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SMNTY Book Club: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I never told you production. I heart radio. Samantha. Were
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you Did you ever get into drawing? Did you ever
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: want to be someone who could draw? I did. I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: really wanted to be an artist of sources. I felt
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: like if I could just do something amazing, So I
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: used to do all of my pictures of people would
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: always be of their profile. I felt like, at least
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: if I had the nose already on there, then I
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: could do everything else. But yeah, they were a big
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: bubble face. It was really sad. Uh. So I had
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of bubble face drawings. And then I was
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: able to draw penguin's. I was very proud of that.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: So I was like, oh, I can draw a penguin.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: That's about the extent of it. I can't draw stick
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: figures really well either, Like you should be easy, but
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: it's not for me. Nothing connects. I don't know why.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Whenever we play any type of like when loser draw
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: or you know, guessing games on those routes, people don't
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: want me on their teach I don't I do know why,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: But I was never good at it. I really wish
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I had the talent. What about you. Oh well, first
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: of all, I forgot about the drawing games on the phone.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: That was at the early stage of the pandemic when
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: everyone was like, oh, right, right, we shall do whatever
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: we need to to keep up these connections. I'm curious
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: about the penguins. Was that a choice that you made
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: or was that just something you discovered? So I'm not
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: really sure why we started drawing penguins, but it became
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: like when we use them as kind of puns. So,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't necessarily about the penguins. It would be
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: about movie titles. So the one I would distinctly remember
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: so a good friend of mine who actually is the
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: old their sister of Kristin Conger of s Mente. That's
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: how I met all of them, Honestly. Anna and I
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: used to just draw a random like penguins and then
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: make little jokes out of them. And my favorite one
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: but she did was Splenda in the Grass, So it
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: would be a penguin holding in Splenda in tall grass.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite movies growing up was Splendor in
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the Grass, which is really really sad and ridiculous. But yeah,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: so we would do things like that, and we would
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: just pass them around to each other. I don't know why,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: but it was always penguins holding something. Uh huh, I
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: love that. Yeah, that's fantastic. Do you have many any
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of them? I think they're gone. Oh I know, I'm
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: very sad about this. I can distinctly remember hers was
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: much better than mine too, by the way, way better.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Mine would just be a penguin who's like would wear
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: a hat or something. Still, I love drawing and coloring,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: as you have seen as an adult, Samantha. If the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: table met at a restaurant has the crowns and like
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the canvas, then forget the food. That's what I'm doing.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: And uh, I still like there's a restaurant I went
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: to a couple of years ago where it's kind of
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: hard to get your picture on the wall, and I
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: got my picture on the wall, and I took a
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: picture of it as if I had won some great award,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: like a picture that you color on the wall. But
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I was never very good at it either. I think
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I've said before the lowest grade I've ever gotten was
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: an art. But both of my friends were really good
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: at it. So I was desperate. I kept trying and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: trying and trying, and I would illustrate all the stuff
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I would write. I would put in like little boxes,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and the pictures were terrible. They were so bad. I
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: could trace things though I was good at tracing. I
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: guess that's not so great overall, but better than what
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I can do. Then I'm not sure that's the case.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I have been drawing a lot for a D and
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: D for Dungeons and Dragons. Nice, I draw the maps
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: and uh. We recently played Dungeons and Dragons for the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: first time in person since this particular campaign started, and
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: I got out my very silly, childishly drawn maps and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: they acted as if I was like presenting them the
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Decoration of Independence. They were so just the real thing.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I like, you compared it to the Declaration of Independence.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. They like gas allowed well. For this edition
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: book Club, we are talking about a graphic novel, which
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: is why this was on my mind. Um, and because
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: it is Pride month, we wanted to talk about fun Home,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: a family tragic comic written by American cartoonist Alison Bechdel
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and six, and yes, that Bechdel of
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the Bechdel Test. She also wrote the comic strip dikes
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: to watch out for. Are You My Mother? A comic
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: drama and a memoir published in one called The Secret
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: to Superhuman Drengths. I think it just came out in May,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: so very recent in. Fun Home was adapted for the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: stage by playwright Lisa Crown and composer Janine two Sorry,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: and the play went on to win several Tony Awards.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Fun Home is an autobiographical look at Bechdel's complicated relationship
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: with her father growing up in rural Pennsylvania at the
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: fun Home, the funeral home her dad runs, but I
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: guess it also functions for the house that they actually
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: live in, which was sort of this Victorian museum, right,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: which we'll talk about more a bit later. After her
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: father's death, possibly by suicide, she wrestled with understanding her father,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: his choices and the things he kept from her, and
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: how that interacts with her own coming out and understanding
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: of gender identities, sexual orientation, and gender roles. The book
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: also delves into family dysfunction and emotional abuse, suicide, coming
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: of age literature and how that can be a tool
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: for understanding ourselves in each other, and sexual orientation and
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: attitudes around it, and how they've changed or haven't over
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the years. It's beautifully illustrated and draws you into the world.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: It's often called a graphic novel for word lovers. A
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: lot of the reviews will say like it made me
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: go to the dictionary more than once, which is me too.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: It's told in a non linear way, with new memories
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: being repeated and re examined in light of new information. Yeah,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: so we definitely have to talk about the author. Bechtel
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: was born in nineteen sixty and started drawing as a child.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: At one time during her childhood, she expressed interest in
