The Secret to Superhuman Strength
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4.1 • 8 Ratings
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The Best Graphic Book of 2021 by Publishers Weekly | A New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2021 | A New York Times Notable Book | An Autostraddle Best Queer Book of the Year | A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year | A St. Louis Post Dispatch Best Book of the Year | NPR, 12 Books NPR Staffers Loved | Shelf Awareness Best Books of 2021
From the author of Fun Home, a profoundly affecting 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bechdel (Are You My Mother?) makes a welcome return with this dense, finely wrought deep dive into her lifelong fixation with exercise as a balm for a variety of needs: "My reasons... run the gamut from the physical to the mental to the emotional to the psychological to the more numinous." Progressing chronologically, from the 1960s through to the 2020 pandemic, Bechdel's early, whimsical efforts to adopt various regimens such as running and karate (at a "feminist martial arts school") bloom in adulthood into often-obsessive attempts to achieve enlightenment. Eventually she begins to suspect that her fanatical focus on a variety of exhausting workouts offers her a way to avoid difficult issues, particularly in her relationships: "I'd managed dad's death so well because I hadn't managed it at all. Who knew you were supposed to have feelings!" Throughout, Bechdel conjures the histories of literary figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Jack Kerouac, and Adrienne Rich, all of whom wrote about their own attempts at inner transformation with philosophical movements such as romanticism and transcendentalism. Bechdel's ever-elegant drawings, with nuanced coloring provided by her partner Holly Rae Taylor, perfectly match the tonal shifts of her kaleidoscopic narrative, alternating between soul-searching angst and dry self-satire. At the close of each chapter, the colors disappear and are replaced by a warm gray wash, symbolizing seemingly a hope for harmony and oneness. Grappling with the desire for spiritual transcendence in the most intensely personal terms, Bechdel achieves a tricky—even enlightening—balance.
