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.
I always love Alison Bechdel. I love how her simple drawings convey so much information and mood. I don't know how she does it. I am 1 year younger than Alison all all of her cultural references growing up are mine. We could have been next door neighbors. Though I am nothing at all like Alison, she seems like a kindred spirit which is weird.
Love her.
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。
Bait and switch! Complete ripoff! There’s not a single secret to superhuman strength to be found in this book!!1!
What you get instead is... enlightenment. Or at least one person’s life journey thereto, and, when you think about it, aren’t they the same thing?
This was such an unexpected delight. Engaging and insightful from the beginning, poignant, self-aware. Tender, even. I get the sense that Bechdel wrote this from a place of love, including for her own self—not something she could’ve done just a few years ago (IMO). (I also get a small sense that mushrooms may have played a part in this growth, apart from the one in her twenties, but what do I know? More power to her if she accomplished it through her own and her loved ones’ efforts).
On the surface, the memoir parts are unremarkable—it’s her tone that fascinated me: compassion the whole way through. …
Bait and switch! Complete ripoff! There’s not a single secret to superhuman strength to be found in this book!!1!
What you get instead is... enlightenment. Or at least one person’s life journey thereto, and, when you think about it, aren’t they the same thing?
This was such an unexpected delight. Engaging and insightful from the beginning, poignant, self-aware. Tender, even. I get the sense that Bechdel wrote this from a place of love, including for her own self—not something she could’ve done just a few years ago (IMO). (I also get a small sense that mushrooms may have played a part in this growth, apart from the one in her twenties, but what do I know? More power to her if she accomplished it through her own and her loved ones’ efforts).
On the surface, the memoir parts are unremarkable—it’s her tone that fascinated me: compassion the whole way through. So much compassion, for her family and lovers and herself. Recognition of, and wry amusement at, her neophilic experience-seeking tendencies. Acknowledgment of her obsessions, but this time with kindness. Explorations of her own privilege. Humor, but the loving kind. (In a therapy couch: “Lemme get this straight. Perfection and worthlessness aren’t the only options?”) (Yes, there are therapy couches herein, but much fewer than in her previous book, and much less neurotic, and more appropriate). Reflections on death and our opportunities to live, really live. Much Buddhism, nonduality, exploration.
Bechdel is one of the lucky ones. Not because of her successes or MacArthur fellowship: because she has made it into Awareness territory. Which isn’t to say she lives in a state of blissful Om (although, maybe?); simply that she gives every indication of living a more deliberate life; and hot damn, it really thrills me to see that in a person. It gives me so much hope.
Fitness, Kerouac, Buddhism, creativity, family dysfunction, alcohol, nature, transcendentalism... It's like this book was written just for me!
It's a wonderful book. It's memoir, I guess? She weaves together her lifelong exercise obsession, the Romantic poets, the Transcendentalists, Jack Kerouac, and Buddhism. And describes her love affair with L.L. Bean, and her abandonment of them for Patagonia. It's complicated!