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: being a cartoonist. She started drawing characters that looked a
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: lot like her out of college when she didn't see
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: them anywhere. Some of her first jobs after college were
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: boring jobs she took so that she could draw, and
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: this is where she created Dikes to Watch Out for,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a humorous comic strip published from three to two thousand
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: eight that followed a group of radical lesbians, partly inspired
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: by Howard Cruise's gay Comics founded in the nineteen seventy
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: it's from one of these trips that we get the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: famous Bechdel tests and the idea she credits to her
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: friend Liz Wallace, where you know, I didn't read this
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: out of the actual comic, but it has stated where
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: she the friend says, I will not go see this
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: movie unless at least two female characters are talking to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: each other and it's not about a man. And so
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: she talks about how the last film she saw was
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Alien and I'll thought of you. But yes, it was
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: funny reading about it because it's named after Bechdel. She
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I don't really like movies really. Before
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: my friend she was just like, hey, I'll take it though.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: It's cool. Hey. So this book took Beackdel several years
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to create. I believe every seven she would photograph herself
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: in the poses of the characters to use as reference
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: when drawing over four thousand photos in total. And you
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: can see a side by side comparisons and it's really amazing.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I recommend looking it up. She also referenced real diary
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: entries from her life. She was meticulous and documenting things
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and has discussed the failings of memory, and she even
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: discusses that within the book, and this hammers home the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: fact that while this is a graphic novel, it is
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: autobiographical with real life and real events and real loss
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and violence and pain behind it right. Inten Bechtel was
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: one of the twenty first recipients chosen for the MacArthur
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Foundation Genius Grant in part for quote changing our notions
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: of contemporary memoir and expanding the expressive potential of the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: graphic form. And she's appeared in an episode of The
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Simpsons in which in the episode where Lisa writes her
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: own graphic novel autobiography called Sad Girl with illustrations by Marge,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: and they appeared together on a comic panel with several
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: other famous cartoonists as well, so it's really fun. It
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: was definitely targeted by many sistership and banning efforts, with
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: some labeling as pornography because it contained oral sex between
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: two women and a woman masturbating four pages of the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: two forty page book by the way, And it still
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: was like, huh, really, this is pornography. I guess that
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: could be. It was even sinceortain band at the college level,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: so that says a lot during our time period, I'm sure. Yeah,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: And that made national headlines so you can read all
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: about what happened there because it it caught, which is
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: kind of ironic because she talks about censorship novel. Yeah,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: and I mean a lot of people rightfully pointed out
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: to say it's pornography when it's so few, like four
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: pages out of two or whatever. I mean, that's like
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: saying a movie is pornographic for having one sex scene
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: in it, and the whole movie like, it's just disingenuous
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: and incorrect. A few years ago, in Beckdale returned to
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: her small hometown to see a production of the play.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: She said it was super surreal. It was the same
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: theater where my mother would do her amateur dramatics and
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: my father was on the board. I was a little afraid.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: I felt anxious, like, oh my god, I'm going to
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: see all these people and they're going to be piste
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: off with me. Because there were people in my hometown
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: who did not think fun Home was a good thing.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: They thought it dishonored by family. There was this great
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: warmth that I just hadn't expected. I had thought I
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: was going back to nineteen seventy seven, but the place
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: has changed, it has evolved. My parents who had met
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: in a play would get to go on living in one, right,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine. Yeah, I do like how she mentioned
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: the fact that she was kind of glad her mother
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: wasn't alive to see it because her mother did have
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: a hard time with a book in general, which I've
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: thought about that. You know, you and I have talked
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: about this. We talked about this with Nicole, the author
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: who came and talked about her book. And when we
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: were talking about what would our parents think is it?
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Is it going to dishonor them do are they gonna
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: be hurt by this? And yeah, she talked about that
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: fact that she her mother I think eventually accepted it,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: didn't love it, accepted it, but that the musical may
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: have been too much for her. It would have to
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: be the other way she could really view it is
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: if she was alone watching it. Yeah, I was like,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, I hate to her from this point all
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the time. But coming from a small town, I cannot
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: imagine going back to that small town and having a
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: play about like me coming out and family drama and
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: having conservatives small town Georgia watching it. Right, as well
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: as the fact that not the coming out was also
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: kind of indicated some really unsavory things for the town,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: especially with from her family that you're like, oh, oh,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: she gonna let it all out. Okay, here we go.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: But of course, even with all the controversy, as we
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: talked about before, she has won many awards and accolades,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: including the book was listed as one of the top
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: ten best books of two thousand six by Time Magazine.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It was also given the Eisner Award for the Best
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Reality Series Works in two thousand seven, but it also
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: was a part given the Award for Best Graphic Album
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: as well um and she was nominated as Best Writer
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: and Artist with the same award. She also won the
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Stonewall Book Awards Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award in two thousand
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: and seven. She was given the Guggenheim A Fellowship in
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: two thousand twelve in part award in two thousand twelve,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: as well the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Publishing Triangle in two thousand twelve. So many awards. She
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: again won the maccarthur Fellowship in twenty fourteen, Lambda Board
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: of Trustees Award for Excellence in Literature in two thousand
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and fourteen, the Ericson Institute par for Excellence and Mental
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Health and Media in two thousands fifteen, and goes On
