What is the What by Dave Eggers

What a beautiful and perfect book. If I were in charge, I would issue this book to every American on their 15th birthday. The first three books I chose were tough all together! The people on my vanpool think I cry all the time.

More on Fun Home

I did promise I would write more, right? Since I am still stuck here at the office thanks to my poor sick kitty, I’ll do that now.

 Well, it is certainly the best graphic novel about making peace with your closeted-funeral-director-father’s suicide that I’ve read so far this year. Drum roll thingy here.

Essentially this book is about the human capacity to hurt each other and ourselves. I thought it occasionally labored under the weight of the literary references that pepper it. I wish I still had it with me so I could look at it one more time.  In both this and The Year of Magical Thinking, I was impressed by the authors’ capacity for honest reflection in front of the world. When did people get so brave?

 Ethan, you really ought to read it.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

In the last few months I have been experiencing an acute period of narcicism (I got a blog!) . One way it has manifested is that I imagine inserting myself into whichever book or movie I am reading or whatching to see how I would do in whatever fanciful situation arises. We saw I Am Legend a couple of weekends ago, and I realized that if I was the final survivor of a vampire plague, I’d last about 36 hours propped up by terror and potent pilfered marijuana before I’d climb into the tub with Xanax and a bottle of Maker’s Mark. I wouldn’t have the wherewithall to cheerfully face each new day, let alone set up a lab in my basement and keep acting like I could fix the problem. We saw The Mist, too, and again I saw that I did not have the stamina and fortitude that is required for Science Fiction. It seems to me that the issue here is hope, or no hope. Where does it come from? How do you get some? Once hope is gone, can it be rebuilt?

 

 This is the picture on the back of The Year of Magical Thinking. I love how the author’s husband and her daughter are looking at the camera, and she is looking at them. I love how they form a little team of two and she is standing apart, observing. I can not imagine how strong and brave she must have been to select this photo.

I’m so new at this writing on the internet thing. Should I recap plots, or what? Do people all ready know what this is about? It is about the year after the author’s husband of 40 years died suddenly, at dinner. Her only child died of pancreatitis right as the book was being published. Not only did she make it through this, she made art out of it. How can you do that? She looks, in every picture I have seen, so beautiful and frail. How could she write this book?

As a coda, I don’t believe in God, and I don’t think that there is anything afterwords, and I am scared to die. I think this book might help at night.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomedy by Alison Bechdel

Sad, kind, moving. I am not sure it was the best book for a day with so much damn snow.  I will write more about it later.