Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home is grossly over-rated.

Entertaining? Check.

Often amusing? Certainly.

Perhaps it’s professional jealousy on my part, but (over the years) I’ve found that alternative lifestyle writers grab more public interest and get more sympathy laughter than the outcasts known as “white males.” Bechdel’s critically gushed-over graphic novel reeks of a publisher and marketing team positioning it for any number of awards and acclaim.

Fun Home explores the childhood upbringing of a fledgling lesbian girl and her quirky, intelligent, dysfunctional family. While it’s highly intelligent, craftily drawn, and painfully autobiographical, I’m still left wondering what makes it such a “visionary masterpiece.” The back cover of Fun Home is chock full of quotes proclaiming uproarious laughter and side-splitting, funny bone-splintering insight. I have to disagree.

It could be that the style of humor is too subtle for me. I’ve always hated David Sedaris’s books and, as far as I’m concerned, Dave Barry is about as played out as Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” or Chicken Soup for the Soul. Sorry, but strategically placed wit does not make a quick-fix for no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoner comedy.

The intellect bar is off the charts and there were multiple occasions where I needed a dictionary for the verbiage (which hasn’t happened since David Foster Wallace’s brilliant and all-over-the-place Infinite Jest). The brutally honest exposition into a family headed by a closet homosexual father who’s a mortician with a yen for Victorian home improvement and a theatrically leaning mother who’s obviously willing to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of raising her children is interesting, tremendously intelligent, and well told.

But funny? I don’t see it.

Is the critical acclaim received by this book an overcorrection in political correctness? I’m not opposed to homosexuality. The world is a cruel, unforgiving climate, and any chance at happiness should be reward enough. If two people can fall in love with each other regardless of their race, creed, or leaning, then more power to them. However, given the accolades this book has received, I can’t help but wonder if the praise for the supposed humor has more to do with the gay and lesbian market regardless of the amount of laughs the work elicited.

Time will tell, as it does with all great (and not so great) works of art. Tennessee Williams withstood the test of time. Truman Capote will always have a reserved seat in the pantheon. Elton John never has to worry about being forgotten. Allison Bechdel? We’ll see in another 100 years if her work endures.

And for funny, I’ll take Reid Fleming: World’s Toughest Milkman any day of the week. Maybe I’m just less sophisticated when it comes to this style of high-minded, overly pretentious wit.

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