that yes, her father committed suicide, and yes, he may have done horrible things, and that she yearned for more from them. However, I almost sense a shift. I can’t quite put a finger on the exact location that this occurred since it happened quite seamless; but towards the end, she realized as a writer that she is her father. Of course, this can be taken directly from the scene where her and her father are in the car and she brings up how she wondered if he understood the reference he gave her towards sexuality with the book. When I reached this section, I felt as though Alison knew that she has more in common with her father, she just didn’t admit it because the bad parts were more prominent in her mind.
Overall, I think that this memoir definitely delivered the heart wrenching, changing progression, and different style successfully.
Having not read or written memoirs before, I am really trying to incorporate different author's styles into my own work. Something that Bechdel does throughout the book is gives us these journal entries and then steps away from them, but always returns. In Chapter 6, Bechdel starts out by drawing a page of her diary explaining that her father was going to visit a psychiatrist. In the next two captions and pictures she visits the past to show the conversation she had with her father on the day he decided to get help. He is very brief in his words with her, and it makes us want to know more, even though Bechdel reveals in the first section of the book her father's problems. Throughout the rest of the book she uses this style of presenting a point in her diary, showing us, and then returning to the diary.
ReplyDeleteAnother small thing that Bechdel does is incorporates real life events at the time when revisiting the past so the reader can pin point exactly what was going on at the time. An example of this is seen on page 154-155 when Bechdel talks about the summer when she is 13 years old and mentions how "Watergate was coming to a head" and she also tells us she received her first period. It may be a little too much information but it gives us a better image of what stage of life Bechdel was in.
In many chapters, Bechdel uses this strategy of presenting a scene, coming away from it, and them returning to it so the audience views it in a new context. Bechdel also does this for the larger structure of her narrative. The piece begins and ends by comparing her father to Icarus hurtling into the sea. In the last panel where we see Bechdel playing “airplane” with her father, the text in the box tells us that she sees her father as Icarus. The header text for the following panel reads “But before he did so, he managed to get quite a lot done.” This is the scene that frames the entire narrative as going to center on her father. She begins by discussing the remodel of the home, but before long the audience slowly learns, along with Bechdel, all of her father’s dark secrets. The different scenes along the way alter the context of what it is that her father “got done” and by the end of the narrative, the tone of that statement is dramatically different.
ReplyDeleteIn the final chapter, Bechdel presents a scene of her younger self jumping into a pool, where her father is there to catch her. Again she makes the comparison to Icarus This image is very reminiscent of the first scene. It seems to ask the audience to consider what it is that Bechdel’s father has done for her. The text on the very last panel reads “But in the tricky reverse narration that impels our intertwined stories, he was there to catch me when I leapt.” With this last statement, Bechdel can show the reader that despite all the things her father has done, he has still been there for her in a strange way. She could have said this same line in the very first chapter when she first compares her father to Icarus, however she saves this for the end. In this way, the audience is able to walk with Bechdel through her story and learn how she was affected by her relationship with her father.
Like Meredith, I was having a harder time getting through the second half of the book than I did reading the first half. I know we have mostly discussed the benefits of writing in the form of a graphic memoir and how well Bechdel uses this to tell her story--which I completely agree with!--but there were parts that left me feeling lost in the second half. As Malachi rightly said, the reader who is not up-to-date on his or her Greek mythology would not understand the allusions and the deeper meaning behind these allusions as they refer to Bechdel's life. Sadly, I am one of those readers. I understand the basic stories, but I am not well-learned in mythology. I could still understand and decipher the conclusions Bechdel was drawing, but I believe it probably took me longer to figure it out because without any foreknowledge, I was left lost. I think as a writer, audience is important. I'm not saying Bechdel did not write to her audience (I don't know who she had in mind when she wrote her memoir), but for me, I would steer clear of allusions that the general population would not understand.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, I must point out what I really enjoyed about this memoir. Bechdel always kept the reader guessing with the ideas presented but also with the visual lay-out of the pages. I think the different ways she set up the pages made the story that much more interesting. Sometimes there are only two panels on a page, while other times there are five or six. The pictures are not always of somebody doing something either. She captures letters, diaries, photographs, book quotes, etc. On pages 220 and 221, the scene is simple: her and her father driving, having a conversation. But the set-up is so different from what the reader is used to and calls a deeper attention to these pages. It's almost as if a sign is posted: PAY ATTENTION! This is important! And it is an important part of the memoir (I would venture as far as to call it the climax) because something--no matter how small--is reconciled between her and her father. I think that is what I have learned the most from reading Bechdel: a writer can use the visual formatting of a page to call attention to what he or she deems important.
