Alison’s Bechdel’s new graphic novel is billed as a book about exercise, but reaches far beyond that theme into the deep question of why we bother to exercise at all.
She has broken her life down into the different decades and reflected on all the exercise fads she’s seen over the years, including running, biking, skiing, and karate. She also analyzes the many obstacles that her personal life would often lay in her path to superhuman strength. Each personal problem is met with a bucket of sweat when learning to rock climb or losing one’s self in the transcendence of yoga.
Bechdel manages to seamlessly incorporate the lives of past romantics including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jack Keroauc, and Margaret Fuller to help illustrate past hardships and to find common ground with those bygone writers. Part exercise manual, part personal memoir, part historical look at the lives of famous writers, the real superhuman strength comes into play as Alison is able to pull these ideas and concepts together without losing the narrative thread. The book pushes the autobio genre to new heights.
Alison is hailed as being one of the greatest cartoonists of her generation and she lives up to that title in this new memoir. Her writing is cradled warmly by her artwork and each page gives you the lasting impression that you are reading something profound. But it still doesn’t make me want to exercise.