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and on and on. I feel like we also haven't
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: mentioned it yet, but about how she addresses the mental
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: health stuff that she had to go through with her
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: compulsiveness and her fears and anxiety that kind of came
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: out because partially from her family and her trying to
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: figure out her own identity. But it was really interesting
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: as she talks about it, especially when she talks about
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: writing m and and doing the diary in journaling and
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: how like that became compulsive for her but also a release.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: It was a very interesting dynamic tocity as well. Yeah,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and she's been very very outspoken about therapy, a strong
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: proponent of of therapy. So the plot is primarily an
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: examination of Bechdel's father, Bruce, a closeted gay man, and
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: her own coming out as a lesbian and the relationship
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: that the two of them had, the very very complicated relationship.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: After going to college and realizing her own sexual orientation,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Beckdel sends a letter home to her parents about it,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: and this is when she learns from her mother that
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: her father had affairs with several men, including a few
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: who were underaged. With this revelation, both Alison and her
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: dad struggle to come to terms with how repressing his
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: sexual orientation may have impacted both of them. Her father
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: died a few months later after her letter, and also
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: two weeks after her mother. Bechdel's mother filed for divorce
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: from him. While Allison and her father are the primary characters,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: her mother and brothers are consistently present, along with her
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: first girlfriend, Joan, as is the house they live in itself,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: an elaborate, meticulous nineteenth century home styled by her father
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: but maintained by her mother, a home that her father
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: more openly cared for than his family, and all the
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: beautiful ornate objects in it. And I do love the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: beginning comparison that she has of it with the Adams family,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: such a big, great beginning that I was like, Okay,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I see exactly what you're saying. Okay has an outward
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: appearance of perfection that he projects only possible with the
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: help and pain of others. So they're constantly having to
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: rearrange and dust the funeral home he inherited after his
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: own father's death. He and his wife, Helen, who had
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: been living in New York before that, had to return
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: to Pennsylvania once his father had died. The death of
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: passion and hope and dreams and thought of escape the past,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: of a new life. It kind of just all disappeared. Yeah. Yeah.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: So they were Helen and Bruce for off in Europe
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: and there's all these like happiness in front of them,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and then Bruce's father died after return home and it
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: did kind of represent like his father's death, but also yes,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: he's inheriting the screener home and all those dreams they
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: had in Europe are kind of like gone, yeah, fizzled out. Yeah,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: And I do love Bechtel's drawings of the comparison of
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: her mom before and after. It's it's it's like, oh
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: that's too really was like, yeah, resonates everywhere, and art
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: is almost a character in this book to something that
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: moves all of the human characters. Allison's parents met at
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: a play. Bruce takes refuge in literature and house design,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Helen and music. In one of the few ways that
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Alison can connect to her emotionally abusive father is through literature.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: It is constant throughout. At first, he's the one doing
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: most of the recommending to Allison, and he's pretty like
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: fierce about his opinions. But after Alison goes to college,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: she recommends some books to him, almost as a way
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: to open the door to them, talking about her coming
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: out as a lesbian and her father's closeted homosexuality or bisexuality,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know for sure, trying to bond over their
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: shared yet queerness. Also just want it's through in here.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: There was seventeen years to Kada's Nixon Watergate was happening,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, time really is a flat circle.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: So we have so many themes we want to go over,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: but first we're gonna pause for a quick break for
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So one of the themes we wanted to start out with,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: which is probably one of the biggest of not the
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: biggest throughout, is Allison's relationship with her father, which was
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: fraught with yes, emotional abuse and miscommunication, and a lot
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: of her thoughts on this came out after her father's
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: death and and her kind of re examining a lot
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: of memories, which I think is one of the most
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: interesting parts of this book is that like you see
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: one memory presented and then she gets new information like, oh,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: your father had affairs with young men and it re
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: contextualizes memories that she has. She understands them differently. But
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: it's something that we've talked about a lot on this show,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: as we we get to see her processing through the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: grief over his death in ways that are quote unquote
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: not normal. So, for one, she gets really angry when
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: I can't remembers the priest or the person presiding over
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the funeral like pats hers shoulder and she wants to
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: rip his arm away. She throws like their flags put
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: on his grave at one point when she comes to visit,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: she throws them away, little flags. And then when someone
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: asked her about it, how are you, and she's like, oh,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: my dad died, and she says it really upbeat. It
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: is kind of laughing, and he's like, oh, that's funny,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: that's weird, and she's like, no, he actually did, and
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: she starts laughing. And that's just how she reacts to it.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: But it does, I mean, it is presented in a
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: way even through the literature, she sites through it where
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: it's absurdest. Almost his death is kind of absurdest, especially
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: when she was raised in the fun home, this funeral home,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: and that did make her kind of cavalier towards death, right.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's interesting too that she uses death as
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: an inn twice through the entire a book. And it's
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: not just the father's death. We're talking about the death
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: in literature. So she talks about those things so many
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: times in comparison to her father and an author that
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: he left that died, or something that happens within the
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: book that hits right on the head. Again. Yes, in
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the origins of fun home or funeral home in her
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: own understanding of death and mortality, which she had to
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: grow up with at a very young age because she
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: was faced to the face with death often whe it's
