Knowing Me, Knowing You

This memoir is a speed dating tour of the western canon, beginning with the Greeks, and finishing with a postmodern interpretation of Ulysses. 

Each of the seven chapters of Fun Home is tightly woven*, with themes and conflicts introduced in the first introductory panels resolving cleanly at the end.

Bechdel frames her story within two bookends, using images of herself child and her father. The first, of a child trying to make her father do what she wants, and make him into what she wants him to be (an airplane, the impossible)  and the final, of the child jumping into a pool, trusting that her father will be, at the very least, a father, and do what father's do, and catch her.  

 Each begins with a single image.   

Chapter 1, Old Father, Old Artificer, introduces the Daedalus/Icarus story with the accompanying faceplate illustrating a snapshot, an idealized portrait of the narrator's father, naked to the waist, half man, half… ? 

( Later in the book, the narrator criticizes a classmate for constantly drawing parallels to Odyssey, when the comparison has already been made, but Bechdel reminds us on almost every page, so here I go…)

An example of Bechdel's multilayered illustration as well as story telling:  On page 9,  lower right, "He would perform, as Daedalus did, dazzling displays of artfulness."  in this panel her father in cut off shorts assembling a gingerbread trim under a gable; here the image pays homage to the text while also illustrating it, the father  looks like, in profile,  like a painting in high relief on a Grecian urn. 

(Some panels are very literal, in the scene, such as the ones of children being spanked and eating dinner, or reading bedtime stories,  and others, myth making  interpretations, such as on page 7 where the father is carrying a beam as a cross, with the accompanying, also minimal text: "Libidinal. Manic. Martyerd". )

 On page 15, the narrator begins to identify herself in contrast to the myth of her father,  and sets herself apart, "I was Spartan to my Father's Athenian"..

WIthin the first chapter, we also get a window, through the television, which also appears and speaks within the frames, to a "It's a Wonderful Life", which Bechdel uses to contrast her father to Jimmy Stewart, and then compares both to Daedalus, on page 11, when she says "he was indifferent to the human cost of his projects."  The portrait of the father contains contrasts and parallels to archetypal father figure, of George Bailey, and mythological father, Daedalus, (The chapter also features, in no particular order:  Jesus, Martha Stewart and the minotaur…  We don't learn, until page 200, about the narrator's Freshman English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience"… but when I did I was like, "ohhhhh!")  

The first chapter of the book takes place primarily in the narrator's home. This is not the "fun home", but a home that has been restored with the passion and meticulous eye of an undertaker.   (Restoration as preservation, in the sense of an undertaking = both meanings fit)  On page 16, Bechdel writes, above a family portrait, the portrait of her father as a Daedalus deepens:   "He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear as they are not."  

The artificer as liar raises a question for the narrator.  ( If my father is an old artificer, what does that make me? The story of her resistance takes up a good portion of memoir.)

Bechdel draws the narrator's home from many different perspectives:  birdseye above the kitchen table on 21, from behind the narrator, on, 3,  19, from profile, from the audience, on page 5. Occasionally there are panels which are simply interior details, as you might find in an architectural drawing, page 8,9.  We feel we have seen the house, inside and out, and left no corner of it dark.  In the same way, Bechdel's narrator examines herself, and her father's life, from all angels, drawing parallels from ancient and modern literature, second guessing, psychoanalyzing, in many ways this work of art is another kind of restoration,  she uncovers the portrait of her father as if the most useful truth lies underneath layers of paint and must be thoroughly scraped off. 

Aside: I love the idea of a book as a Trojan Horse. (p.224). (That stories can be sent into battle and surprise and overtake the enemy, as if every story is a volley over the wall,  and part of a larger argument. )

In Fun Home, Alison processes her father's death as she deconstructs her own coming out.  The grief stays between the lines and panels, leaving Bechdel, and her narrator to explore her past and pain with a clearer eye. 

Bechdel has liberated her own form.  She brings everything to the table,  and draws her own maps, (literal maps of her father's home, and sphere of influence, and maps of his life) and boundaries... She turns Ron into a Centerfold, (page 100) magnifying the moment she discovered her father's secret photo - -submitted as evidence.   She includes her own hand/ thumb in many images. In the coffeeshop Sailor says, "Look", and points to her thumb, holding the book at the same place where the narrator's life sized thumb sits on a photo. In this way Bechdel builds a relationship between her narrator and her audience.  (The viewing adds ANOTHER layer to the reading.)

  Other times, she chops up the frames into tiny bits to illustrate the moment by moment intrigue of a pivotal conversation with her father, (220)  she interrupts panels with both framed and unframed text, from letters and books.So the frames filter by like frames from a movie. The scene is dialogue, but cinematic, because we would care, in such a conversation, about seeing the character's faces.

LAST CHAPTER: 

In the AntiHero's journey, the narrator embarks on a personal Odyssey of self discovery,  which she describes as an inversion of her father's journey, to repress his identity.  To mark the path she alludes to corresponding books of the Odyssey, and places this journey in time as she is also reading, for a course, JJ's Ulysses.  The four stories weave in and out,  and revolve around a key question, What is a Father? a Socratic type of inquiry, which Bechdel begins, like any investigator, with the dictionary. The image serves the text, bringing the weight of a photographic image of the definition, while allowing Bechdel's narrator to comment in between the lines. 

The logic of this chapter as it deconstructs the lines of inquiry,   is very Greek. Inversion and questioning.

But the love between father and daughter is where the literature comes in, as it is expressed obliquely, in couplets: 

On page 199, 

("I think we were both starved for attention.")

You're the only one in that class worth teaching. 

It's the only class I have worth taking

*Penelope?