Fun Home: A Memoir Told in Critical Theory Anonymous College

In Alison Bechdel’s “tragicomic” graphic novel Fun Home, the author combines the traditional forms of the Bildungsromanwith the more contentious form of the graphic novel in order to apply a literary analysis to her own life. The result is a provocative and poignant work that interrogates aspects of psychoanalytic theory, such as inversion, in order to tell her own story – and her father’s. Rather than creating distance and distraction, the trope of telling her story by telling her father’s story and offering summary of intellectual history is instead an innovative way to approach the subject that feels it is uniquely Bechdel’s own. Her memoir, constructed as it is through numerous direct references and subtler allusions to other work, allows her to tell a uniquely American, twentieth century story, one that has in part been made possible by the literary heritage she draws on.

The graphic novel is organized around seven major chapters, each of which engages with a common theme from the realm of critical theory. Even this organization complicates traditional generic notions of the coming-of-age novel, as Alison Bechdel (or the character of Alison meant to represent her in the novel) herself is decentered in this construction and...