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: because she had to vacuum, you know, the actual funeral home,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: or whether she was had to go and hand scissors
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: to her father while he was embalming a body, and
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: the fact that she didn't know if this was the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: test or not, and so she made sure to be
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: completely unemotional and without fear, and she felt like that
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: was something that she had to do in the face
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: of death to prove to him that she was okay,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: or that she was worthy something alongost lines. So I
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: feel like even though we do, yes, we definitely talk
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: about grief and having to grieve over or not grieve
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: over in the most normal, as she would like to say,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: and we would not categorize anything as normal, but quote
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: unquote normal. In her father's death, we see that she's
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: had to confront it and to show a different reaction
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: than what we would consider normal as a child, especially
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: like she has that confrontation of seeing the family that died.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: So he said, she called it the triple that came
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: into it, and one of them was a child, her cousin.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: It turns out, I believe that was her age, and
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: he would just show her like this is his broken neck,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and just having to look and identifying like yeah, there is,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and moving on without any fear, without any real emotions
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to it. So I find that interesting that she puts
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: that as part of uh the string throughout the entire book,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: that yes, we're talking about someone's specific death, but also
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: there was death, whether it's also death and identity, whether
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: we're talking about her mom who had to give up
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: so much, or her dad who had to closet his
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: own orientation or whatever whatnot. It's kind of like, yeah, yeah,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: and that is probably one of the biggest themes in
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the book as well, which we're definitely going to delve
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: into more later, but of the almost preference for fiction
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: um and living in a kind of of curdest world
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: and that fits that very well. And and just the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: idea Alison's grandmother lives in the fun home and you know,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: if there's somebody living there that you know is not
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: long for this world perhaps, And it's just like those
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: blurring line of life and death. And then her dad
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: went through this very after he died. He ended up
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: being involved in the zone the funeral home that he
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: worked at. Yeah, so there's a lot of layers in
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: that way. And then yes, there is this ambiguous nature
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: of his death of did he kill himself? If so,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: why was it something he planned in advance? And Alison
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: is always trying to find clues to find meaning in that,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: like if he had underlined a sentence in a passage,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: or he was the same age as f. Scott Fitzgerald
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: plus or minus a couple of weeks when he died,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: just like trying to find all these things to give
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: it some sort of me because there was no note
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: or anything, right, he just got hit by a Sunbeam
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: bread truck where she made her to point out. I
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: did find it interesting when she brings out the narrative
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: of seeing the snake when they went camping, and then
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: she was like, maybe he saw a snake and he
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: jumped back, because that's what the truck driver or the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: motorist said. That he was across the road. I think
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: was fine, and all of a sudden he jumps back,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: So no one really knows, because he was doing what
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: he loved, gardening, which is apparently something that he does
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: almost impulsively throughout her life. And she says that whether
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: it's they're playing a game, he sees something wrong with
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the guards, so he must fix it immediately, and that's
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: what he was doing. So it's kind of interesting to
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: hear her talk about that because maybe it really wasn't accident.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was the snake that scared him. Then we
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: just don't know, Yeah, And I think that's the pain
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: that the uncertainty, not that either is necessarily better, but
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: especially in terms of people in this context who love
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to give meaning or to read these books, and they
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: even if it is absurdist ultimately, which is where I
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: keep coming back to, but she uses it a lot
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: throughout this that it has weight so you're always trying
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: to find that the story, the thread, and even the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: fact that it feels so strange to we're talking about
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: this because this is a real person. We're referring to
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: her with her first name, but it's a real person.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: But it's also like a fictional almost a fictional world
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: she created to make sense of all of this, right, Yeah,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: So I did want to read a couple of quotes.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm trying to render my senseless personal loss meaningful
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: by linking it, however, posthumously to a more coherent narrative,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: a narrative of injustice, sexual shame, and fear of life
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: considered expendable. And I think that's a very human trait.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I think in my case, I always want to think about,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: like horror movies. I think that's a very you know,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: if I hadn't done this then, or if this person
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: hadn't done this, they'd still be alive to day. And
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: it feels like you're giving meaning to your choices that
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: if you do the right things, you'll be fine, or
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: if you do the wrong things, and and these are
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in like heavy right or wrong quotes, but you know,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: like that then there's some sort of punishment that happens,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: and that makes us feel better because it makes us
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: feel like we have more control over things. And then
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: there's another story that her grandmother, Alison's grandmother used to
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: tell the children, and it was a story about her
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: father being very young and getting stuck in the mud
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: and not being able to get out and having to
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: be rescue, like pulled out by an older man. And
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: after he dies and Alison is thinking she's hard for
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: her to imagine him in the ground rotting, she says,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: stuck in the mud for good this time, or she
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: thinks that right, Yeah, yeah, I do love that she
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: She and her brother's love the stories because it makes
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: her dad so human and sallable as where you know,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: the man that she sees at that point in time
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: is seeking perfection and everything and everything must be beautiful
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: and pristine, and so for hard to imagine that he
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: was a stuck be in mud, see having to be
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: unclothed and naked and being taken care of and such
