Mcglynn Lecture on Fun Home

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Prior to attending Lawrence, as well as Wednesday’s lecture, the idea of defining a memoir or a graphic novel would have left me in a daze. Professor McGlynn’s lecture of the book, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, has allowed me to comprehend and examine much deeper into defining a memoir and graphic novel. He asked the audience to think of a memoir as two amino acids. Much like how amino acids are the building blocks for how protein is constructed, we can look at a memoir in the same context. Professor McGlynn described the first building block of a memoir by stating, “by looking inward, a memoir looks outward.” Much like in Fun Home, the closer you dive into specific details or tiles of the comic, the more clearly you see the deeper meaning of the memoir itself. We have discussed this numerous times in our class discussions from our panel assignments. An example of this is how Bechdel uses many different novel references in relation to her own life experiences. Perhaps the most frequent one is to Odysseus. On pages 214, 215 of Fun Home she compares the fear of her own sexuality to Odysseus being stuck on Cyclops Island. She also compares her childhood home to the Labyrinth. Although specifically she means in contrast to the houses many different doorways and mirrors making the house difficult to maneuver through, to me this is a way of comparing herself to the Minotaur and her father to Daedalus. The second building block described a memoir as a story of conversion. Professor McGlynn referred to John Freccero’s quote,” I am I, but I was not always so” to describe this final amino acid. This theme is very active throughout Fun Home. Bechdel describes her transformation from a shy confused young girl, into a confident lesbian, author and cartoonist. Bechdel, in her vast network of transversals, finds a way to turn her father’s suicide into a happy
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