Since 1983, cartoonist Alison Bechdel has been a political activist, social commentator and humorist, all wrapped up in the form of her well-respected and widely published cartoon, Dykes To Watch Out For. It goes without saying that every artist will show a little bit about themselves in their work; following that theory, after writing hundreds of columns about the lives and loves of dykes, trans-folk and occasional het character, one would assume that the celebrated queer cartoonist’s essence would shine through. Not entirely; but that is about to change.

With the release of her candid new book, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel has opened up a lifetime of her secrets for all to see. Not only is it written beautifully, the Vermont-based cartoonist has illustrated her story with gorgeously emotive visuals that frequently resemble intricate paintings more than they do cartoons.

Fun Home is short for ‘funeral home’, the family business that her father, Bruce Bechdel inherited. As the book’s full title implies, the work is both bitter and sweet, a journey that oscillates between Alison’s analytical perspective and her deep honesty. The novel primarily focuses on her dissection of two prominent elements in her life so far: firstly, her love of fine literature and secondly, Bechdel’s own coming out process. Tying those two threads together is Alison’s father, and much attention is placed on how such a complicated man played his own part in both her art and her queer journey. "I realized at some point in my process of writing this book," recalls Bechdel, "that it was really about becoming an artist, and my apprenticeship as an artist under my father. It was a tough apprenticeship and he was very judgmental and extremely overbearing. He wanted me to be an artist…to do things he hadn’t done."

While away at university, the young Bechdel bloomed emotionally and creatively, eventually coming out to herself and her family. After outing herself to her parents, Alison’s mother reacted with her own family’s hidden truths. Mother Bechdel outed her husband, explaining to Alison that her own father – a local grade school English teacher -- had a long history of sexual relations with men and teenaged boys. In telling these stories, Bechdel’s novel is no upbeat, dumbed-down cartoon…in fact, just the opposite. Fun Home is an in-depth analysis of a family – and their breaking points -- from the inside. "To boil it down to its crudest level, I think I wanted to show the anecdotal effects of homophobia in one family’s life. It is much more than that, I hope, but I guess that was sort of my mission."

One day while at school, Bechdel received a phone call telling her that her father had been killed after being hit by a truck, an accident that to this day Bechdel believes was a suicide. Following years of counseling and consideration, Alison made the decision to write and draw her very private family’s story. She didn’t tell her mother that she was writing it until the project was a full year into its seven-year gestation. "I was very nervous about it; she’s a private person and her friends don’t know this stuff. Over the years, I had gotten a lot of information from her and I guess she felt kind of betrayed by me going public with it. I felt bad about that but I felt that it was something that I needed to do. At the same time," recalls Bechdel, "she gave me a box of letters from my father, and I got a lot of insight into my father from those. One of the strangest moments ever was reading my father’s love letters to my mother."

Those letters and the couple’s earliest development – a courtship that included quotations of F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Shakespeare – was the formation of a bond that was intellectually stimulating, if not romantically so. Growing up under the tutelage of such literarily-fueled parents provided Bechdel with the opportunity to access great literature and language, yet she admits that her desire to rebel against her parents led her to the land of comic strips. "My parents had passionate, creative interests; I carefully chose my own mode of expression so that I could elude their radar. In a way I became a cartoonist by default. It was one mode of expression that they didn’t know anything about, didn’t care about, and I could work without their scrutiny. Consequently, you don’t get taken seriously. I didn’t mind…I liked that…it enabled me to be free."

Ironically, one of the reasons that Bechdel’s Fun Home book stands out as unique is the juxtaposition of the perceived simplistic cartoon form against her own broad use of complex language. Throughout the novel, Alison uses heady comparisons of her life to classic literature, from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Homer’s Odyssey. Truth is, the autobiography is often so intellectually complex that it occasionally risks alienating its audience. At one point of our conversation, I quote a line from the book back to Bechdel: ‘My father’s life was a solipsistic circle of self, from autodidact to autocrat to autocide’ and then ask her if her frequent use of symbolism and elevated language is possibly the result of her trying to ‘raise the bar’ of cartoons -- consciously or unconsciously -- in hopes of gaining her late father’s approval, or perhaps her own. "That’s a very good question. I won’t deny that that is a possibility, but I really do passionately care about words…they are extremely important to me. The thing about cartoon is that you’re using language and images…that is a potent mixture. That is something that really interests me, that interplay between language and reality, and how language can’t – no matter how precise you are – quite capture reality in the same way that an image can. Besides," she defends, "there’s no point in dumbing it down. I feel like everyone can go to the dictionary, and I think they should. We have richer lives when we have richer language."

One of the reasons that the Fun Home took so long to complete was Bechdel’s painstaking process of capturing as much literal and expressive detail as possible in every frame. Her secret technique? Photography. "I took tens of thousands of photographs," explains Bechdel, "dressing up and reenacting each scene to come up with each image. One very intense part of my photographic research was going back to the spot where my father was killed, standing there on the side of the road and taking pictures of trucks as they whooshed past. Even though I was acting things out matter-of-factly, the experience entered into my body in some way. I was in a jacket and tie at one point impersonating my father in a casket. I could either emotionally explore that or shutdown…I feel like I did both of those things."

As a result of her groundbreaking work, advance copies of the book have received rave reviews from a wide variety of respected writers and cartoonists. Oprah-heralded author Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina) called this book ‘brave and forthright and insightful’, while American Splendor comic legend Harvey Pekar dubbed Bechdel as "one of the best" in the cartoon genre. "My work does span the comic world and literary world," explains Bechdel. "I’ve been getting feedback from writers that is thrilling to me!"

Throughout the writing of the book, Bechdel kept one foot in the Dykes To Watch Out For world, both out of enjoyment and economic necessity. "I could have done the book in half the time, but I had to keep doing my comic strip; I’d have two weeks to do my book, two weeks to do my comic." After years of working on the strip, she admits "I started to yearn for more recognition and I hope that this book will get me some of that. I love my comic strip and I don’t want to demean it…I just feel like this book has a different quality to it." Bechdel’s future plans include touring and promoting Fun Home and hopefully – if the reception to the book is positive – continuing to work on further autobiographical work. She admits to still being fueled by Dykes, although the cartoonist admits that her dedication has a personal cost of its own. "It is really getting to be a ‘can I afford to keep doing this?’ situation; I get $30 - $60 a paper, sliding scale. I couldn’t possibly live on my comic book income." In an effort to keep the characters in print, she is currently working towards a cyber-answer to aid her financial problems. "I have a plan of Dykes To Watch Out For premium," she explains. "You could get the strips emailed to you right off the drawing board, right when they are most current and have a connection to the current news. And I would leave them uncensored, or I could have occasional frontal nudity…it could be like HBO!" she laughs. After 23 years of working on that project, when asked if moving on from Dykes is an option, the ever-activistic Bechdel explains where her fuel comes from. "The strip is still really exciting to me. Especially at this point in history, as it is dissolving into totalitarianism, it is just vital to me to have an outlet."

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is available from Houghton Mifflin Books.

 
Denise Sheppard (scribeshawca) is a self-employed journalist/editor who likes long walks, candlelit dinners and writing for U.S and Canadian national mags and websites. Her fave topics are human rights-related pieces and entertainment journalism.