Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel about her father Bruce's life as an aesthete and closeted gay man (or possibly bisexual man) in rural Pennsylvania. The truth about his sexuality becomes clear to Bechdel shortly before his death at the age of 44, just after she's come out as a lesbian. Although the details of his death are unclear-- he stepped backwards into the path of a truck while crossing the road, jumping back as though he had seen a snake-- Bechdel is convinced that he committed suicide. This conviction is one of many artistic inferences that she gives for her father's life.
Bechdel's explanation of Bruce's regionalism (he stays within a few miles of his birthplace for most of his life), homosexual relationships with young men, and careers as an English teacher and a funeral home (or "fun home") director is informed by readings of literature. Ulysses, The Far Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Proust are all called up. "I employ these allusions," Bechdel writes, "...not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms." The triple function of these books-- as actual objects in Bechdel's families lives, as interpretive frameworks, and as devices to suggest removal-- makes for an unusual memoir that insists on the fictional qualities of real lives. after his death, bruce's life becomes even more of a book, which bechdel can attack and interpret but only at a distance.
I was a little frustrated at how bechdel was always making sure that these books matched her father's life, but this is also the most revealing thing about the memoir: it's a memoir about her, and the twisting and turning she has to do to make sense of her family.