I grew up reading comic books/graphic novels, but I haven't read them with any frequency in my adult life. Bechdel reminded me of a graphic novel feature that works well for composing her memoir. There are specific scenes that appear and fear very cinematic. On pages 177-179 she recalls the storms that destroyed five trees on the Bechdel property. The frames start off showing her family in their house. She then moves outside with them and eventually shows an aerial shot of their property. At first this may seem like a purely visual effect but it actually provides perspective regarding the situation. It also allows Bechdel to narrate the details of the storm's aftermath, as well as offer some reflection. For three pages she uses little more than one dialogue box. On page 178 she has her father say, "Christ" when he first steps out front. Who knows if that's actually what he said in that moment, but it fits. What else do you say when you see that kind of destruction at your doorstep? Bechdel's revelation that their neighbors weren't subject to the same results makes her father's reaction even more profound. She even uses her summary/reflection to move the plot at the end of this sequence as well. On page 179 she says, "in this light, the ring of downed trees conveys a theme less of destruction than narrow escape...but one more narrow escape was yet to come." That was a very creative and effective way to draw readers back into her father's pending hearing.
ReplyDeleteThe part that caught my eye during the second half of Fun Home was on pages 220 to 221. It's when Bechdel's father talks about his homosexuality to her in the car. Even though her father had alluded to it before in his letters to her, Bechdel finally gets him to talk to her about it, albeit briefly. The illustrations capture the awkwardness of the exchanges between them perfectly. I'm not sure that the scene would have the same weight if the illustrations of her stone-faced, emotionless father looking straight ahead and avoiding looking at his daughter were not there. Though it's a short scene, it's powerful. It seems like the memoir, or at least the chapter, was building to that moment.
ReplyDeleteI also liked all the references that she uses. For example, after they go see the movie Coal Miners Daughter, Bechdel draws parallels between that movie and her relationship with her father. It seems likes Bechdel's able to draw parallels between her life and her surroundings with ease, whether it be a novel her father is reading, a play her mother is in, a book she's assigned in college, or a movie that is mentioned briefly.
When reading the second half, I noticed that it was littered with more references than the first. As others have alluded to, these references made the second half a little more difficult to read. Though it was frustrating at points, it was still an engaging read.
I think one of the most effective memoir techniques that Bechdel uses are the letters, written by her father to her and her mother, that she showcases up close to the reader with much summary and reflection. These are littered throughout her graphic memoir but seem to resonate more so in the final chapter, “The Antihero’s Journey.”
ReplyDeleteIt starts on page 200, showing the reader how detached yet close-knit their relationship is. She notes how books continued to be their “currency,” aka the only way they could relate to one another without being awkward or trying to talk about her coming out as a lesbian again. It all ties in with the concept of the “artist’s colony” and how they were each in their own little world away from the pressures of family and other life matters. Bechdel returns to the letters on pages 211-212 after talking about being a lesbian again, and how her relationship slowly grows with her father after he cryptically comes out to her.
She uses these letters to describe a withering, or semi-growing, relationship between two people. It pieces the memoir together and gives the reader a good sense of coherence throughout the story as they first learn background information and then start to unravel, through Bechdel’s reflection, how the family intermingles and how her father truly “works” as a human. And as she shows the audience these letters, her reflection and summary always tie in an aspect of the book she is reading or studying. This keeps the reader’s attention and amusement, because they can piece together information and realize that Bechdel is trying to make a statement about her father and how she can gain his love and attention in any way.
