A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

Fun Home: A Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is graphic -- literally. Probably one of the only graphic novels I've ever read that I would consider literature, it's the autobiography of a young woman--Alison Bechdel--viewing her childhood through the lens of adult hindsight. Through a combination of text and images, Bechdel examines the shape of her life. The richness of her narrative and the images she chooses to pair with it almost tell parallel stories -- when the text is not reinforcing the pictures, or vice versa, it almost seems that there are two separate narratives, narrowing down to the same focus. One of the things that surprised me the most about this novel was the depth of Bechdel's prose, and the plethora of literary references that made me feel as unread as a five year old.

Fun Home is fairly daring in content and style. Bechdel doesn't spare details to save the reader comfort. That's not what she's concerned with. She's telling her story as honestly as she can, and she's doing it, it seems, for more than the sake of telling a story -- it's a mode of clarification, a way of working through the tangles of her past that will allow her to follow individual threads, and reach an understanding that has thus far alluded her. One of those threads is Bruce Bechdel -- the husband, the father, the homosexual man repressing his sexuality for the sake of a socially acceptable image, and the man who, eventually, ends his own life. Bruce Bechdel, as Alison puts it, is a master of artifice. Stoic, aloof, and an aesthete to the highest degree, he loves to shape, mold, and construct things to make them beautiful -- or, rather, perfect. This drive to create perfection doesn't end at molding inanimate objects, however. He does it to his family as well. There is a notable gap between Bruce and the rest of the family, and yet he is the force that directs their lives, for better or worse.

Another thread that Alison follows through the novel is the development of her own sexuality, and the ways in which her father may have prefigured that, too. Alison's gender confusion, sexual discovery, and life as a lesbian woman in a family and culture that is repressive--in more ways than one--is told (and shown) in a genuine and understated way. She does not deal in cliches or melodramatics. Honesty and self-clarification are her purpose.

I would highly recommend this, even to those who might not be particularly interested in the self-discovery of a lesbian woman. I had my own set of reservations in starting it, but found, the further I read, that I very much enjoyed and, in some ways, connected with Bechdel's voice. The style most certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea (though I highly enjoyed the novelty of it), but Bechdel is a skilled raconteur, and her story is worth reading. To me, it wasn't really about politics -- it got right down to the nitty gritty of human experience. Whatever one's opinion on homosexuality may be (positive, negative, or somewhere in between), it can only be beneficial to try to understand another's life through their eyes, respectfully and sympathetically.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the impact of a novel with both.