In the comments to Suat’s post on Fun Home, Uland notes;
The milkman bit is interesting, but I think it bears pointing out that a literary allusion isn’t an allusion at all if it’s being pointed out in the text. It’s a reference.
It isn’t that I have a problem with the drawing or the subject matter. It’s more that it all seems so prescribed . The author refuses to allow mystery to intrude upon her strategy. The literary references seem like a huge part of that strategy. Employed in a less on-the-nose kind of way, I think it could’ve been really effective.
I get the sense that Bechdel pulled back and , reminding herself that it’s just a graphic novel, tried to pull all these different schemes into nice little packages. Problem is, it’s a story about confusion, mystery, shame, secrets, etc. Rather than letting them loose, she seemed to want to conquer them..
Agreeing with Uland is always disturbing…but I agree with Uland.
I think the comparison with Likewise is pretty interesting here. Both Bechdel and Schrag have an ambivalent attitude towards literariness and art. Bechdel associates it with her father; Schrag associates it with Joyce (and through Joyce with Ariel’s girlfriend, Sally.)
Schrag uses that ambivalence structurally; her desire to embrace Joyce and distance herself from him is incorporated into the storytelling, both through her use of or dropping of stream of consciousness, and through the artwork, which is in some ways obsessively ordered and in some ways deliberately random. Chaos and confusion are important thematically, so Schrag makes them part of her storytelling
Bechdel doesn’t do that. She criticizes her father for his artificiality and for wanting a neat bourgeois existence — but her own work never gets beyond insistent artificiality and the conventions of a decidedly bourgeois genre. Everything is neat and in its place; if she’s referencing Icarus, she tells you she’s referencing Icarus; if the house is a metaphor for her dad’s obsessions, she tells you the house is a metaphor for her dad’s obsessions. And if she wants to show a parallel between herself and her father, she does it in the most obvious ways possible — look, it’s a split screen! And also…mirrors!
I find Bechdel’s writing itself almost intolerably clumsy…but I think the narrative and thematic flaws of the book are in many ways more crippling. This is a story about the dangers of deliberately acclimatizing yourself to a typical middle-class existence. But the book…deliberately acclimatizes itself to a typical middle-class narrative. Bechdel fits her book about queer fathers and queer daughters neatly into a classic father/son memoir dynamic. As I said in another context:
The American memoir is a fairly simple formula. Clearly identify your colorful ethnic heritage (Chinese, Jewish, Irish…even Appalachian will do.) Milk said heritage for all it is worth. Discuss your simultaneous love of and resentment of said heritage. Milk your ambivalence for all it is worth. Feel deeply. Stir well, then appear on Terri Gross.
Suat notes that “Much of [Fun Home’s] appeal to general audiences must lie in the way it gently eases readers into the comics medium.” Fun Home did appeal to a lot of people. The irony is, of course, that it’s ingratiating in much the same way that Bechdel’s dad is ingratiating. It uses bourgeois and literary trappings to present a familiar and comforting front. Thus, readers can safely condemn Bechdel’s father for his capitulation to convention while reading a book that goes down so easily by virtue of obsessively cleaning up all its messes. Bechdel takes her quirky, colorful past, dabbles it with knowing commentary, and serves the results to a literary audience eager to smack its lips over delectable, safely contained difference. A rich, unusual, ideally painful childhood is the spice that both validates one’s present normality and makes it worth consuming. Sacrificing your ancestors is, as James Baldwin acidly put it, the price of the ticket.
I’m finding it a bit tiring saying bad things about Schrag’s comics but since Noah brought her up as an exemplar of fine comics…
>>>Schrag uses that ambivalence structurally; her desire to embrace Joyce and distance herself from him is incorporated into the storytelling, both through her use of or dropping of stream of consciousness, and through the artwork, which is in some ways obsessively ordered and in some ways deliberately random. Chaos and confusion are important thematically, so Schrag makes them part of her storytelling
You made this argument a few times during the Schrag roundtable but it always sounds like a poor and somewhat circular excuse for bad art. There have been a number of comics which have made “chaos and confusion” an important thematic element: The Airtight Garage, Ed the Happy Clown, certain comics by Brian Chippendale just to name a few off the top of my head. But what Schrag does with this subject matter is so uninteresting as to numb the mind.
