A real fun time

This is the second comic book I have ever read, and even though I don't see myself reading a whole lot more comic style fiction in the future, I really enjoyed this read. First and foremost, the title really has an irony that I feel helps to encapsulate how the author is trying to portray her family's dynamic as well as an unnatural familiarity with death as a result of spending most of her childhood days at the family's funeral home. Bechdel conveys a permeating sense of miscommunication amidst the concealing of identities - not only her own sexual identity, but also her father's. It was very interesting to me how she began by describing how her father passed away and then spent the rest of the book unpacking her simultaneously complicated and close relationship with him. I also felt like her description of as well as visual portrayal of her experience with OCD was accurate, liberating, and exciting for me to encounter since I feel like OCD is either misrepresented or avoided altogether in a good deal of literature. She narrates from a place of obviously deep introspection, the style of her comic art very intentional in coloring (blue is the only color used among black, grey, and white) and the facial expressions of her characters very telling of emotion that is carefully captured. The professor whose class I read this for pointed out something I don't think I would've noticed on my own: every depiction of the author's father shows an unsmiling, rather apathetic man. Only in scenes where the father is speaking to or with some of the other male characters who the reader later realizes he was having sexual relations with is he showing even a hint of a smile. I think this detail is especially interesting for the sole purpose of most of the book being hinged on the author's attempts to ruminate on and understand (to the best of her abilities) why her father took so long to finally come out to her (in a very indirect, illusive conversation) and details having to do with his inherent obsessions and favorite authors that might have pointed to some explanations for what looked like a freak accident resulting in his untimely death. All in all, I was very impressed with the relationship of text and images throughout this entire piece, despite my lack of comic book expertise. It is definitely the kind of book that keeps you thinking even after you've replaced the bookmark and set it aside. I also recently learned it was adapted into an award-winning Broadway musical, so I'm going to have to listen to the soundtrack!



Some of my favorite quotes from Fun Home:

"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."

"Then there were those famous wings. Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure?"

"Who embalms the Undertaker when he dies?"

"Although I'm good at enumerating my father's flaws, it's hard for me to sustain much anger at him. I expect this is partly because he's dead, and partly because the bar is lower for fathers than for mothers."

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