PDF Summary:Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

Fun Home is a graphic memoir by cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It follows Alison through the early years of her life as she navigates her relationship with her closeted father, discovers her own sexuality, and grapples with her father’s supposed suicide. Told in a non-linear fashion, the book touches on the themes of gender identity, sexual orientation, dysfunctional households, suicide, and literature as a way of connecting to life.

A New York Times best-seller, Fun Home has been acclaimed for its discussion about the topic of intergenerational homosexuality and its innovative approach to the genres of both comics and memoirs.

(continued)...

A Double Life

Alison’s father tried to live a double life: one in which he was the perfect family man, and another in which he followed his sexual predilections. He would often take trips without Alison’s mother and bring his children and whatever boy was helping him with housework at the time.

For a while, this boy was Roy. He babysat the kids and helped Alison’s father with a variety of tasks. He accompanied them to the beach one year. After her father’s death, Alison found a photo of Roy taken during this trip by her father. In the photo, Roy is lying in bed wearing only his underwear. At the time, Roy was only 17.

She doesn’t blame her father for his behavior. In fact, she wonders if she would have had the guts to be openly gay in the 1950s, or if she would have done exactly as her father had and made a life for herself pretending to be straight. Though discrimination against homosexuals still existed in the 80s, it was nothing compared to that of the 50s. For example, while she and her lesbian friends were once denied entrance to a bar because of their sexuality, the lesbians of the 50s had to deal with bar raids and cross-dressing rules.

Isolation and Disorder

Alison experienced isolation within her own home. Her parents were both artistic. Her father had the house to fix. Her mother played piano and rehearsed for her productions. When she tried to interact with either of them, they would often ignore her to focus on their work. She describes her home as an artist's colony in which each member of the family became consumed by their passion, but in isolation.

OCD

In addition to the disorder she felt within her household, Alison also developed an actual disorder at the age of 10. Initially, her obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) involved counting the drips in the bathtub. She couldn’t turn off the faucet until the final drip count was an even number and not a multiple of 13. Soon, her behaviors intensified. She developed rituals for crossing through doorways and had to put on her clothes in a specific order.

During her OCD phase, Alison started a diary. Initially, the entries were bland and straightforward. However, she soon began questioning how she knew that everything she was writing down was objectively true. She began writing the words “I think” in small letters between sentences. She soon developed a symbol to represent the phrase “I think” and began to cover her diary entries with it. The symbols covered up names and pronouns that referred to other people because she couldn’t confirm what they actually saw or thought, and she had to satiate her need to be completely accurate in her diary entries.

Slowly and with the help of her mother, she began to give up her compulsions. She would dictate her diary entries to her mother and developed dates by which she had to stop certain behaviors. Ironically, she was just as obsessive about kicking the habits as she had been with adopting them.

The Summer of 1974

Alison experienced a chaotic summer in 1974 because of events in the country, in her community, and in her personal life. In the United States, the Watergate scandal was coming to a head. In her community, locusts had risen from the ground and infested the town. In her personal life, Alison started puberty and her father got arrested for giving alcohol to an underage boy.

The End of Childhood

When Alison was 13, she got her first period in June. At first, she didn’t mention it in her diary or tell anyone about this development, not even her mother. She hoped that ignoring it would make it go away. However, when she got her second period, she knew that she had to do something. For a while, she used tissue paper so that she could wait for the right moment to address her development. Though she almost brought it up on a few occasions, Alison didn’t tell her mother that she had gotten her period until around December of that year—almost 6 months after her first one.

Alison’s Father and the Police

Alison’s father had a run-in with the police after an incident with an underage boy. Her father picked up a 17-year old and told him that his brother had gone missing. The boy got in the car and they went looking for his brother. During their search, her father purchased a six-pack of beer and offered the boy a drink. Alison’s father was sent a summons and was charged with giving alcohol to a minor. Though Alison never knew the nature of her father’s relationship with the boys, she later inferred that it was sexual.

While in court, the magistrate focused solely on the alcohol charge and never brought up the nature of Alison’s father’s relationship with the two boys. The judge agreed to dismiss the charges if he agreed to 6 months of counseling. Alison implies that the nature of the sentencing had little to do with the liquor charge and more to do with the unspoken accusation: a homosexual act with a minor.

New York City and School

While on a trip to NYC in 1976, a 15-year old Alison saw the city in a new light. She was traveling with her father and brothers to take part in the bicentennial celebrations. They stayed with a family friend who lived in Greenwich Village, a well-known LGBT community. During her time there, she participated in activities that introduced her to members of the LGBT community and exposed her to LGBT stories.

Years later, Alison moved to New York. She believes that, had her father not died when he did, there was a good chance he’d have died shortly after with the emergence of the AIDS crisis. This is because the LGBT community in New York was the center of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, and Alison’s father had a tendency to go out at night and sleep with men from that community when he visited the city.

Literature and Education

Alison and her father didn’t begin to develop a close relationship until she developed the ability to discuss literature in an intellectual way. When Alison was in high school, she was assigned to her father’s English class. During this time, she discovered that she enjoyed the same types of books that her father did. Their discussions of literature extended beyond the classroom and helped them develop a closer relationship.

When Alison started college, she and her father connected over the books she was assigned in her English classes. However, his excitement for the literature she was reading soon left little room for her to have her own thoughts or opinions. She believed that he was living vicariously through her instead of connecting with her.

Confessions

While home from school, Alison and her father went to see a movie. On the car ride to the theater, Alison’s father opened up a little about his experiences with men. He said that his first time was when he was fourteen with a man at the Fun Home. He also said that he used to dress up in girl’s clothing, just like Alison used to dress up in boy’s clothing. Though the conversation didn’t delve any deeper, Alison felt as though they had finally discussed the unspoken bond they shared over their sexuality. They never discussed it again.

Alison’s Father’s Death

Alison’s father died after he was hit by a truck while clearing brush from a home he was planning to renovate. The truck driver stated that Alison’s father jumped backward into the road as if he had seen a wild animal. Alison doesn’t know for sure, but she believes that his death was a suicide. She points to the facts that Alison’s mother had just filed for divorce and that her father had been reading literature that implied that life was meaningless.

Though Alison and her mother believed his death was deliberate, Alison mentioned later that perhaps her family chose to believe that because, to them, it was less painful. It gave her father agency over his own death. He chose when he wanted to die and went through with it.