Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Why is this book so appealing, why do we love Alison B’s work so passionately? It’s her unrelenting honesty, for one thing. Hiding is not an option. The political act of not hiding becomes an aesthetic advantage, because there is nothing more important in writing, I feel, than absolute, complete honesty, no matter how painful. But this isn’t about baring the soul without control. Alison B.’s strips have always been about controlling the medium, saying so much in such small spaces, creating an entire world within the very challenging medium of the comic strip. (Almost a metaphor for breaking through the prisons and confines imposed on us by the ignorance of what I keep calling society, for want of a better word – we will speak out.) This creation of a complex, coherent world in this limiting medium requires profound intelligence and sensitivity, as well as the kind of skill and talent that few have. In Fun Home, which is brilliant in every way, Alison Bechdel doesn’t hold back, and at the same time, she isn’t out for revenge. She never writes with anger, and that is the beauty of her work. She writes with so much compassion for everyone. And that’s why on her site fans agonize over every tiny detail of every panel, as if these were all real people. They seem real because they are so recognizable, so familiar, and once again, that has to do with the honesty that saturates everything this remarkable artist does. She is indeed one of the great artists of our time. I love the structure of Fun Home. Just as memory returns to the same images again and again, just as memory haunts us and we replay scenes in our mind, trying to understand them, to penetrate the mysteries, so AB does not go in chronological order, but looks at the story from different angles, expanding it each time. This is a deeply moving book of discovery, it’s a book about discovery and it’s a book that encourages us to face our own past, accept it, love it, forgive, understand, and embrace it, no matter how difficult it has been. I don’t know if AB knows just how much she has meant to how many people.
