One interesting thing that we discussed is the underlying importance of literature in this text and the different ways in which Bechdel thinks about literature and books in general. For Bechdel, it seems like reading is a way for her to escape from reality. As we talked about in class, people can use literature as a way to cope with their problems. We learn that Bechdel was an avid reader growing up. She also describes her father’s affection for literature, and how one of the most notable ways that they could connect throughout her childhood was through their shared love of literature. Thus, literature took on many different meanings for Bechdel. She could use her books as a way to escape from the reality of her family situation, where her father created an unpleasant home environment. Yet at the same time, literature could also be used as a tool to transcend this unhealthy home environment and try to bring some positivity into her relationship with her father. In a relationship that was largely marked by unpleasant interactions, Bechdel could gain the attention from her father that she craved through their shared love of literature.
Furthermore, Bechdel also uses literature as a tool for self-discovery. As she is beginning to come to terms with her queer identity, Bechdel turns to literature as a way to explain her experiences. This struck me because it almost seemed like she had removed herself from the reality of the situation, and she was doing research on queerness as if she were a case study. It seemed like she was almost trying to study herself through an objective and unemotional lens, and through this approach, she partly removed herself from directly confronting her queer identity. Additionally, I was interested in the way that she used literature to try to understand her father’s life. Bechdel constantly alludes to pieces of literature throughout the novel and compares these stories to the experiences of her parents. Maybe her comparison of her father’s life to various works of literature demonstrates that she does not think that her father lived in reality. Maybe literature marked a way for him to escape from all of his problems in the real world, and like her, he used it as a coping mechanism to escape from reality. However, he might have also used literature as a point of self-reflection, like she did, to try to understand more about his queer identity. Overall, literature undoubtedly played a critical role in the lives of both Bechdel and her father. Although they were very different people, they might have used literature as a lens through which to make sense of the world.
I agree that literature seems to be the link between Alison and her dad. At the same time, I’ve been trying to apply what we learned in Zeitoun to the other texts we have/are read/ing. Specifically, the idea of the narrator (for these purposes, Zeitoun is the narrator of his book) being unreliable and telling only a partial-truth or a version of the truth. I’m not trying to undermine Bechdel in any way; I think she would gladly admit, being an avid reader herself, that a story is just that: one story. So I’ve been thinking about what Bechdel left out of Fun Home. In this way, I think I’ve been trying to separate the writer from the character presented in the story, because I don’t think that that person is a whole person. Maybe the net effect is an uneven power dynamic between the writer and the writer’s subjects.
I think the role of literature is really interesting in Fun Home. The way in which we use books as a coping mechanism for our life is relevant to all of us. We all fabricate identities, and this is important when we think about just how it effects our relationships with people. The father in Fun Home used books as an escape from the issues he was dealing with himself, but the literature infused itself into his actions and opinions in ways that were crucial to how he interacted with his family.
I think you make a good point, the role of reading is central to this book’s plot in a way that not very many other books display. While I was reading it I thought that Bechdel’s references to literature were mainly a way to contemplate her own literary production, and the purposes and value in literary production. For instance in part one we have the story that her grandmother tells her about her dad as a kid getting stuck in the mud, which even though didn’t bring her any power over her father changed the way she thought about him, and how in her narration she framed the close of that chapter with the image of her father in his grave, comparing it to the initial story. And her constant references to Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, it seemed to me she was evaluating the role of literature, and narrative as a way to create and change meaning in a meaninglessness world.
I think that Bechdel’s thoughts on her father’s “subliminal messaging” in giving her the book about lesbians could be her desperately clinging to a link to her father. This is compounded by the time when she mentions in her book that she may not be a lesbian, but she holds onto that part of her identity as a way to relate to her dad. The books connected them, but they also gave her a way to express herself individually from her family.