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: a whole thing for her that she's like what and
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: humanizing and that she just loves it as if as
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: a fairy tale. Yeah yeah, And I think you know,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: not to get too deep, but I feel like he
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: was kind of stuck in the mud for most of
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: his life, right, because he couldn't really move on or
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: except himself fully, uh, And he really wanted to present
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: this certain persona and it made him and everyone else
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: around him unhappy. So it was like being stuck, right.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: And yeah, you mentioned about the fact that about Fitzgerald
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: and in the parallels in his death kind of the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: age and ended upbringing and kind of that whole level
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: like his love for these books. I know Ulystens ended
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: up being his most read, most loved book, but he
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: also really absolutely loved Fitzgerald's books and made sure to
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: talk about it on it consistent basis. Apparently. I think
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: that's how he I won't say it seduced, but seeks
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: a long conversation with younger men is by handing out
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Fitzgerald's books a lot of the times. But the fact is,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: like she sees the similarity, like he kind of wanted
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: that life and he understood that life of being hidden
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: and wanting to become someone different and being something so
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: grandiose and big. And I think she also talks about
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: comparing him to Robert Redford and from the movie when
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: they saw it as a family that like, I almost
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: talking about it as if he made a little more
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: sense when she watched this movie, and I'm like, yeah,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: I could get that. M hmm. Yeah. So we did
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: want to talk about the sexual orientation and coming out
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: aspect of this too, because yes, the damage of being
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: closeted on both her father and the family is something
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: that Alison examines throughout, but also wondering if it would
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: have been better or not if it was different. She
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: recognizes she would not exist for one or probably wouldn't,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and speculated that maybe he wouldn't have lived much longer
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: due to the AIDS epidemic, which you do see like
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: on newspapers and stuff throughout, like news about that. Here's
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: another quote. I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: erotic truth could have a cumulate if Renuncieri affect. Sexual
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: shame is in itself a kind of death. So, like
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: you were talking about Samantha about the multiple layers of
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: death in this book. And then when Allison does send
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the letter to her parents and then kind of gets
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: this not what she was expecting reaction, but also this bombshell,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the revelation to her about her dad. She has these
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: feelings of being upstaged by this news and then his
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: death and wondering if coming out to your parents crossed
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: it or was part of the cause of why he
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: did it, because she seems pretty convinced that he did
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: take his own life, and still trying to put that
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: her experience into a cohesive narrative, wondering if the repression,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: ultimately it would have been better for her family and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: herself after all, like because it's and it's so kind
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: of heartbreaking because when this happens, she's like, well, I
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: hadn't really had sex with any a woman yet, questioning
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: all of the stuff, which makes sense too in response
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: to how they reacted to the news. Yeah, I did
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: love though, as she talks about in later parts of
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: the book, and she does the hindsight of them spending
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: time together, and with the fact that her mother is
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: just kind of outright so as well, he's had affairs
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: with the young men before, blah blah blah. So she
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: starts asking and it was like, oh, so trying to
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: probe at her dad, and then the revelation about and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about gender roles in a second, but
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: like they had a flipped idea of what they wanted
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: and why this conflicted with each other so much, and
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: then also kind of explaining who he was, and then
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: through the love of books and the recommendation and showing
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: themselves to each other without telling each other who they are, like,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: you see a lot of that unfolding, and it is heartbreaking.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: As it becomes a point that they are actually communicating
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: through their own special way, it kind of still falls apart.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: So it's definitely a big part of that. And again
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: just that we were talking about just trying to identify
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: when she sees the delivery person and she identifies with
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: her because she's dressed as they wouldn't want to say butch,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: very very masculine, and she suddenly feels like she's not alone.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: But her father also realizes this, and that's kind of
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: one of the big narratives again at the look, like
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: he keeps saying, yeah, I kind of knew, Yeah, I
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: kind of knew, Yeah, I kind of was there. He
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: witnesses this and realizes that she is going to have
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: a really difficult life like him. When he talks about
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: the fifties in comparison to that day that she was
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: present and even then it still wasn't easy. We know
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: that the eighties and nineties were not easy, but for
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: him to be like, you know, in the fifties that
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: wasn't even thought of, that was very looked down on,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: And just kind of that reminiscence with her when they
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: talk about that moment of her and when he asked,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: do you you want to dress like her? That's not
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: how you want to be, and she's just like, obviously,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: if my answer has to be no, yeah, you're like
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: giving me no space for anyone You're right, yeah. And
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: she's pretty young at this point when this happens, but
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: like jumping way ahead when her and her dad are
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: trying to have a conversation after she's come out, they're
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: going to the movies and they're having this really stilted
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: conversation which is beautifully illustrated and I read like a
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: breakdown of why it's so good because it makes you
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: sit with every panel of silence. It did remind me
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: of reas the topic we talked about, which is pernification,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: because Alison feels more like the parent in this exchange
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: when her father finally starts to open up to her
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a little bit about his homosexuality. She's the one that's
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: trying to be supportive and feels like she can't share
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: her experience, but it wants to hear his, and that
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: moment he does seem very childlike and like he he's
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: never spoken out loud about this before, perhaps so especially
