This was not at all what I was expecting. Unlike most young people, the Bechdel children have a tangible relationship with death because of the family mortuary business. [2][3][31] Bechdel chose the bluish wash color for its flexibility, and because it had "a bleak, elegiac quality" which suited the subject matter. Unable to add item to List. Aug 2006 . The musical was developed through a 2009 workshop at the Ojai Playwrights Conference and workshopped in 2012 at the Sundance Theatre Lab and The Public Theater's Public Lab. [119][120] On October 11, 2006, the library's board appointed a committee to create a materials selection policy, and removed Fun Home and Blankets from circulation until the new policy was approved. ", "Critics' Circle Names 'Fun Home' Best Musical", "Village Voice Announces Winners of 59th Annual Obie Awards, Names Tom Sellar Lead Theater Critic", "Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel on turning a tragic childhood into a hit musical", "Image as Paratext in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home", "Drag as metaphor and the quest for meaning in Alison Bechdel's, "Groupe de Recherches Anglo-Américaines de Tours", "Lines of Transmission: Comics and Autobiography", "Twenty Years Later, the Walls Still Talk", "Best of 2006 Top 10 Editors' Picks: Memoirs", "The 10 best books of 2006: number 10 — Fun Home", "The First Annual PW Comics Week Critic's Poll", "18th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in San Francisco", "Holleran, Bechdel win 2007 Stonewall Book Awards", "Alison Bechdel Among Triangle Award Winners", "Lambda Literary Awards Announce Winners", "The 2007 Eisner Awards: 2007 Master Nominations List", "1000 novels everyone must read: The best graphic novels", "Library trustees to hold hearing on novels", "Library board hears complaints about books/Decision scheduled for Oct. 11 meeting", "Marshall Library Board Votes to Adopt Materials Selection Policy", "Library board votes to remove 2 books while policy for acquisitions developed", "Library board ready to approve new materials selection policy", "Anti-Porn Group Challenges Gay Graphic Novel", "College of Charleston freshman book questioned", "CofC freshman book ruffles conservative group's feathers", "SC lawmakers vote to punish colleges' book choices", "Palmetto Sunrise: College of Charleston dollars cut for 'promotion of lesbians, "Alison Bechdel's memoir 'Fun Home' runs into trouble with the South Carolina House of Representatives", "Lawmakers to S.C. colleges: Choose freedom or funding", "Bechdel Reacts to 'Fun Home' Controversy in So. [41], In the beginning of the book, the memoir exhibits Bruce's obsession with restoring the family's Victorian home. The main characters of this sequential art, graphic novels story are , . [36] Miller notes that the narratives of the referenced literary texts "provide clues, both true and false, to the mysteries of family relations. She met Bruce Bechdel when the two were appearing in a college production of The Taming of the Shrew, and Alison Bechdel intimates that this was "a harbinger of my parents' later marriage". Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. One year later, a lawsuit was filed in May 2019 against the administrators of the school asking for removal of the book. [21][22][23][24] The Broadway production opened in April 2015[25] and earned an even dozen nominations for the 69th Tony Awards, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical. They buy a charming fixer-upper which her father lovingly devotes much of his spare time to restoring to grandeur often enlisting Alison for assistance. The first edition of the novel was published in June 8th 2006, and was written by Alison Bechdel. Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2019. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high-school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. In an Addams Family -esque way, they develop a … Other. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt . It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. [117] In 2019, the graphic novel was ranked 33rd on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. Learn and understand all of the themes found in Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, such as Ornamentation and Appearances. [157] Kalle Oskari Mattila, in The Atlantic, argued that the musical's marketing campaign "obfuscates rather than clarifies" the queer narrative of the original novel. [36] Incidents are told and re-told in the light of new information or themes. [84][85], An Italian translation was published by Rizzoli in January 2007. [39][51] This question is never answered definitively, but Bechdel closely examines the connection between her father's closeted sexuality and her own open lesbianism, revealing her debt to her father in both positive and negative lights. I've not read many graphic stories. "[36], Several publications listed Fun Home as one of the best books of 2006, including The New York Times, Amazon.com, The Times of London, New York magazine and Publishers Weekly, which ranked it as the best comic book of 2006. Young Alison Bechdel lives in Pennsylvania with Helen, Bruce, and her little brothers Christian and John. Fun Home refers to the family’s funeral home business. Fun Home is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. "[52] Yet, hints of her sexual orientation arose early in her childhood; she wished "for the right to exchange [her] tank suit for a pair of shorts" in Cannes[53] and for her brothers to call her Albert instead of Alison on one camping trip. Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2015. [15] Bechdel described the attempted banning as "a great honor", and described the incident as "part of the whole evolution of the graphic-novel form. [109][110][111][112] Fun Home was nominated for the 2007 Eisner Awards in two categories, Best Reality-Based Work and Best Graphic Album, and Bechdel was nominated as Best Writer/Artist. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." Fun Home refers both to the funeral parlor, where he put makeup on the corpses and arranged the flowers, and the family's meticulously restored gothic revival house, filled with gilt and lace, where he liked to imagine himself a 19th-century aristocrat. