The Secret to Superhuman Strength

hardcover, 256 páginas

Idioma English

Publicado el 31 de agosto de 2021 por Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

ISBN:: 978-0-544-38578-8

(1 reseña)

From the author of Fun Home, a profound graphic memoir of Bechdel's lifelong love affair with exercise, set against a hilarious chronicle of fitness fads in our times

Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s ("Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!") to the existential oddness of present-day spin class. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. She turns for enlightenment to Eastern philosophers and literary figures, including Beat writer Jack Kerouac, whose search for self-transcendence in the great outdoors appears in moving conversation with the author’s own. …

From the author of Fun Home, a profound graphic memoir of Bechdel's lifelong love affair with exercise, set against a hilarious chronicle of fitness fads in our times

Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s ("Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!") to the existential oddness of present-day spin class. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. She turns for enlightenment to Eastern philosophers and literary figures, including Beat writer Jack Kerouac, whose search for self-transcendence in the great outdoors appears in moving conversation with the author’s own. This gifted artist and not-getting-any-younger exerciser comes to a soulful conclusion. The secret to superhuman strength lies not in six-pack abs, but in something much less clearly defined: facing her own non-transcendent but all-important interdependence with others.

A heartrendingly comic chronicle for our times.

2 ediciones

Pam Phillips reseñó The Secret to Superhuman Strength de Alison Bechdel

Engaging essays, beautiful artwork, poses questions that may be unresolvable.

4 estrellas

At first glance, the book seems to be about Alison Bechdel's life of exercise. Then you see it's also about her love of the outdoors, which leads to some truly beautiful layouts of trees and mountains and tiny people in the landscape. She bounces her own transcendent experiences off other transcendalists: Wordsworth and Coleridge, Emerson and Margaret Fuller, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder. The more she strives and succeeds and struggles with that very success, the more mystified she seems to be about why she works so hard, both mentally and physically. None of the answers she finds in therapy, meditation, or Buddhism seem to satisfy for long. In the end, I'm not convinced that her persona in the book has truly accepted what few want to face: our own mortality and failing bodies. But then, I'm only a year older, so who could say if there are any answers.