Fun times

Bumming around bookstores happens to be my favorite spare time activity. I usually make a beeline for the fiction, or the cultural studies, or the women's studies, or the nonfiction, or the poetry shelves--depending on my mood. I settle in witha pile of periodicals and books, and I read, or skim, for hours on end. Strangely, I do this even when I'm in the middle of great books of my own, and when I have dozens of fabulous unread options sitting on my shelves at home. What draws me to put all those on hold in favor of bookstore browsing? Who knows?

Anyway, yesterday I was at my favorite Boston-area independent bookstore, and I found myself in a section that I don't normally pay much attention to: graphic novels. Sure, I respect the art form, and I'm in love with Marjane Satrapi and Art Spiegalmen's books, but I haven't yet made graphic books a regular feature of my reading habit.

But yesterday, I devoured two fabulous books: Aya and (most of) Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Allison Bechdel.

It's Fun Home in particular that I want to rhapsodize about. I'm not one iota surprised at its goodness--I mean, it won just about every award it could when it was first published, and Bechdel, whose also the artist behind the Dykes to Watch Out For, got loads of well-deserved attention. But ... good lord. It's one thing to *know* a book is (supposed to be) good, the way you know a Class if English Literature that you haven't read yet is *good.* It's another thing to be smacked in the face with it.

Bechdel's book is really autobiography: a marvelously artistic two-color pictoral that tells the story of her father, who was an rural Pennsylvania English teacher, the town undertaker, a obsessively talented historical home restoration expert, and, as Bechdel found out when she came out to her parents when she was in college, he was gay. In fact, he'd had relationships with teenage men, including Bechdel's babysitters. Months after this revelation, he kills himself.

Don't worry, I didn't spoil the plot for you. Fun Home is a timeshifting, living memory sort of story that leaves the chains of chronology far behind--you find out those major bits in the first few pages. Bechdel plays at the ideas of artiface and fiction, using Camus, Proust, Nin, Fitzgerald and many other writers to tell the story of the 'reality' of the love, pain, and identity in bookish family.

It's not all melancholy and heartbreak: there's tremendous humor and joy on these pages. Bechdel is remarkable at simply conveying those moments that hold highs and lows at the same time.

If, like me, you heard the buzz about Fun Home, but weren't moved to check it out yourself, let me urge you now: don't wait. Read it now. Why deny yourself the pleasure?

Aya is something totally different, and charming in its own way.

Written by Marguerite Abouet and illustrated by Clément Oubrerie, it was originally in French. The story follows a group of young people in Ivory Coast in the 1970s--a particularly prosperous and hopeful time for the country. While the story's not autobiography, for Abouet it's still personal. She's quoted as saying:

"I was so annoyed by the manner in which the media systematically showed the bad sides of the African continent, the usual litanies of war, famine, AIDS, and other catastrophes.” She added, “I wished to show the other side, to straightforwardly tell about the daily life of Africans.”

It's light, funny, at times striking. Aya--but most particularly, Fun Home--might just be the hooks that draw me again to the graphic novel bookshelves. What else might I miss? I'd hate to think.

Comments

[chicaloungin]

Anna,

Laurie and Layla are coming to Ptown in September and we'll hit Powell's and we'll be buying us some graphixxxxx.

I hope you are well. I have written my first truly SHORT short story (as in, 6 pages!)

Does WW change you? You bet.

xoxo
Chris

[Othemts]

I loved Fun Home. It's a great book that incorporates literary references without being pretentious.