One might just as easily say that bad craft (and Schrag’s inability to draw adequately) was the theme of her comics hence the resulting product. The various techniques (alterations in lettering, panel frames, drawing styles, narrative devices etc.) which she uses in Likewise are so long in the tooth and, more importantly, so badly executed that they made the reading experience pretty intolerable for me. It’s hard to like a comic with such poor craft; craft which thoroughly mires the narrative in thick, enervating mud. If I were to come up with a single reason why Potiential and Likewise haven’t caught the public’s imagination it would be this: it’s an ugly book. Not ugly thematically or in characterization but in execution.
>>>Everything is neat and in its place; if she’s referencing Icarus, she tells you she’s referencing Icarus; if the house is a metaphor for her dad’s obsessions, she tells you the house is a metaphor for her dad’s obsessions. And if she wants to show a parallel between herself and her father, she does it in the most obvious ways possible — look, it’s a split screen! And also…mirrors!
No, that’s just part of the way Fun Home works. As I mentioned in the short analysis, this is Bechdel’s way of easing the reader into her narrative. What you might say about Fun Home is that in many ways it is quite the “middle-brow” work. It successfully attempts an act of communication with the average comic reading person or neophyte. It’s a bridging work in the same way that Watchmen has become a bridging work. There’s a lot in both these works which is on the surface and easily amenable to non-comic readers and also enough lodged in the crevices of the narrative to encourage a deeper reading.
>>>I find Bechdel’s writing itself almost intolerably clumsy…but I think the narrative and thematic flaws of the book are in many ways more crippling. This is a story about the dangers of deliberately acclimatizing yourself to a typical middle-class existence. But the book…deliberately acclimatizes itself to a typical middle-class narrative. Bechdel fits her book about queer fathers and queer daughters neatly into a classic father/son memoir dynamic….It uses bourgeois and literary trappings to present a familiar and comforting front. Thus, readers can safely condemn Bechdel’s father for his capitulation to convention while reading a book that goes down so easily by virtue of obsessively cleaning up all its messes. Bechdel takes her quirky, colorful past, dabbles it with knowing commentary, and serves the results to a literary audience eager to smack its lips over delectable, safely contained difference. A rich, unusual, ideally painful childhood is the spice that both validates one’s present normality and makes it worth consuming. Sacrificing your ancestors is, as James Baldwin acidly put it, the price of the ticket.
I’m going to suggest here that this a misreading of Fun Home and a case of Noah getting on his hobby horse. Noah will need to reread Fun Home again and pay the dentist extra next time he visit visit her (new readers: see previous blog entry comments).
For starters, I don’t think Bechdel started out with an intention to target the middle class or middle class mores in her book. Fun Home is first and foremost a memoir concerning family and, in particular, about a single relationship. If the American middle class comes off badly in certain sections of the book (and this is by no means a consistent theme), this really has more to do with self-analysis than any real social agenda. It’s frankly ridiculous to blame Bechdel for writing from a standpoint which is the most genuine from her perspective. For better or worse, there’s quite a bit of Bruce Bechdel in Alison Bechdel as far as Fun Home is concerned. As Eric points out in his comments, literature (among other things) is a major point of connection between father and daughter. The “literary trappings” aren’t meant to lull potential readers but an attempt at rapprochement.
Nor do I find condemnation to be a particularly strong theme in Fun Home; the central themes here are of reconciliation and memory. Alison Bechdel actually comes off pretty poorly if one notes her utter callousness in the face of her father’s death. There’s also nothing particularly traumatic about Bechdel’s childhood – it is probably no more “rich”, “unusual” or “painful” than those of many people I’ve encountered in my own travels. It’s really her narrative abilities and inventions which make the work so “quirky” and “colorful”.
