Finishing Fun Home

Okay, back to serious posts. I promise to be more academic in this entry.

I finished Fun Home while working through some stomach problems earlier tonight. At least I was able to get some work done while I was otherwise incapacitated. Anyway, if I thought that Bechdel liked dropping literary references and drawing connections between her family's life and various novels' plotlines earlier in the story, then she pretty much goes berserk in the last few chapters. One can get the gist of what she's trying to convey most of the time, even without possessing an intimate knowledge of all the literary works that she alludes to, but it does get a bit tiresome after a while. The references that I could understand (Taming of the Shrew, The Importance of Being Earnest) really did add to my appreciation for the story, though. However, at the same time, I found myself practically skimming over what seemed to be an entire chapter about James Joyce. I've not had to read any Joyce, but I've heard the horror stories, and I can't help but feel that the author is indulging in literary elitism when she makes repeated reference to a book that very few people have actually been able to read.

Speaking of elitism, holy vocabulary, Batman. I'm very nearly convinced that she made up some of those words, or at least coined them herself. I mean, bathetic? Obtunding? The context was usually sufficient to make sure that I wasn't entirely lost, but sometimes I'd see words and just say, "I'm not even trying to figure out what that means." As far as the rest of the narrative went, I was entertained enough to keep reading until the end. I have to wonder why she ordered things the way she did, though. I can see why chronological order may not have given the story the same effect, but I'm not sure what the seemingly random jumping around did, either. It's as if the entire story is in stream-of-consciousness style. I kept waiting for some sort of climax--and the last chapter did seem to be building toward some final conclusion to the whole affair, but the ending still seemed just as ambivalent in tone as the rest of the story.