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: not with people and his family right, and so vulnerable.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: And then it shuts down very quickly. Conversation just fizzles out, right. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: her whole coming out and her parents reaction I thought
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: was interesting because her mother was upset and didn't want
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: to talk to her, didn't want to even acknowledge what
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: was happening. And I'm sure this may have triggered her
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: and every wady just knowing what she was going through
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: with her own husband. Uh, And the dad is like,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: great experiment, did you or did you partake an orgy? Like? Essentially,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: it was his reaction just thinking it was not necessarily
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: because he knows it's not just the stage, but that's
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: how he's been seeing it in his mind. So he
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: will fulfill things in the dark, to fulfill his desires
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: and the darken and in secret and hope it passes,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: but it never does. Obviously, so he's wondering, is just
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: what she's doing or you're having you're experimenting like I do, great,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: but that's not really are you really? It still was
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: a questioning. I thought that was an interesting take as
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: for the man like reacting for the way he reacts
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: to himself, to her, who was obviously open at this point,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and I thought that was again really well put out
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: by her. It was reality, was what happened. The fact
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: that you know, he had to be like, your mother
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: is busy, she's kind of too upset to talk right now,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: she's still processing it was still part of the reaction. Yeah, yeah,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: and that's one of those situations where it kind of
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: sucks just because yes, the mother is dealing with Helen
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: has this pain from what she knows about her husband's
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: so she that she is reacting that way and then yeah,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Bruce is like very much reacting to how he thinks
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: he is. And then she Alison is kind of didn't
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: know this was the thing, right and was just like,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: you know, trying to come out and maybe the way
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: she did it had this kind of like vision of
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: how it would go and instead it kind of and
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: you can't really blame everyone, but it kind of became
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: a very selfish thing, right, right, Yeah, Yeah, And I
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: also think that we can't go without mentioning the fact that, yeah,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: her dad's path to the logical tendencies, the fact that
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: he went for young boys and even soliciting with buying
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: minors beer and that was his only charge with that
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: whole But we know, but we know why this is happening,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: and it's it's very sad because you have so many
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: aspects of feeling sorry for people and really understanding that
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: this is a hard time. But at the same time,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, but we can't excuse this. This is
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: not a thing and she and she kind of does
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: the same thing of like, I'm not excusing this. This
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: is what happens. We know what happened, we just don't
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: talk about it and kind of that way. But I'm
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: and she, I'm sure, I have no idea. I didn't
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: read this that that she had any backlash from her
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: family for revealing is saying out loud was you know
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: when he's been keeping quiet. So it's kind of, oh,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I wonder how that went down, because when family secrets happened,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: it's not pretty. But it's also offensive for the victims
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: or those who have been affected to ignore it as
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: well and pretend like it was a thing, And obviously
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: was a thing, as she would pinpoint each time when
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: there was like this dude helped us, and she would
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: always say things like this dude helped us clean out
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the basement, this dude helped us with you know, they
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: were all young students of his, which we've talked about
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: as many times. It's obviously a power play and it's inappropriate,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: so we can't ignore those conversations either. And though it
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: is a black cloud in the family, she she didn't
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: shy away from it for sure. Yeah, And there's also
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the whole sequence where they're in New York, younger brother
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: ycause not missing, but it's just painted in a way
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: where you're like, if this has gone differently, like almost
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: putting her father in that same box. But then he's
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: fine with it, like once it's once the situation is involved,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: he goes out on the town, right, but he's very aware, yeah,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: of what can happen and who can come after him,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: And it says, yeah, it definitely says a lot. Yeah. Yeah,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: my expoy friend gave me this book. Of untranslatable words,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: and one of them in there translates to the family
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: secret that everyone knows but everyone refuses to talk about, yeah,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: which is yeah, that's a great word. But that kind
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: of reminds me that we do have some more themes
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: we want to discuss, but first we have one more
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: quick break for word from our sponsor and we're back,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you sponsor. So, yes, we did want to talk
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: about gender roles in this book because we do see
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: instances of dressing in gender nonconforming clothes. So Allison did
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: that with a friend of hers where they were kind
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: of playing dress up and her friend wanted to do
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: something else and she's like, no, this would be way
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: more fun in men's clothes. And she asked her dad
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: to get her a measured shirt and he said like,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: we'll have to measure your appendages, yes, meaning breast, and
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: she was like, okay, no, never mind. But yeah, Alison
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: felt like she needed to fill the space of masculinity
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: her father didn't, while her father wanted to express femininityes
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: through her, putting them forever at quote cross purposes, a
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: war of cross purposes. I think I do love the
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: scene in the car when they had that revelation and
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: when she when I was younger, I wanted to be
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: in dresses. I wanted to dress like a girl, just
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: like I wanted to dress like a boy like She
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: says it so excitedly, but then goes quiet. Comes down
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: to because the realization comes down to the fact that, yeah,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: they were really at odds with each other because they
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: were envious of the other, which but we also saw
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: as Allison grows up, she is giving him advice on
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: what kind of student he needs to wear, what kind
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: of things that invest that he needs to look at,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: and he's like, you're you're right, you know, understanding that
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: that okay. Yeah. At the same time, she's having the
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: battle of not wanting to wear stupard barette, but he
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: is insistent that she must throughout to the point that
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: becomes physical, and she's like, why, why is this is dumb?