I’m actually sort of happy to have goaded you into the full-on attack on Schrag’s visual craft. I don’t agree with it…but I think it’s a much more defensible, and much less uncomfortable, argument than the one you ended up making in your roundtable post. I’m content to just agree to disagree.
“No, that’s just part of the way Fun Home works. As I mentioned in the short analysis, this is Bechdel’s way of easing the reader into her narrative.”
“It’s frankly ridiculous to blame Bechdel for writing from a standpoint which is the most genuine from her perspective.”
You haven’t actually managed to say anything that suggests to me that I’m misreading the book. On the contrary, your defense seems to be simply that thinking about Bechdel’s structural or thematic choices in these kinds of cultural terms is illegitimate because (a) they aren’t what Bechdel intended, and (b) Bechdel’s perspective is genuine. I don’t find either of those defenses even remotely persuasive.
Think about it this way Suat. Why couldn’t you say that Town of Evening Calm‘s narrative devices are intended to ease the reader into the work? How do you know that the book’s author was not writing from a perspective that was genuine to her?
To the first, you’d no doubt say that those devices are illegitimate given the subject matter, and that the genuineness of the perspective is less important than your disagreement with it.
“The “literary trappings” aren’t meant to lull potential readers but an attempt at rapprochement.”
I don’t see why they can’t be both. In fact, they are both, in this as in every other book in the genre. The numbing regularity of the rapproachement is the whole reason for the memoir to exist, just like martial arts movies exist for the ninja battles.
I’d agree with you that Bechdel’s childhood is not especially interesting — though I think that your assumption that she believes the same is not necessarily born out by the evidence. Unfortunately, I find her narrative abilities and invention hopelessly turgid as well, which leaves little to tempt me to reread, alas….
>>>On the contrary, your defense seems to be simply that thinking about Bechdel’s structural or thematic choices in these kinds of cultural terms is illegitimate because (a) they aren’t what Bechdel intended, and (b) Bechdel’s perspective is genuine. I don’t find either of those defenses even remotely persuasive. Think about it this way Suat. Why couldn’t you say that Town of Evening Calm’s narrative devices are intended to ease the reader into the work? How do you know that the book’s author was not writing from a perspective that was genuine to her?
The main difference is that I disagree with you when you say that Fun Home is about “the dangers of deliberately acclimatizing yourself to a typical middle-class existence”. I just don’t see that as the overriding theme of the book. I also don’t find that “readers can safely condemn Bechdel’s father for his capitulation to convention”. All your arguments which proceed from these statements therefore seem invalid to me.
I think that what comes forth from Fun Home is a bit more nuanced and forgiving, but that’s for someone else to write about in another article. I was only talking about Bechdel’s use of various graphic devices in my Monday posting.
If you’re saying that Fun Home is sanctimonious, hopelessly bourgeois and overly literary (and therefore dull), I would say that this would be entirely consistent with you’ve said in the past about some white American male cartoonists. It’s a perfectly valid opinion.
It’s much clearer (if not totally obvious) what the theme of Town of Evening Calm is. It’s a pretty straightforward book. I think we can both agree that Town of Evening Calm was largely about the suffering of the hibakusha and of their descendants. This is a legitimate subject matter but one that should not be taken entirely at face value.
I can’t agree to anything about Town of Evening Calm — I haven’t read it!
But yes, I see Fun Home as of a piece with other American memoir comics and American memoird (not all by white people, as the link to the article about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ memoir makes clear.)
Oh…and I guess I will comment on one thing about Schrag. You say that the comic hasn’t been popular because it’s ugly. I think that’s a really hard case to make. Lots of ugly comics are quite popular (Jeff Brown, Alex Ross…lots of things.) I think Schrag’s art style probably has something to do with her lack of cred among comics folks, but I don’t think you can easily map that onto a simple “comics folks don’t like ugly art” meme, because they actually do quite like various kinds of ugly art, at least to my eyes.
