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Harvest Henderson & Scott Wayne Indiana

Visit the LittleBird Gallery to view paintings and mixed media by Harvest Henderson and Scott Wayne Indiana.

And visit their website at 39forks.com.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Fun Home
by Alison Bechdel
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006

reviewed by Kristian Williams

The story of Fun Home is the story of discovery -- of sex and of death. It's a story about father figures -- Daedalus, Yahweh, President Nixon -- all those absent/omnipresent forces that create and constrain us, that we want so much to connect with and try so hard to escape. But it's also very specific, very personal. It's the story of Alison Bechdel's life, and a tragedy that in some ways lies at the heart of it.

When Bechdel was nineteen, her father died. He may (or may not) have killed himself -- perhaps because of his homosexuality, or perhaps because of his daughter's.

Bechdel's response to his death was not what one would expect. She "cried quite genuinely for about two minutes," after which she and her brother both were stuck with "ghastly, uncontrollable grins" (46). At the funeral she found herself "dry-eyed and sheepish. . . . The sole emotion I could muster was irritation" (52). Later, she tries to tell an acquaintance the sad news, but can't stop laughing. She writes:

"It could be argued that death is inherently absurd, and that grinning is not necessarily an inappropriate impulse. I mean absurd in the sense of ridiculous, unreasonable. One second a person is there, the next they're not. Though perhaps Camus' definition of the absurd -- that the universe is irrational and human life meaningless -- applies here as well. . . . The idea that my vital, passionate father was decomposing in a grave was ridiculous" (47 and 227).

The reference to Camus is fitting. It turns out that, when he died, Bechdel's dad had been reading A Happy Death. In it he had underlined just one sentence: "He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love -- first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage" (28). Bechdel calls this "a fitting epitaph for my parents' marriage" (28) -- but she strongly suggests that her own relationship with her father took a different direction, from seeing him as "a lowering, malevolent presence" to understanding him (as if by definition) in terms of "vagueness and distance" (197). As the illusion is stripped away, he becomes more -- not less -- mysterious. Lies are not replaced by truths so often as by uncertainties.

Without grief or self-pity, Bechdel brings an historian's steely gaze to the evidence at hand -- her memories, of course, and also her diaries, her father's books, family photographs, old tape recordings. She scrutinizes each for lies and omissions. She criticizes her younger self for being inattentive, unreliable, self-censoring, circumspect. She earns the reader's trust, even as she casts her own evidence into doubt. She is telling us secrets, and the most important secrets are those she kept so long from herself.

To confront her father's mortality is, inevitably, to confront his sexuality -- and her own sexuality, and her own mortality. She begins the fourth chapter, for instance, by explaining that her dad "died [while] gardening" (89). He crossed the road to dump a load of brush and then leapt backward into the path of a truck. The driver suggested that he might have seen a snake. Later in the same chapter, Bechdel recounts an "unspoken initiation rite" in which she spotted a large snake (115). She writes:

"What if my father had seen a snake the size of that one? The serpent is a vexingly ambiguous archetype. It's obviously a phallus, yet a more ancient and universal symbol of the feminine principle would be hard to come by. Perhaps this undifferentiation, this nonduality, is the point. Maybe that's what's so unsettling about snakes. They also imply cyclicality, life from death, creation from destruction. And in a way, you could say that my father's end was my beginning. Or more precisely, that the end of his lie coincided with the beginning of my truth" (116-7).

The tragic aspect of suicide is not death -- since death is inevitable -- but the choice of death over life, and the judgment that choice implies concerning the specific, individual life that has been abandoned. Bechdel writes: "Dad's death was not a new catastrophe but an old one that had been unfolding very slowly for a long time" (83). Again she makes reference to Camus, this time by way of comparison: One man incessantly smoked cigarettes despite his tubercular lungs, the other was cruising New York's gay scene just before the outbreak of AIDS. Bechdel asks, in effect, how much longer either of them really could have had, and concludes rather pragmatically: "Intentional, accidental. It was une morte imbecile any way you looked at it" (54).

What does it say if we choose death repeatedly, in small things, without ever meaning to, without even knowing it? Perhaps just that we are fragile and imperfect, that life is precious even if it is absurd -- and that suicide is not only a renunciation of life, but might, in some cases, be one way of finally facing it.

Bechdel draws out the details of her life -- and her father's -- the coincidences and synchronicities, and elevates them to the level of symbol and archetype, revealing a pattern just below the surface of events. She shoots her story through with literary references -- to Wilde and Camus, The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye, Collette and Millett, and even (God help us) Joyce and Proust. But -- and this is something of a miracle -- the allusions never seem forced, or tacked-on, or pretentious. Bechdel draws meaning from classics; she uses them to understand and explain her own life. Isn't that, after all, what a literary tradition is for?

Great stories can make us feel like we're discovering a new, secret world hidden inside the one we think we know. Fun Home is such a story. Alison Bechdel has given us something more than a memoir. She has given us a real work of literature.

Buy FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel by clicking here.

Kristian Williams' most recent book, American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination, has been chosen as a finalist for the 2007 Oregon Book Awards.

"Obscene": a film about Barney Rosset

Barney Rosset, the legendary publisher of Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Naked Lunch, is the subject of a film called "Obscene," to be released next year.

You can read about it HERE and HERE.

My Neighbors

I'M NOT THERE

Last night I attended the Portland Premiere of I'M NOT THERE (Cate Blanchett was awesome), the latest film by Todd Haynes. It was a benefit for Outside In.

Todd Haynes hosted the event at Cinema 21, describing the program as such:

"Outside In understands and addresses the needs of homeless youth with a comprehensiveness and sensitivity unlike any organization I've ever known."

As a former member of the Board of Directors of Outside In, I can tell you that this is true. Over the years, our society has become increasingly desperate to disguise matters of class. And now that the cosmetic job on the face of the United States is wearing thin, these are the first programs to go.

A government may be judged by its treatment of its own people. A democracy is only good when it delivers the constitutional rights it promises its citizens. In the court of law, the District Attorney's office is paid 40% more to prosecute people of low income than what the public defender's office is paid to represent them.

So don't think our country is only invested in breaking the spirit of other nations. It's building prisons right here at home, where it plans to place many of its own citizens. It's proven to be a money-making business; building and upkeeping schools has very little payback. Welcome to the United States of America in the 21st Century.

So give a little to those in need, because our government isn't going to do it.

Visit OUTSIDE IN by clicking here.

Send donations to:

OUTSIDE IN
1132 SW 13TH AVENUE
PORTLAND, OREGON 97205
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Harvest Henderson & Scott Wayne Indiana

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Thursday, November 08, 2007

"Obscene": a film about Barney Rosset

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

My Neighbors

Monday, November 05, 2007

I'M NOT THERE

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