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form.Meet … Fun Home Restored in New Jersey High Schools | Comic Book Legal Defense Fund", "Ojai Playwrights Conference Begins in CA; Kron and Tesori Pen New Musical", "Cherry Jones, Raul Esparza give Sundance Theatre Lab star power", "Awkwardness adds to 'Fun Home' charm Muddled beginning, smudgy staging and distracting songs in this musical ultimately add up to a tender honesty", "Fun Home's Success Defines the 2015 Tony Awards", "Jake Gyllenhaal to Produce & Star in Movie Musical Adaptation of Fun Home". Alison ponders whether her father's death was an accident or suicide, and finds it more likely that he killed himself purposefully. The production, directed by Sam Gold, was called "the first mainstream musical about a young lesbian. In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic… This is a review of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Bechdel had viewed her father as "a big sissy"[58] while her father constantly tried to change his daughter into a more feminine person throughout her childhood. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Fun Home is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. "[29] Bechdel told an interviewer for The Comics Journal that the richness of each panel of Fun Home was very deliberate:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, It's very important for me that people be able to read the images in the same kind of gradually unfolding way as they're reading the text. It's like reading someone's diary, because essentially it is someone's diary, but this has to be the most painstakingly artful diary ever created. "[8] Several publications named Fun Home as one of the best books of 2006; it was also included in several lists of the best books of the 2000s. [37] Bechdel describes the structure of Fun Home as a labyrinth, "going over the same material, but starting from the outside and spiraling in to the center of the story. Bruce was a funeral director and high school English teacher in Beech Creek, where Alison and her siblings grew up. The book's title comes from the family nickname for the funeral home, the family business in which Bruce grew up and later worked; the phrase also refers ironically to Bruce's tyrannical domestic rule. Its publication in 2006 brought her wide literary renown. "[48] This opposition was a source of tension in their relationship, as both tried to express their dissatisfaction with their given gender roles: "Not only were we inverts, we were inversions of each other. Bechdel writes about growing up with a father obsessed with accurately restoring their Gothic Revival home. On the uncertainty relating to Bruce's cause of death, Rohy says Alison concludes it to be a suicide to fill in her knowledge gap of the situation, similar to her use of books to fill in gaps in her own understanding of her childhood.[74]. Her new memoir, The Secret to … [88] A German translation was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in January 2008. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. "[132] Bechdel called the funding cut "sad and absurd" and pointed out that Fun Home "is after all about the toll that this sort of small-mindedness takes on people's lives. With two-part visual and verbal narration that isn't simply synchronous, comics presents a distinctive narrative idiom in which a wealth of information may be expressed in a highly condensed fashion. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her … Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Alison Bechdel. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2015, I really enjoyed this graphic memoir; the pictures are lovely - so well-drawn - there is one of the author as she represents herself walking up through some woods with her father, and it is such a beautiful picture. [139][140] After a nearly week-long debate in which Fun Home and Bechdel were compared to slavery, Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler, the state Senate voted to restore the funding, but redirect the funds towards study of the United States Constitution and The Federalist Papers; the university was also required to provide alternate books to students who object to an assignment due to a "religious, moral or cultural belief". Every flick of her pen tells part of the story, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 31, 2017. [29] Bruce had homosexual relationships in the military and with his high school students; some of those students were also family friends and babysitters. [61] As a child, she confused her family and their Gothic Revival home with the Addams Family seen in the cartoons of Charles Addams. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt . The memoir explores Bechdel’s journey from childhood to college student to adult in relation to both her identity as a lesbian and her dynamic with her family, particularly her father who is a closeted gay man. [78][79], In the summer of 2006, a French translation of Fun Home was serialized in the Paris newspaper Libération (which had previously serialized Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi). 1st Mariner Books ed. Modern to his Victorian. Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. [10] In 2008, Entertainment Weekly placed Fun Home at #68 in its list of "New Classics" (defined as "the 100 best books from 1983 to 2008"). Mariner Books; Illustrated edition (June 5, 2007), Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2015. The lawsuit claims that if the book is not removed, "minors will suffer irreparable harm and that New Jersey statutes will be violated. The chapter headings, too, are all literary allusions. [158], On January 3, 2020, it was announced that Jake Gyllenhaal and Riva Marker, through their Nine Stories Productions banner, secured the rights to adapt the musical version of Fun Home into a film. Free download or read online Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic pdf (ePUB) book. [54] Her father also exhibited homosexual behaviors, but the revelation of this made Bechdel feel uneasy. [30], Bechdel wrote and illustrated Fun Home over a seven-year period. It was sort of like living in a trance. It has won several award and was nominated for 2007 Eisner Awards. [118], In October 2006, a resident of Marshall, Missouri attempted to have Fun Home and Craig Thompson's Blankets, both graphic novels, removed from the city's public library. The graphic novel is a genre not widely associated with serious subjects. As Bechdel wrote the book, she would reread the sources of her literary references, and this attention to detail in her references lead to the development of each chapter having a different literary focus. This emotional numbness is first alluded to in Chapter 2. It was a war of cross-purposes, and so doomed to perpetual escalation. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2021, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. [136][138][139] The letter was co-signed by the National Coalition Against Censorship, the ACLU of South Carolina, the American Association of University Professors, the Modern Language Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Association of American Publishers, the National Council of Teachers of English and the American Library Association. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a graphic novel memoir of the author’s childhood, particularly focused on her relationship with her closeted gay father Bruce. [72] The first chapter, "Old Father, Old Artificer," refers to a line in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and the second, "A Happy Death," invokes the Camus novel. "[105][106], Fun Home was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, in the memoir/autobiography category. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Alison Bechdel. [9][116], In 2010, the Los Angeles Times literary blog "Jacket Copy" named Fun Home as one of "20 classic works of gay literature". [74] Rohy explores how Alison uses her diary in her childhood and readings in her young adulthood to both document her life and learn about herself through written works. For the musical based on the book, see, e.g. The subtitle of Fun Home – “A Family Tragicomic” – captures a number of aspects of the book. Utilitarian to his aesthete. First, it captures the fact that the story of Bruce in the memoir is a tragedy told in the format of a graphic novel – a comic. [11][12][13] Fun Home also generated controversy, being challenged and removed from libraries due to its contents.[14][15][16][17]. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a graphic novel memoir by American cartoonist Alison Bechdel. [26] This motivation is present throughout as she contrasts Bruce's artifice in hiding things with Alison's free and open self. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. In addition to sexual orientation, the memoir touches on the theme of gender identity. Gardiner argues Bechdel takes control of creating an open culture for lesbian feminist work through Fun Home by focusing less on Bruce's wrongdoings regarding minors, and more on the tragedy faced by Alison and the guilt towards his subsequent death after her coming out. Judith Kegan Gardiner, a professor of English and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, views Fun Home as queer literature that bends the literary norms of the graphic novel genre. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. (The closest I can think of is logicomix.) I found the drawings very transparent; they weren't screaming "look at my drawing", but "look at what my drawings are of". [16] The university said that it had no plans to remove the book. Fun Home is Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir of her life growing up. "[38] In an essay on memoirs and truth in the academic journal PMLA, Nancy K. Miller explains that as Bechdel revisits scenes and themes "she re-creates memories in which the force of attachment generates the structure of the memoir itself. The production won five 2015 Tony Awards, including Best Musical,[156] and ran for 26 previews and 582 regular performances until September 10, 2016, with a national tour that began in October 2016. [115], In 2009, Fun Home was listed as one of the best books of the previous decade by The Times of London, Entertainment Weekly and Salon.com, and as one of the best comic books of the decade by The Onion's A.V. [97] The Village Voice said that Fun Home "shows how powerfully—and economically—the medium can portray autobiographical narrative. The subtitle of Fun Home – “A Family Tragicomic” – captures a number of aspects of the book. Breaking the gender norms of the genre, particularly within lesbian and gay literature, Fun Home has dramatically affected representation. [96] Similarly, a reviewer in The Tyee felt that "the narrator's insistence on linking her story to those of various Greek myths, American novels and classic plays" was "forced" and "heavy-handed". Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. [135][136][137] A coalition of ten free-speech organizations wrote a letter to the South Carolina Senate Finance Committee, urging them to restore the funds and warning them that "[p]enalising state educational institutions financially simply because members of the legislature disapprove of specific elements of the educational program is educationally unsound and constitutionally suspect". [55] Father and daughter handled their issues differently. Alison Bechdel. you work to do. "I'd been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents' tragedy". Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. Please try again. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was … [11] This translation, by Corinne Julve and Lili Sztajn, was subsequently published by Éditions Denoël on October 26, 2006. Prior to its publication, Bechdel was best known for her long-running cult comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, which followed a series of diverse characters between 1983 and 2008. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home."