In general, I think it’s hard to argue that quality (however defined) has any one to one relation with popularity. The two certainly connect, but it’s always tangential and mediated by various other factors.
As I’ve said, I actually like the art in Likewise, but that’s a different argument.
I’m quite pleased you worked in a shot at Alex Ross.
I’m not taking sides since I haven’t read Fun Home, but Suat’s post has convinced me to at least give it a try.
Perhaps Bechdel’s small town Pennsylvania middle-class life is not so interesting to Noah because it is too much like his own? I recognize my own past quite a bit in Bechdel’s memoir–despite being straight, male, etc. Also have a brother-in-law who’s a funeral director…so all that stuff seems almost too normal to me.
Anyway, I think it’s a bit too easy to call this a slightly displaced father/son story since Bruce’s gender is also unstable–so it is a father/son, and mother/daughter, and father/daughter, and mother/son story all at once–even if you’re just talking about Bruce and Alison. I think it’s interesting from that perspective–
And while Alison does work pretty hard to domesticate and “make sense” of all kinds of oddities and strangeness in her life and relationship with dad, she also consistently acknowledges that this is precisely what she is doing…that there are mysteries beyond her grasp, etc. It’s basically a therapy to put these things into order. If you don’t like “art as therapy” then it’s a problem, but I think there’s enough in there to make it enjoyable and interesting even if I’m not thrilled by the art.
Nah, it’s not familiar because it reminds me of me. It’s familiar because it reminds me of thousands of other memoirs. It’s formulaic…and I’m not fond of the formula in the first place. Art as therapy is an abomination, damn it.
I think I prefer the art (to which I’m largely indifferent) to the writing (which actively irritates me.)
———————
Uland:
…Problem is, [“Fun Home” is] a story about confusion, mystery, shame, secrets, etc. Rather than letting them loose, she seemed to want to conquer them.
———————
If you grow up surrounded by “confusion, mystery, shame, secrets,” wouldn’t it be a natural reaction to “want to conquer them”?
Isn’t “Fun Home” in part a detective story, with clues, telling incidents, snatches of conversation, etc., scavenged and interpreted to achieve insight into her father’s character? Do those tales aim at obfuscation, or clarification? Even her own sexuality is better-understood by herself via research.
Look at Bechdel’s childhood obsessive-compulsion, a fervent way to attempt to force order onto the chaos of life. (A characteristic shared slightly by Hercule Poirot, significantly by TV’s “Monk.”)
Is this the sign of a person who wants to embrace, unleash “confusion, mystery,” etc.? Or one who seeks control, to impose order?
Bechdel’s routinely deadpan countenance also speaks volumes: the inner life is to be subdued, controlled.
——————–
Berlatsky:
Bechdel…criticizes her father for his artificiality and for wanting a neat bourgeois existence — but her own work never gets beyond insistent artificiality and the conventions of a decidedly bourgeois genre…
…This is a story about the dangers of deliberately acclimatizing yourself to a typical middle-class existence. But the book…deliberately acclimatizes itself to a typical middle-class narrative…
———————
Does that not – whether intentionally or not* – also give the message that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”; that you might not wish to share parental attitudes, yet end up replicating them anyway?
But I’d argue that rather than “Fun Home” being “a story about the dangers of deliberately acclimatizing yourself to a typical middle-class existence,” it’s a story about suppressing your true nature with a facade of heterosexuality.
You’re confusing the outward aspects of “a typical middle-class existence,” which many gay folks hanker after and enjoy, with the denial of one’s sexual orientation.
* But, as with Alan Moore’s scripts, is there a hint that “unintentionality” might squeak through Bechdel’s watchmaker-like precision?
I don’t think Bechdel is denying her sexual orientation — there’s nothing more gay than passing, after all. And absolutely, many gay people want a middle-class lifestyle.
