Hardcover, 240 pages
English language
Published May 3, 2021 by Mariner Books.
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 …
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.
So cool to read after seeing Bechdel lecture a few weeks ago!
A book that asked many questions that touched on my insecurities and fears without answering them.
This will take some absorbing; I’ll want to return to this book again.
You start this book thinking the title refers solely to physical perfection as approached over decades spent pursuing first one discipline and then another. But as she spares no detail of her own romantic troubles, her dependencies on substances including alcohol, philosophical movements that strip away all that is illusion, psychic traumas and losses then you start to see that much of the strength she strives for is inside. She intersperses her own breakdowns and setbacks along the way with ones from history: Kerouac and Cassady, the English Romantics of the early nineteenth century, the twentieth-century roshis and gurus from the East and West who built fanatical followings. And then there are the real feats of athleticism which come in waves just as her artistic outbursts come and go in waves. The book is the product of a Macarthur Genius Grant recipient who has been given the freedom to take …
You start this book thinking the title refers solely to physical perfection as approached over decades spent pursuing first one discipline and then another. But as she spares no detail of her own romantic troubles, her dependencies on substances including alcohol, philosophical movements that strip away all that is illusion, psychic traumas and losses then you start to see that much of the strength she strives for is inside. She intersperses her own breakdowns and setbacks along the way with ones from history: Kerouac and Cassady, the English Romantics of the early nineteenth century, the twentieth-century roshis and gurus from the East and West who built fanatical followings. And then there are the real feats of athleticism which come in waves just as her artistic outbursts come and go in waves. The book is the product of a Macarthur Genius Grant recipient who has been given the freedom to take the longest view possible on everything she has seen and felt. You get to feel the highs, the numbness (sometimes literal) and the anger she has explored in her other works. It is hard to understand where it all come from both for us and for the author. The drawing style is precise and all-encompassing just as the words are. She doesn't let her subject get off easily, least of all herself, making it a deeply moral statement. What better delivery mechanism to convey greatly unsettling insights than a graphic novel in color? And will she write and draw another one which then deals with the labor of creating this one and what she learned from it? If the author does that, I don't doubt that it will be short on further profound realizations, since I don't see any sign that she's done with these powerful adversaries all her life. The two of us are different in so many ways, but I am happy to count her as an important apologist for the Baby Boomer generation we share.
仍然有很多打动我的地方，但是感觉这个故事线其实挺让人挫败的（作者一直陷入困境和低潮，然后找到某种运动/修行方法，暂时好转，然后忽然又陷入低潮）。当然人生可能就是这样但是……反正看完我也没对这个新世纪禅宗的“无我”“你和世界合一”这种有更多体会。还是自己冥想做瑜伽去吧。
