more Fun Home news
December 12th, 2006 | Uncategorized
Okay, I’m feeling a little perkier after finding out that Fun Home just got two really nice end-of-year mentions. One in NY Magazine–I’m on their top 10 books of 2006 list. My name occurs in the same sentence as Alice Munro’s! Really! Look. “Alice Munro came up with a new kind of memoir, and so did Alison Bechdel.”
And Salon called it one of the best debuts of 2006.
Not too shabby.
46 Responses to “more Fun Home news”
Congratulations, Alison! It really is gratifying to see Fun Home getting so much attention, since it’s so richly deserved.
wow…. the world is really a place i can feel more at home in , if you and Alice Munro are getting big mentions in the same breath. graph. thanks & congratulations.
Reading this pleases me so very, very much!
I can’t stop grinning, and I can NOT imagine how good you must feel.
Well deserved. A nice Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Gurnenthar’s Ascendance present, too!
[…] On her blog, Bechdel points out that New York magazine has included its memoir among the 10 titles in its year-end “Best in Books.” […]
Congratulations, you really deserve it! Alice Murnro is my favorite author–what an honor.
Separated only by a comma…
Yay for you! Well-deserved. Although I think it’s kinda funny anyone would call it a “debut,” given how many other books you’ve put out over the years.
Alison! This is so richly deserved! I am extremely glad about all your recognitions. Your book graces our lives with incredible strength, compassion and beauty. Thank you for collaging into words and images your poignant story.
This is so well-deserved. I’ve been reading your stuff since I first encountered it in “Wimmin’s Comix” in the mid-80s, kept seeking out more and noticed that it just kept getting better and it was *great* to start with.
FUN HOUSE was such a masterpiece on so many levels — the art, the humour, the re-telling from a slightly different angle, the literature, the eventual empathy one develops for all the characters, the historical context of being gay in America, your wonderful way with words. Fantastic!!
I’m now wondering when you’ll enter your jaded “oh my fans won’t leave me alone phase”, LOL.
I’m so happy for you Alison! You are finally getting all the accolades you have so richly deserved, not only for “Fun Home”, but for for your entire body of work.
Congrats!
You deserve all this praise–it’s a wonderful book!
yes much congratulations! also a long time reader of your work i am very happy for the attention your work finally is getting! hope you recover from your family visit quickly, enjoy your being and the end of the year…
One more “Best Books of the Year” list for Fun Home, Alison–this from The Capitol Times, Madison, Wisconsin, at : http://www.madison.com/tct/features/index.php?ntid=110828&ntpid=0
Rob Thomas, entertainment writer:
There were many great graphic novels released in the past year, including Brian K. Vaughan’s “The Pride of Baghdad” and Jessica Abel’s “La Perdida.” But the one that stuck with me was “Fun Home” (Houghton Mifflin, $19.95), Alison Bechdel’s moving memoir of growing up in a small Pennsylvania town with her closeted gay father.
With painfully true emotional moments wrapped around references to the literature that was the main bond between father and daughter, Bechdel elevates the memoir genre, honoring her father by revealing the secrets he worked a lifetime to conceal.
The Cap Times’ list also included Hit By a Farm, which some Fun Home readers might be interested in–
Mary Bergin, features writer:
I was raised on a farm but have worked hard to distance myself from pig sties, manure piles and dusty granaries. That said, two books about farm life are powerful and vivid reminders of what makes farming a fulfilling, honest, complicated and bittersweet life.
“Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn” (Marlowe & Co., $14.95) by Catherine Friend is the multimood story of a lesbian couple who learn the mysteries, miseries and miracles that are a part of farming.
happy daze–
Daña
The entertainment editor, *wink*.
That’s excellent! Congratulations. And well deserved.
But I must confess myself a bit baffled by Salon’s category. Best debut? What is Dykes to Watch Out For — chopped liver?
Congratulations! You deserve all the glory and honor!!
Best debut?
I remember when a friend of mine wrote her first novel after a couple of poetry books an a cartoon album. What did the relatives say: “So you finally published a REAL book then”.
Nothing wrong with chopped liver. Good stuff! (Grew up near NYC. The Catholic Church and the Jewish Deli…a multicultural upbringing…)
Cheers! What a treat to be typeset next to Alice Munro! I’ll just pretend that “debut” refers to “those hardbound books.”
I just had a cool coincidece/it’s-a-small-world kind of story told to me by a friend.
She grew up in rural-ish Pennsylvania, and her mother always told her stories about a wonderful teacher she had in high school who was her mentor: Mr. Bechdel. Recently, my friend told her mother about Alison, Fun Home and the story therein. And, now her mom wants to read it, and they’ve gotten closer and her mom is becoming more tolerant (of her being gay) as a result.
Cool story, huh?
Hey ! Fun Home just got a run-down on the NPR show “On Point” talking about favorite books of the year. w00t ! congrats, Alison !
Yes, great news, indeed!
this isn’t quite in that league, but as I mentioned once before, I’m teaching Fun Home as one of five texts in my Graphic Novel class starting in January. The other GNs being taught in the class are:
Midnight Nation by J. Michael Strazcyniski (sp?)
Don Rosa’s Life and Times of Uncle Scrooge
The Golden Age ( requisite superhero stuff, not bad)
Tezuka’s Phoenix vol. 2: future (the one with the moopies in it)
I also just completed a grad school paper comparing Fun Home with Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood as part of my master’s program.
so that’s the company you’re keeping in the classroom, Alison!