I do think that in the story Bechdel’s dad is presented as choosing a certain kind of middle-class lifestyle, and suppresses aspects of himself to get it. I think the book’s neatness and familiar structure mirrors this without really structurally acknowledging or dealing with it.
It’s not quite so simple with the dad…Bechdel does see her dad as denying parts of himself to fit into small town bourgeois, blah…but she also explicitly points out that she doesn’t really know if this is true–that her need to see her father as herself (gay but passing as straight) may be driving this “story”–and that the “truth” of her dad’s experiences and self-identification are fairly unknown to her. This skepticism towards “truth” is a fairly hoary memoir trope (and one, I’m sure, Noah has little patience with)–but it’s not quite fair to say that she depicts her dad as “choosing” and “suppressing”–She both does and doesn’t–insofar as she admits this is just the dad she would like to believe existed–not necessarily the dad that did.
—————–
Noah Berlatsky says:
I don’t think Bechdel is denying her sexual orientation…
—————–
Uh, I was – obviously, I thought – referring to her father.
——————
— there’s nothing more gay than passing, after all.
——————
(!!!!!) Being married, having children by that “beard” of a wife, staying firmly closeted, is as gay as one can get??
——————
I do think that in the story Bechdel’s dad is presented as choosing a certain kind of middle-class lifestyle, and suppresses aspects of himself to get it. I think the book’s neatness and familiar structure mirrors this without really structurally acknowledging or dealing with it.
——————-
There are other ways in which “Fun Home” acknowledges the suppression which is going on. As I’d written in some old TCJ message board threads:
——————–
As for the “limited expressions” of Bechdel’s characters, isn’t it one of the defining characteristics of the “Fun Home” that, not only do its denizens lead compartmentalized lives (beautifully depicted in one of those ways that comics can do better than any other art form, save painting), but that much emotion is carefully masked off? With her father (widely considered here the “worst offender” in the deadpan-mug department) having the greatest amount of buried secrets, closeted inner life?
…Glad I got the first printing. That jacket was particularly beautifully done, rich blue-green and silver, the family portrait on the back cover an image of togetherness that contrasted with what lay beneath: the “cross-section,” each family member isolated in their separate activities. One of the many “dualities” I had earlier enumerated in “Fun Home”…
——————–
http://archives.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?t=1004&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
——————–
…the measured, step-by-step…narrative of Bechdel’s panels perfectly fits the nature of her tale. Not to mention, the personality of the teller. The complexity of its interplay of past and present, themes of multiple identities, possible interpretations of events (a spoonful of “Rashomon,” a dash of Proust), not to mention literary allusions, make a conservative approach a wise strategy.
And what, artwork telling a story of a family repressing lies, a joyless marriage, smothered sexuality, an emotionally closed-off father should be joyful? Might as well complain Käthe Kollwitz’s work could use some color…
——————–
http://archives.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?p=50235&sid=da5ec6e17a078af85f6fd9fa51901f92
———————
…the “Fun Home” creator learned she was gay from books, grew up in a mostly emotionally-repressed home, with a controlling English-teacher father….An environment saturated with books and literature, and let’s not forget the ritualistic obsessive-compulsiveness Bechdel described having in her youth.
So, perhaps the chilliness and lack of liveliness made “Fun Home” a truer depiction of how she felt, growing up. And, the odd, frequently strained marriage of her closeted gay father and mother? “Constructed” instead of organically created…which led to its overall stiffness” [as a complaint about the book stated] would be an on-target description. Is it a conscious plan of Bechdel’s that she “didn’t let her pages breathe enough,” or was she unconsciously doing so to express the mood in the “Fun Home”?
Reading an interview with Adrian Tomine, or a blog entry where he freaks out over a slight error in ruling his borders, …it becomes apparent that much of what some (and I) dislike about his stories and characters are extensions of the personality of their creator.
