June 17th, 2006
I’m afraid things have been so crazy with the book tour that I wasn’t able to do new DTWOF episodes this month. I feel very bad about that, because it’s the second time in a year I’ve done this. But I’ll be back on track soon. Here’s an archive episode. Click the image to go to the bigger version (thank you, Nichael!) [Strip is now visible here without having to go to Flickr]
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June 17th, 2006
Okay. You know that scene in Broadcast News where the William Hurt character says “What do you do when your real life exceeds your wildest fantasies?” And the Albert Brooks character says, “Keep it to yourself.” You know that scene? Right now I feel like a peculiar amalgam of both those characters. But I’m not going to keep this to myself: Fun Home just got an excellent, if not lavish review in the New York Times Book Review.
If the theoretical value of a picture is still holding steady at a thousand words, then Alison Bechdel’s slim yet Proustian graphic memoir, “Fun Home,” must be the most ingeniously compact, hyper-verbose example of autobiography to have been produced. It is a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions, with panels that combine the detail and technical proficiency of R. Crumb with a seriousness, emotional complexity and innovation completely its own.
Well, the R. Crumb thing is a bit over the top. But I can’t tell you what a strange sensation it is to get all this establishment recognition after spending my whole career on the fringes of acceptability. I feel depressurized or something, like I’m getting the bends.