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: I don't want it. I just want a crew cut.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: She literally says, I would rather have a crew cut.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: And I find that interesting and just that level of
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: it's not necessarily that there trying to make sure that
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: each of them have a defined gender, but that the
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: fact that the other wish that they were that gender. Yes,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: and I think there's a lot of shame there for
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: him of himself. But also I do believe he really
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: thought he was trying to protect her because he was
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: afraid of how society would treat her if she didn't
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: hide herself like he did. But also there's a lot
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: of instances of him living vicariously through her throughout. And
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: one of the one of the scenes that sticks out
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: in my head is when she's coloring and as a kid,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: and he takes book and starts coloring in it because
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: he's like, I can do it, I can do it better.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: And there's just a bunch of instances of that too,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: So you can definitely see like him trying to live
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: through her and be feminine through her, but it's not
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: what she wanted and it's not what she felt her
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: who she was. And then there's Alison kind of observing
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: her mom having to clean the house, cook the food,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: raise the kids, and especially when there's a scene where
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Alison and her mom are at a table and her
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: mom is speaking to her as an adult for the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: first times, kind of like I hate doing this that,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Like I hate cleaning this stupid house and it's his house,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Like I don't want to do it um having that moment,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to live in this museum, Yeah exactly. Yeah, Yeah.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's interesting because she, again we know that
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: at the same time, she was continuing on with her
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: education and wasn't having to defend her paper, and she's
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: doing plays, and she's trying to do all of these things.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: She's trying to be the supportive wife that goes to
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: court with him, all of these different levels. But I
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: also find it interesting at the beginning of the relationship
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: with her mother, Helen and Bruce, that it becomes a
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: little explosive and she realizes what she's kind of getting into,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: even though at the beginning it was all poetry and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: love stories and all of these things, and calling her
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: a crazy bitch when she didn't want to do something
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: or question something or was confused about something, or when
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: he would go out and do things that was obviously
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: against their marriage, as in he was having an affair
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: no matter what gender, she was having an affair and
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: and bringing in different types of heartaches to her that
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: when she would get upset that he would call her
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: a crazy bitch. It was mentioned a few times, or
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: she would just kind of give up and just be
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: like okay and just kind of do her own thing
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: in her own world. And that included doing those plays
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: that she loved and doing it to her best, including
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: memorizing everybody else's lines so she didn't flub one line
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: at all. Right, Yeah, and that kind of goes back
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: to that the whole fiction aspect that is in this
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: of people choosing to live in these fiction worlds more
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: than reality. And yeah, like you said, Samantha, that that
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: broke my heart too when it described her. Alison described
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: her picture as dull, like she had just been told
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: so much from like when they first got married to
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: several years later. But yeah, that was kind of one
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: instance where at least felt to me that Alison was
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: observing this between her parents and was like the gender
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: roles of her mom having to do this stuff didn't
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: necessarily make sense, right click, And then I just wanted
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: to mention there is a whole segment of Alson getting
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: her first period and trying so desperate to hide it.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: I do love her things of trying to figure out
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: when she needs to say it. She's like not now
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: not and even talking about the fact that as particulous
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: as she was, and as factual as she was for
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: her journaling and diary, they were, she did not write
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: it out or she was slowed through the entire time
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: until she finally does and her mom's reaction, but non
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: reaction she talks about her mom starts shaking, So I've
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: got like, I don't know, I didn't exactly know what
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: that meant, but obviously it was a big deal enough
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: that she was trying not to react, but she was reacting,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: and I found that super interesting, as well as the
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: fact that asking her are you cramping? Which I feel like, yeah,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I think for her as a mother, she's just trying
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: to find out that she's in pain. And I was like,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: that makes sense. That makes sense because I had extensive
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: amounts of pain from cramps and my mother understood it
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: and trying to take care of me as much she could.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that was her only reaction. Do you need
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: more pats? Are you cramping? Yep? Yeah, which is kind
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: of a anticlimactic because Alison had been hiding it like
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: this is going to be such a huge deal, which
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: it is, but her mom was kind of So we
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: wanted to wrap this up with art because we've been
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: talking about that art and how the fiction aspect and
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: trying to find a narrative have been just present throughout this.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: There are so many literary references f Scott Fitsjerild, James Joyce,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Marcella Proust, Kate Millett. The list goes on and on.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: And this is one thing I related a lot to
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: communicating with your dad through art. We weren't great at communicating,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: but we did love movies. He loved movies and I
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: loved movies, and he would send me movies when I
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: was in college, um, and that's what we would talk about.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: To a lesser extent, books. He was also extremely poetic
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: and would do the same thing where he would underline
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: things or he would quote things to me all the time,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: which I and his relationship with my mom, he would
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: write her poetry. It was very similar, and that like
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: very artistic and almost presentation of here's my perfect family.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm not necessarily sure that's what he really wanted,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: but it's what he thought he wanted and what he
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: wanted to present to people. He he was very much
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: similar in this whole kind of vein of quoting things
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: and ask you to read things or see certain movies
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: or things like that. And I do think, I don't know,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I just really related to that. I really related to
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: that whole thing where it's almost easier to build this
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: fiction world, or or to use this fiction world to
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: try to have a conversation that might be difficult or
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: that you don't feel certain in communicating with with the
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: other person, right, And yeah, I think you're not the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: only one. People who feel disconnected from their parents find
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: a common ground. And yeah, you're talking about living vacariously.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: One of the things in college, one of the biggest
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: things that really helped them communicate was her taking classes
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: with literature and of course having to actually take a
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: class about ulysses and having to sit and listen to
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: her dad. Of course she got to the point that
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: she got tired of it, but the fact that they
