Fun Home: A Family Tragic Comic by Alison Bechdel

Review by Raphael Klarfeld, M.D.

I find myself in a peculiar position reviewing this truly excellent piece of artwork by Alison Bechdel, because I am a Freudian psychoanalyst by training and survived what her father went through. Ms. Bechdel spent seven years of her life crafting this autobiographical comic book which is both an excellent piece of artwork and an excellent piece of writing. The main reason I say this is because in 231 pages Ms. Bechdel says what it would take many people several years in daily psychoanalysis to say and, in addition, the psychoanalysts were the last to recognize the immutability of homosexuality and the harm that reenforcement of internal homophobia does.

This comic book illustrates these facts so beautifully as Alison describes her gay father and the life he led in the closet which culminated in his suicide at a young age. I, myself lived his tragedy for nineteen years in a heterosexual marriage which also produced a lesbian daughter whom I love dearly. As a psychoanalyst I came out the second time when information began to appear in the psychoanalytic literature to the effect that the causes were hard wiring probably related to hormone levels the fetus was exposed to during the second trimester of gestation when mating behavior is being formed in the fetal brain. I came out the first time at age eighteen in college when I fell in love with my fraternity brother and we moved to Berlin, Germany so we could live together. When I came back to the States I married a woman I had known a large part of my life and went into analysis. I suffered bouts of depression until I began to understand that I was made this way and could live a happy productive life as a gay man. I saw myself clearly in Ms. Bechdel's portrait of her father, an intellectualizing, project-oriented, physician /psychiatrist / psychoanalyst with an interest in interior design, literature, art and architecture. I almost became a professor of Germanistik, the study of German life and culture through its art, literature and history. The similarities to Alison's father are amazing.

As for her portrayal of herself in the novel, clearly, she is aware of the awareness she had of her father's veneer as he pursued his gay interests with a relationship of sorts with an adolescent neighborhood boy who was yard boy and baby-sitter. It angered her to watch his inauthenticity and obfuscation as she pursued her own identity with vigor. The pictures of her smoldering smirk and looks of disbelief are so perfect as images of her struggle.The sequence of events in the book are not entirely chronological which is also so true to life. One part of a story in your life may come to mind later as you negotiate other passages. Her goal though was definitely to find out who she was. Dad seemed to unconsciously be trying to help her realize it and hide it through intellectualization at the same time just as he had.

In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel artfully weaves her life story of identity as a lesbian woman in "graphic" authenticity and detail. If you look closely at the comics you will see great  detail, such as the names of books written on their spines as they were when she read them. She demonstrates remarkable talent as a novelist and graphic artist. I would recommend this book to anyone, gay or straight. It was after all a best-seller.