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The Secret to Superhuman Strength
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78/99
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76/99
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95/99
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About This Book
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.
Reviews
"Divided into the decades of her life, this graphic memoir is as much a cultural history of the last half-century as it is Bechdel's story of pursuing physical strength, which it turns out is not so different from surrendering to her art ..."
"Like Woolf, she is preoccupied with depicting the texture of thought and memory—their ambushes and heretical swerves ..."
"As usual, Bechdel is ruthlessly honest, her sharp gaze helping us see ourselves, our culture, more clearly ..."
"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 ..."
"The book makes you see exercising as a kind of touchstone, the way going back to the same place every year can be."
"Her conclusion is inevitably trite, but Bechdel makes for such a likeable protagonist that readers will be pleased for her all the same."
"No detail fails to glow with meaning; everything is related to everything else ..."
"In panels busy with expressive drawings, text, and commentary, Bechdel excavates her deepest thoughts and feelings."
"This is a thoughtful, funny and ruminative autobiography whose intensity is leavened with surprising notes of grace."
"More thought-provoking work from an important creator."
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