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: were living bacarously through each other, to really be in
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: love with something, or being able to discuss something, or
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: to be able to understand something in such depth and perception,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: or maybe just too too much. You're like a mom,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: calmed down. I did love her. She's like, calm down,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: I think you're okay. Then it later transfers as the
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Kate Millet and the fact that her dad was like,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: oh my god, and doing the same thing. She talks
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: about how he had left that book for her, and
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: then the vice versa. She had left that book for him,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: and he is so enthralled and loving something new, something
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: brand new, and it is because of her knowing who
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: he was through literature, and I think that was beautiful.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: That is their biggest connection. Also her understanding of his death,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: Like that's one of the biggest ways she was able
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to neck to his death. Whether it was by suicide
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: or not, it was through literature, like the whether she's
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: underlining something, or he's underlying something, or he's loving a character.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: She has some kind of commonality with these books to
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: connect to him and his death. And I think it
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: is a very beautiful way of understanding him. Especially it
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: was something that he loved, like it's it's it's a
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: bigger point of like, it's not something that I love,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: is something that he loved and I've found it. And
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: of course his whole library. The fact that he was
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: able to give her ten thousand books. It was so
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: excited And I get that way too. I don't know
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: a by you when someone is interested in something I
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: like and then start asking me questions. I start pulling
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: out references. Here, you go, do this, you need to
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: do this. You didn't look at this. I mean that
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: kind of love and level of you're able to see
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: me is is a beautiful thing. And it's through this art.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Of course, I don't think anyone understood his art and
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: love through his house. That seemed like a point of
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: contention for all of them, but she still understood what
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: he was getting towards. Yeah, and that is something you
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: can understand something about someone based on, especially if they're
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: really passionate about a certain character. For my dad, my
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: dad loved to kill Mocking Berne. He loved Atticus Finch,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: and he was a lawyer and he represented people who
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: couldn't afford to represent themselves, and and just knowing that,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: like you know something about that person. And it was
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: kind of like funny and sad to me of the
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: where she went to college and she's like, I never
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: take English again because her father was trying so hard
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: to live vicariously through her. My dad was kind of
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: the same, but I I was like, no, I'm never
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: going to be a teacher, and so I shut it down.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I guess, but yeah, I connected with that as well. Um,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: something else I did find interesting is which we've been
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: talking about, but I thought it was interesting that not
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: only does this book examine memory and the failings of
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: memory or how it can get re contextualized, it also
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: talks about recontextualizing art and mistranslating art. There's a couple
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: of examples she gives where she talks about like I
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: think this is a mistranslation, like from French to English
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: or whatever. Are her father using Albert Camus and his
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: thoughts on suicide, but ultimately the thoughts on suicide where
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: it's absurd, like choosing, picking and choosing and re contextualizing
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: happening not only in memory and in our real lives,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: but also in the art that we do consume, which
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: does inform our real lives, which I thought was really interesting.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: And then one of the things that I think we
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: should come back and talk about later is the power
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: of images, because um, that's not necessarily discussed in this
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: but it is a part by nature of it being
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: a graphic novel. That's why most people, including Alison Bechdel,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: think this has been the target of so many banning
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: and censorship efforts because it's I think she said something like,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: I guarantee you there's more things in there that have
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: way more gay sex than this, but this is illustrated
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: that it's hard and you can see it. So that's
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: why it made people so uncomfortable, which I think is
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: worth returning to in the future. And then I just
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: I did want to talk briefly, I mean, just to
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: mention of this whole idea that's present of Daedalus and Icarus,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: of akers find Tukos's sun, but Allison is kind of
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: constantly making comparison to that. But Allison's father was there
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: to catch her in her memory of jumping off the
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: diving board, which is I thought it was really sweet
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: and well done and it makes her you know, question,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: is there's somebody to catch him, right or had he
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: been like just all these years waiting, right? But yeah,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: it was really touching. It was yeah, And you know,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: she actually did talk about the fact that about the
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: mistranslation and learning new things after the book was least,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: and she talked about the fact that she's like, oh,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: I would you know, there's so many things that I'm like, oh,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: that makes more sense, And yeah, it would have changed
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: that perspective of the book. Had I known these things,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: but I'm glad I didn't because it makes it more
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: honest from me. But I felt like that was such
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: an interesting idea. Is like, there's so many things that
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: we don't know behind pictures. You know. You and I've
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: talked about this before, and I've talked about it with
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: so many people recently, that we don't know what has
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: happened through the generations of our families, so we don't
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: see the true stories. And oftentimes because there are parents
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: or we're connected with them on an everyday basis, we
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: don't think to ask. We just assume we know. And
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: then when people start asking and you're like, oh, I
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: didn't know that about you what? It changes so much
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: perspective later on, it could change the whole book in general,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: the whole novel in general too, Like I wouldn't want
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: to change that, but there's definitely new things that I
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: have learned that I'm like, wow, you know, And I
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: feel like that's something to note because of course, as
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: we go into any kind of conversation about our own
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: past and our families past, there's so much that we
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: miss out and how things get mistranslated or even just
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: left out altogether, and I think it makes it interesting. Yeah, yeah,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up. I hadn't read that
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: from her, but that is that is really interesting. Well,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: clearly a lot to talk about. Very highly recommend this
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: book and you have not read it. And as always
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: we love getting book recommendations from you listeners. You can
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: send them to her email. It is Stuff Media mom
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Stuff at i heeart media dot com. You can find
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: us on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You are
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks It's Always started.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Super producer Christina, Thank you, and thanks to you for
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: listening Stuff I Never Told. Your direction of I Heart
• 51:41
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