This has been on my TBR list for...so long. And I have almost read it so many times, but it's just never happened. Until... I got the (apparently) final nudge from another book. I just recently read Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun (yes, I know, it's a Holiday romance and I definitely read it in the summer, I am who I am) and the book our OTP "bond" over during their bookstore meet cute is, you guessed it, Fun Home. And I was just finally ready to know what it was about for myself.
This is basically a seminal memoir in queer history, and perhaps graphic novel history (though I know less about that myself), in which Bechdel gives an unflinching view into her relationship with her father and the role he played in her formative years, for better and worse. From the legacy of his cold distance and high expectations on her as a child to the details of his untimely (and kinda gruesome) death and his extramarital affairs with younger men (boys, in some cases) that she mostly only found out about posthumously, Bechdel unpacks with detail and insight and profound literary allusion and intelligence his part in - or the inverse mirror he was for - her own identity and coming out.
Objectively, I have read a lot, of all types of books, and I feel pretty confident in my ability to "get" most things, at this point. But this...I'll be honest, reading this made me feel literally inadequate for the first time in a long time. Bechdel's writing is exquisite, the vocabulary is so intellectual (I need more than one hand to count how many words I looked up) and everything is so extremely precise, a function both of the graphic novel form (where word space is at a premium) and the exemplar of the skill of the person behind it. And then there are the mythological and literary metaphors and allusions, as well as the western philosophical inclusions and musings and comparisons. They were classical and high brow and, while I know with absolute certainty that some points sailed right over my head, what I did catch was spot on.
As far as Bechdel's interrogation of her relationship with her father and family, and how those intertwined...it is clinical and intelligent in a way that is distant enough to recall the way interactions with her father felt IRL. Yet the need for that exploration to have to happen at such a distance belies, a bit, the reality of Bechdel's emotional investment in it. If it was easier for her to examine, perhaps that distance wouldn't be as necessary. Sort of along the same lines, I felt like there was something solemn in the coloring choice, a sort of monochrome with "hues of pale green" to add depth. Similar to the bichromatic/sepia tone of Palimpsest, it fits the seriousness of the topics up for discussion and pretentiousness of the events in Bechdel's formation and memory. And that all fit so well with the strange literary grotesqueness in the reality of her family's interactions against the backdrop of a funeral home and a home of gilded restoration. Just, a masterclass in vibes and delivery.
I had to take my time with this graphic memoir (I've actually never read anything graphic-novel-esque this slowly before), but it was wholly necessary for me to digest the content. And I was blown away (and remain a bit dazed, to be honest) by it all. But in the "good" way. What a writer, what a memoir!
“He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not.”
“If only they made smelling salts to induce grief-stricken swoons, rather than snap you out of them.”
“Causality implies connection, contact of some kind. And however convincing they might be, you can't lay hands on a fictional character.” (In speaking about her father and any role her coming out may have played in his death, and what a sentiment, hits - not to be insensitive - like a truck).
“While I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him...he was attempting to express something feminine through me.” (The way they formed around and due to each other is such a crux of this memoir in a painful, but absolutely human and real and unavoidable, way.)
“I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.”