———————
http://archives.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?t=4702&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20
Addressing some slings and arrows aimed “Fun Home” ‘s way:
———————
…those who fall more in the comicscenti category might well prefer a more challenging, unconventional “read” [than “Fun Home.”] Just as the phenomenon of folks being known as “artist’s artists” (Toth, Krigstein) or even as a “horror writer’s horror writer” (Ramsey Campbell) demonstrates those more intimately “in the know” regarding an art form/genre can appreciate nuances or less-accessible approaches that would leave the average reader cold. Or critics in the “upper middlebrow” category, for that matter.
Much as I admired and enjoyed “Fun Home,” when it comes to factors such as inventiveness, originality, imagination, not to mention dazzlingly fluid rendering, the criminally underrated couple ‘a comics from Thomas Herpich – http://www.indyworld.com/herpich/ – far outshine it. Factors which some readers or critics with a more adventurous palate might value over the considerable array of more conventional virtues displayed in “Fun Home.” (Such as cinéastes could prefer “Persona” over “Lawrence of Arabia.”)
Steve MacIsaac:
“…rank-ordering literature is a mugs game, and ANY choice that is offered up can be easily ripped to shreds, depending on one’s criteria…”
Yes, it’s the criteria a reader/critic most values that make all the difference in the world. If you demand inventiveness and a work which expands the parameters of an art form, well…”Fun Home” doesn’t measure up. As a nuanced, intricately wrought emotional panorama filled with vivid detail and some fascinatingly complex persons, satisfyingly “novelistic”: it’s a triumph.
——————–
http://www.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?t=1004&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
The closet is historically one of the defining tropes of queer experience. So, yes, passing — being more straight than straight — is very queer.
Hey Noah— Next time you rip off my criticism, try not to insult me at the same time. I’m not too worried about those things on their own, but when combined, it’s crossing the line.
I mean, god forbid you should compliment me on stating my case well enough for you to adopt it as your own..
Oh for heavens sake…take a lude. I said I agreed with you. I didn’t “rip you off” or “adopt” your argument as my own, except insofar that you expressed something I was already thinking (and you did express it nicely, which is why I quoted it.)
You know well that we hardly agree on anything. I was acknowledging that. And yes, it was a bit of a dig, but hardly anywhere near as aggressive as things you post practically every time you show up. If you don’t want me to quote your comments, don’t post comments here. That will much decrease my likelihood of doing so.
Yeah but look at what she’s doing with time!
And if you’re arguing that it’s easy to read, I agree with you. I differ in that I don’t think that “easy to read” is… I’ll go eh… 99% of the time-or-thereabouts an asset. I just don’t see failing to hide what the author’s doing behind layers of metaphor and formal trickery as an inately fatal flaw.
I like easy to read! Really, I do. I much prefer C.S. Lewis to Joyce, for example. Or Bob Haney to Chris Ware, for that matter.
I think there’s a line between easy to read and actively clumsy, though. I mean, Twilight is easy to read. But even though I rather like Twilight, and even though it’s easy to read, I can’t in good faith pretend that I like Twilight better than I like Portrait of the Artist.
“C.S. Lewis to Joyce”
I like Joyce an awful lot, but I certainly woulda enjoyed Ulysses more if I didn’t have to read everything twice and then read the book of commentary to figure out what it meant.
“Bob Haney to Chris Ware”
Oh Lord yes.
The reason I don’t see Fun Home as clumsy is that (and I think I’ve said this here before, but what the hey) it’s such a fairly complex narrative, all zipping around in time and space. If you can do that AND be easy to read, I’m impressed.
It’s the tone, Noah. Sure, we both get nasty from time to time, but you and I have had plenty of good natured exchanges; why not use that tone? Especially when it’s something you agree with to the extent that you use it instead of writing something yourself?
If you’re gonna be a dick, yeah, I’ll just stop participating on HU.It’s become one of my last stops anyhow..
It was meant as a good-natured dig, not as an attack.