Fun Home - An exploration

I was prompted into reading Fun Home by Sinduja (See below. Warning: plot spoilers in her review as well as mine). A tragicomic, in the same vein as Persepolis, Alison Bechdel uses the brevity of the format with great effect to explore her complex relationship with her father. I’ve come to believe that the Graphic novel is a powerful way to deal with difficult and emotionally overloaded subjects in an engaging, thought provoking way with the illustrations speaking a thousand words. I also enjoyed the thematic organization of the narrative instead of a strictly chronological one.

To me Fun Home, in many ways, illustrated how we often use childhood experiences to justify the way we turn out as adults (not an entirely unfounded argument) but the fact is causation is mostly retrospective. Bechdel for example, traces her obsession with keep her spaces spare to her father’s obsession with creating a Victorian home, a restoration project that lasted his lifetime.

I enjoyed how Alison describes the effect of growing up in a family that ran a funeral home and how this stunted her ability to express grief at her father’s demise.

Alison then muses about how we believe we will react to certain events in specific, stereotyped ways and how, when actually confronted by those situations we discover that our reactions are quite different – that we perhaps cannot shed those public tears and labour under a much more private coming to terms with.

Another part that struck me as particularly poignant was how she tried to claim some responsibility for her father’s death and holds on to guilt as a lasting bond. I was reminded of this particular portion again yesterday as I was watching No Reservations, one of my absolutely favourite movies, for the umpteenth time. There’s a scene in the movie where Zoe is found by Kate at her mother’s grave and Zoe tells Kate that she came there because she was afraid of forgetting her mother.

Through the journey of the graphic novel, Alison traces, one by one, the various things that bonded her with her father in both antagonistic and compassionate ways. From books to their aesthetic preferences to her sexual orientation, Alison finds the hand of her father in every aspect of her life and eventually realizes that she can understand that bond only to a certain extent through rational contemplation, and that perhaps, she depends on him far more than she knows or cares to admit.

Review also posted here.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

To most of us who love reading books, the stories have meanings beyond the plot. In many ways, the stories have shaped how we see places, people and even ourselves. Reading Lolita in Tehran is about all this and more.

In a country taken over by religious fanatics, Azar Nafisi, tells her story of how and she and her students found liberation through books. How they found the courage to face oppression at home and in the streets, how their minds refused to be bound even though their bodies were.

In her little book reading class, Azar finds the women slowly transforming themselves as they encouter Lolita, Elizabeth Bennett and others who stood out and stood up for themselves. The class soon becomes their little act of rebellion against Khomeini's transformation of Iran from a liberal to a fanatical society. Finding their bodies suddenly encased and covered from head to toe, their movement within their own country and city restricted, these women use books and stories to experience other worlds, and to let these experiences shape their own decisions.

Reading Lolita... brings to life what some books have meant for each of us, it puts in words how some characters have shaped us, and its pages recount the solace that I have found at many points in time in certain books. It is a book lover's tribute to books, her memoir of the most potent influence in her life and how that helped shape an act of individual rebellion for a group of girls in Islamic Iran.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult ends the acknowledgments of Nineteen Minutes by dedicating her book to different, unpopular and scared kids. You know the kinds who’ve been laughed at in school and college. The kinds who have been given ‘names’ by cliques because of their offbeat character..the kinds who dont ‘fit in’. I am sure all of us had someone like this in our class at some point in time. The important question is whether we were a part of denting that student’s self-esteem. If we were, in any which way a part of the mocking brigade, then unintentionally we have created a broken human being who, as in this case, destroys the source of pain and hurt.

Peter Houghton has stormed Sterling High School and killed students on an impulse. He’s exacted his revenge in ‘nineteen minutes’. He has orchestrated this act with enough coldness to shock a jury and the town in consideration, but with enough sensitivity to spare his friend Josie Cormier.

With two parallel storylines, one that runs forward and another that goes back in time, Jodi goes on to explain the concept of bullying and how it impacts students worldwide. Through Peter’s character she shows how every little insult and every act of comparison drives the nail into the coffin. Its not just the act of bullying or the use of humiliation that is accounted, but also the apathetic nature of society who turns a blind eye to a child’s helplessness. Josie’s mother Judge Alex Cormier’s character is introduced early on in the story and makes an impact right till the end. Through Alex’s character, Jodi questions the right of society to judge anybody for a mistake that has been eventually created by society itself. Her need to protect her daughter from the trauma of her trial, forces her to relieve herself of legal duties related to the case. Josie Cormier’s daughter who happens to be the only friend that Peter had in school, becomes key witness in the case. Josie Cormier is a typical case of a ‘trying to fit in’ personality. She abandons Peter for a more popular group of friends, who are the perpetrators of humiliation in school. Josie is Jodi’s mirror for the popularity issue in schools and colleges alike.  There are teenagers who for hours on end keep thinking about how they can be popular and save themselves from incessant torture by the ‘it’ crowd. Come to think of it, for an average teenager it is indeed a questionable dilemma. The risk of being laughed at is huge and the need to get into a clique enormous. No wonder self esteem is derived from materialistic possessions.

The novel is written in a remarkably easy to read language and combines the elements of drama, friendship and suspense to keep the reader involved. What strikes the reader early on, is the thought process that has gone behind the creation of each central character. For this reason the parallel storylines, that keep the day of shooting as the focal point, help us understand, slowly but steadily the events that led to D-day and the months after that. All while till the end, you as a reader, will agree with all the characters and their actions. You will think that each member of the novel is justified in his position. However you will thank that there is a law in place, that prevents us from turning into a banana republic. Then again, who are we as individuals to judge Peter’s act. True, he took lives and scarred families, but werent the victims actually the cause of the crime? Shouldnt we all then be a recipient of punishment? Shoudnt the society that caused the formation of a monster be held accountable for this act?

There is a beautiful point in the story where Lacy Houghton ( Peter’s Mother) meets her friend Alex Cormier after many years and Alex recounts Peter’s wonderful childhood years and the beautiful shades of creativity that he possessed …She ends the conversation by saying this personal favourite quote of mine …

“Some things exist as long as there is someone to remember it “

Cross posted here.