It may be hard for some of you to really appreciate the acclaim in the mainstream press — all deserved, I might add — for Alison Bechdel’s wonderful auto-bio Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, hitting the trade paperback market very soon. Maybe you will after reading this interesting Slate.com feature posted a couple of weeks ago connecting a series of short essays from writers discussing “the experience of publishing a book about their lives” and the people around them.
Bechdel’s essay described the hard-earned life lessons she learned after sharing the secrets of her father’s closeted past described in her book with her mother, along with tasty bits of karma thrown in for good measure. I’m deliberately being vague as heck, so you’ll have to read it…
There’s other short essays in the mix from notables like Mary Karr (The Liar’s Club), Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes) and Rich Cohen (Sweet and Low, one of the best looking book covers I’ve seen in a long time).
April 9th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
That’s a really insightful piece. Thanks for directing me to it.
April 9th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
It is a good piece and a smart thing to link to, but just to clarify, it’s a Slate, not Salon piece. Part of their memoir week that they did a while back.
Easy to get the two confused, though.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for the catch! It’s easy to miss when you’re in a rush…
Wayne