Artistic alchemy
Despite the long list of flaws Allison Bechdel sees in her father, she can find some admirable qualities in him, including his talent for transformation. The most obvious example of this ability is his restoration of her childhood home, a Gothic mansion that went from lost cause to living museum. He found something rotting and decrepit, saw a spark of potential, and turned that spark into something beautiful. In a way, Allison did the same thing with her relationship with her father by writing Fun Home. She took something that could be seen as random and tragic, and over the course of two-hundred and thirty-two pages, created something cohesive and meaningful. In the first chapter of Fun Home, Allison writes of her father's ability to "spin garbage into gold". You could say she does the same thing with her and Bruce's relationship. That comparison might seem harsh, but when summarized, the experiences she shared with her father seem inadequate at best. As a child, sh...