Hi Alison, you so deserve the praise, well done! I ordered your book a couple of weeks ago and it reached me yesterday. Needless to say i couldn’t put it down and was very deeply moved by your story. You’re a gifted, talented and sensitive woman. Thanks for sharing all this with us! Best wishes from France.
Just been browsing your blog and I can’t believe I missed you when you visited Paris *sob* When are you coming back?
Just imagine the smiles you’re getting back at the sight of your self-portraits from the other sides of the worldwide numerous computer screens! Congrats!
that is amazing! you deserve it! keep up the great writing. I can’t get enough of your strip.
“One of the best memoirs of the decade” says the NY Magazine article.
Okay, I have this fascination with dykes using the word ‘perky’. It just seems so un-dyke-like in some way I can’t quite name. It’s a conversation I’ve had with more than one person, especially when I lived in Virginia, where debutante balls were not yet completely a thing of the past.
Beyond that, yep, AB sure does have a well-deserved reason for feeling perkier!
Congratulations again Alison. This has been a wonderful year for you!
Hey, now. I’m a dyke. I was a participant in a debutante ball…. 🙂 Ah, what growing on a military base overseas can do to your personal story.
“…one of the best memoirs of the decade…”
dyke or not, being perky is preferable to being worn to a nub, isn’t it?
not sure I quite captured Alison’s previous state, I’m just sayin’ . . . think she’s been revived by yet another wave of good reviews.
and they’re well deserved. don’t know that folks ever dreamed such a book would be written *and* that’d find such a welcoming audience.
You know, I have yet to see a negative review of “Fun Home”. Is it any wonder?
LONDON BOY–
Just by chance found your ORANGE CAKE recipe back in the October 8th comments section. (THANKS! Yum yum!)
There is an element of simulataneous universes to keeping up with this blog. It’s as if life is a big hypertext and you have to keep revisiting to the past to keep up with the present. (DAMN THAT WAS HEAVY!!)
Speaking of the past, thanks to whomever (in yesterday’s comments) reminded me that the radio shack computer was the “TRS 80.” Yes indeed.
If anyone is looking for me, I will be baking and thinking later today.
p.s. London Boy,
I am not Martha Stewart, so you could please translate what “ZEST of 1 large orange” means?
Also, what is “CASTER sugar?”
Are these British cooking terms?
The cake sounds DELICIOUS. I will let you know how it turns out. Have you ever tried to send this cake through the mail? I am wondering how it would hold up.
Want to send me one and I’ll let you know? (just kidding!)
Hi Silvio–a quick google for caster sugar provided: “Also called superfine sugar. It is pulverized granulated sugar. It can be purchased or prepared at home by whizzing some granulated sugar in the blender.” The zest is the outermost part of the peel of a citrus fruit. You get it off with either a zester, a grater or vegetable peeler, in which case you would then mince it finely for a cake. Try to use an organic orange to avoid nasty chemicals. Happy baking!
Hey thanks judy!!
I wonder if “caster” sugar would be what we in the USA call “powdered” sugar?
What a nice term “zester” is! As if the outer edge of the orange peel (like electrons?) is leaping into outer space…
silvio, we leave electrons out of this, please?
Considering that Entertainment Weekly waxed rhapsodic over “Fun Home” for three consecutive issues this past summer, if they leave it off their “Best of 2006” issue, something’s wrong.
Silvio, my reading of the definition of caster sugar is that is IS different than powdered suger. Amercian cooks call caster sugar “superfine.” You will be disappointed if you use powdered. If you can’t find or make superfine, just use regular white sugar. I like your reading of “zester” And yes, you are removing it from the orange electron by electron, right? This results in better flavor than molecule by molecule. (So sorry. I told you I am the dull one at parties….)
You can also toss regular sugar in a blender, spin it around on pulverize for a minute, and voila–you’ll end up with superfine sugar.
Well how could I argue with anything called “superfine?”
And Lea, what do you have against electrons?
Granted, I am probably the least scientific among us, but even I like to mention them occasionally.
I did read a wonderful book a few years ago called “The Emperor of Scent” which was about physics and perfume. (Author: Chandler Burr, which brought to mind Perry Mason and Chandler from FRIENDS…a strange brew indeed!) But a “superfine” book.
Thanks for the tip, 2manycookz–I will try the blender method.
no, nothing wrong with electrons. in fact, electrons have been my good friends for years and years. i guess my scientist brain just couldn’t make the link between zest, electron and outer space. are you picturing electrons as little things going in circles around a bigger thing?
Hold a piece of orange peel against a light. Compress it – just take the ends and bring them into a straight line, rather than letting the peel keep its curve. Keep your eyes on the air above what was the convex aspect of the piece of peel.
See that fine spray?
Smell that fine orange?
Those are orange molecules, with their electrons, zesting.
hm, well. anyway, it definitely yields very pleasant results if you follow alex k’s instructions very close to a candle flame. you should try it!
alex and lea,
the blog has moved on to the next topic, but here I am to put in one last comment on this one…
Although people say one can understand anything one puts one’s mind too, I have given up long ago on trying to follow scientific discourse…but I like the idea of the orange molecules, zesting!
If you read the perfume book (“The Emperor of Scent”), it is all about how molecules of scents travel into the nose…I never considered this before I read the book.
there is no denying that scents travel from an object to one’s nose sensors…there is definitely a bridge…
I suppose I was wrong to refer to electrons.
Anyway, I am definitely planning to make the orange cake this weekend. it sounds so heavenly. I will try the thing with the peel and the candle flame.