Like Brian I am very unversed in the world of memoirs, and personally I am finding that it is exceptionally difficult to get my point across. And at first I thought that this memoir was fantastic and very interestingly presented, but in the latter half of ‘Fun Home’ it became a confusing amalgamation of Greek mythology and Bechdel’s childhood. I agree with Shannon that keeping your audience in mind is important to consider when writing basically anything, and for a group of college English students who for the most part probably haven’t touched Greek myths with a 10-foot pole since high school. Along with that, the second half of the work seemed to be a bit more cluttered and busy than the first; but then on the last two pages of the work, everything goes back to simple and clear. This was something that I found extremely interesting.
ReplyDeleteWe talked about Bechdel’s possible motives for writing this memoir, and it was brought up that perhaps it was her way of journeying to her individual identity and trying to process her life experiences. To me this makes sense with the way that the pages are filled in ‘Fun Home’, at first they are simple and relatively easy to process; but then the pages become cluttered and a jumbled mess of thoughts, and then they become simple and sweet again. Perhaps this was intentionally devised to visually portray her thought process and Bechdel’s expression of what she felt in her search for self. Or, perhaps I’m just crazy.
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ReplyDeleteMuch of the final portions of the memoir are unreadable without at least a basic knowledge of Greek Myth. I think Bechdel's greatest strength is her ability to present her own life and stories as part of the great existence. By presenting her own life through the lens of Camus, Joyce, or whatever else, she is presenting us her life as viewed through a way we understand, in a world often viewed through other people and works. Since we all have access to all these works, she trust we can understand the way she presents the world, as focused through our other experiences and readings.
ReplyDeleteOne of the greatest techniques incorporated in Bechdel’s novel is one of the most obvious, but at the same time most important. The use of comic panels to recreate scenes in her memoir allows her to focus more on the writing aspect than scene making. The scenes that she creates are memorable and detailed. Scenes such as the autopsy with her father and her in college are very vivid and demonstrate to the reader her personal development.
ReplyDeleteAnother technique she incorporates is how she initially starts off her memoir with how she hated her father. However, over time she begins to learn more and more that she is more like her father to the point where she realizes she is her father. This shows how this life wasn’t flat, but very dynamic. This also shows her strengths as a writer that she develops her main character, herself, very effectively.
Also over time I noticed that her uses of references were effective over time. Some of these references are the use of The Adams Family to relate to her family and the use of movies to relate and parallel to her father.
Overall, I found that the first half and the second half of the memoir were very different in terms of drawing in the attention of the reader. I think that the biggest thing for me was that the memoir initially drew me in because of the sure nature of the book. Being that it was very different from what I was used to reading. However, overtime I felt that the initial shock had worn off once I reached the second half. The parallels had been made and were interesting, but my attention was a bit lack luster.
I can understand why Bechdel adds in these Greek stories. They add another dimension to the story; it’s relatable for a lot of readers. She uses these Greek myths as a reference to readers, to reinforce what’s going on in her own life. Despite the fact that I’m an English major and a fifth year college student, I’m somehow only slightly familiar with some of the myths Bechdel talks about. Between the background Bechdel gives us and what I already knew, I can understand the comparisons she draws but I agree with whoever said she might confuse/lose readers who are unfamiliar with Greek mythology.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy the way in which Bechdel sets a scene, how she puts the reader in a moment (time/place/etc.) and then puts them in another moment in time, only to return to the first with a fresh perspective. It’s an interesting way to give the reader lots of backstory. It also serves to give the reader another point of view on the first part of the story. What I found interesting was Bechedel’s flawless transitions from first story, flashback, to first story (but with different perspective). She flows so smoothly between these stories it’s amazing.
While I’m still not a fan of the graphic novel genre in general and I probably won’t be picking them up anytime soon, I definitely can see why Bechdel chose to use this format for her memoir. There are moments that she could have vividly described in words but the pictures bring the story to life for the reader.