Fun Home is being published serially, two pages a day for the rest of the summer, in the French newspaper Liberation. Unfortunately, you can only see it in the actual paper, not the online edition. “Fun Home; Une Tragecomedie Familiale” will be published in book form in October. Aren’t you impressed that I spoke such fluent French as a child?
I think I’m too old. But they have Fun Home listed as one of their featured books.
God. I’ve been meaning to put this up since yesterday. Finally, at 4pm, I’ve gotten around to it. Thanks, as ever, to Nichael for hosting the large-print version. [Episode 491 is now visible here.]
On Monday I drove nine hours to Pennsylvania. On Tuesday I met a reporter who’s doing a story about Fun Home and wanted to see the actual house I grew up in, and that my father so painstakingly restored. The place is for sale. It was very odd being there because in many ways, it’s just the same as it was when my mom sold it over twenty years ago. The trees and shrubs and flowers are badly in need of pruning, though. They’re threatening to swallow the place up.
Just like, upon my return to Vermont, my sadly neglected email and lawn are threatening to swallow me up. I have so many things to do, I can’t seem to begin any of them.
I had a very pleasant, intime reading in Burington last night at the good old Peace and Justice Store.
Today’s the first day I haven’t had to go anywhere in quite a while. Here I am studiously attacking my staggering backlog of email.
I’m trying to keep doing that and resist being sidetracked by the extremely interesting discussion going on in the last post. But thanks to everyone who’s been contributing to that. Yeah, at my readings, lots of people have been pointing out the way I’ve ended up mirroring many of my dad’s neuroses in the creation of the book. The obsession with detail, the compulsive collecting (he collected antiques, I collect ephemera and documents), the escape into literature. I have to confess, I didn’t really see this clearly until after the book was done. Okay. Back to work.
I know Fun Home has gotten a lot of good reviews, but this article by Hillary Chute in the Village Voice is excellent. She really gets the book. A most gratifying sensation indeed.
I’ve been trying to post about the reading I did last night at a local independent bookstore, Bear Pond Books in Montpelier. But I’m feeling immobilized. Partly from all the email and snail mail and bills that have been piling up while I’ve been flying around the country. Partly by the news, which I’ve been too distracted to follow closely. Now the reports from Gaza and Mumbai are making posts about my book tour seem a little ridiculous. I know, you’re not checking in here for insights on the international situation. But I had to get that off my chest.
The Bear Pond reading was very pleasant. I love this bookstore. I even like their bunting.
The second, midwest leg of my book tour is over. Back to reality. No more adoring crowds or fancy hotels. Here’s a little movie on this theme I made this morning on the blue line out to O’Hare. Thus passes the glory of the world.
I’m feeling sort of digitized as I shuttle about the country, like a piece of email that gets opened in Minneapolis, then forwarded to Milwaukee and then to Chicago. Or maybe it’s more that the real world is starting to feel virtual, and I have random access to it. Last night in Chicago, for example, I was startled to see all these people I know show up at my reading. I knew they all lived here, but I was still in virtual mode, and the actual, analog people came as a shock. I can’t quite explain it. It’s sort of like the last ten people you got emails from suddenly manifesting in your living room. There was Nicole Hollander, and Kris Dresen, and Anne Elizabeth Moore, and Carrie Barnett who used to run People Like Us, the erstwhile queer bookstore here, and a couple people introduced themselves as commenters on the blog.
Here’s everyone after the reading, waiting to get their books signed.
Here’s Kris Dresen and me. If you don’t know her work, go check out her site immediately. She draws incredibly beautiful comics.
After the reading, I went across the street for sushi with Nicole Hollander, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Cat from the bookstore, and Michelle who owns a nearby art gallery. Here’s me and the awesome Nicole Hollander.
Here’s Anne Elizabeth Moore, champion of cartoons everywhere and co-editor of Punk Planet.
Anne gave me a really nice intro before my reading, talking about the comics world vs. the lgbt literary world, and how my work has mostly been confined to the latter but now that’s changing. That’s a very bad paraphrase, but it’ll have to do for now. Anne is editing the Best American Comics series for Houghton Mifflin, and the first volume is coming out this fall.
Here’s Cat and Michelle. And here’s Nicole in Michele’s gallery, after dinner, with a paper dress sculpture she made.
Then Nicole drove me over to Riva Lehrer‘s place. Riva is an astounding portrait artist. Here she is with her latest project. And check out this portrait she did of my friend Eli Clare.
Okay. Jeez, this was an exhausting, link-filled post and I didn’t really explain everything properly. But now I have to run and catch my plane back to Vermont.
Thanks to Anna the sculptor in Madison who told me about the Masters of American Comics exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum. I went to it yesterday morning. The hotel shuttle bus dropped me off in front of this cool orange sunburst sculpture.
Then I walked across a bridge to the art museum, which looks like some sort of infernal catapult about to launch a projectile across Lake Michigan.
The comics exhibit was amazing. The Winsor McKay (Little Nemo in Slumberland) and George Herriman (Krazy Kat) stuff in particular blew me away. It was stunning to see it in black and white, without the printed newspaper colors. Vigorous, free, confident, accurate. I got all excited by McKay’s masterful perspective and architectural renderings. (Some people I’ve talked to have objected to the “Masters” in the title, I guess on sexist grounds, and it’s true there’s not a woman in the whole exhibit, but McKay is a fucking master so I’ll let it go.) His pages were so vivid I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Little Nemo tumble right out onto the gallery floor.
Here I am waiting for the shuttle bus to pick me up and take me back to the hotel so Amy from Broad Vocabulary can drive me to Chicago.
