THE SECRET TO SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH - ALISON BECHDEL

I got lucky and was able to get a quick, no-holds, peak-pick, copy of this from the library. As you can imagine, a Bechdel book goes quick in Seattle. Reading this one, I was struck by the similarities and differences she has from David Sederis. I bring it up because they’re both young boomers/Gen. Jones queer folks who write about their lives and got amazingly popular, quickly, decades into their careers. Bechdel did Dykes to Watch Out For, which I was familiar with before FUN HOME because I went to college in Asheville (and, thus, was surrounded by dykes) but I think it’s pretty fair to say that they both became famous beyond their wildest expectations later in life. Both of them take their lives and the lives of their families, especially their parents, as their subject matter. Both of them have charted the monumental changes in gay life during their lifetimes and how that’s effected them. Both have, essentially, the same audience, ie NPR people. But while Sedaris writes short, pithy stories that typically are about one thing or one theme (a job he had at one point, or about learning French, etc.), and come off like the world’s greatest diary entries, Bechdel is doing something different. While Sedaris’ stories seems effortless, as if you’ve run into the most interesting person at a party who’s got the best anecdotes, Bechdel foregrounds the labor that goes into her stories. Her breakthrough and follow up, FUN HOME and ARE YOU MY MOTHER? Are focused on the life of and her relationship to her father and mother, respectively and they not only tell the story of their child/parent dynamic and history, Bechdel also folds in all sorts of allusions and parallel digressions that play off the main story. In FUN HOME there’s lots of Greek mythology and Camus and Joyce; in ARE YOU MY MOTHER there’s a whole lot of psychology, Wolfe, Mozart, etc. TSTSS ostensibly follows Bechdel’s history with fitness and her body but manages to fold in a lot of stuff about the transcendentalists and Jack Kerouac. Normally, I’m pretty allergic to Kerouac stuff (he’s the worst beat) and the “the beats are the 20th century transcendentalist” is played out as criticism, but Bechedel is so controlled and plotted that it works. There’s not too much of this stuff, it resonates when it has to then moves back into the background, and Bechdel being a lesbian prevents some of the more non-critical hagiography and misogyny that crops up when discussion the beats. Like in all of Bechdel’s work, her quest to document the ostensible subject, here it’s fitness, blooms into a broader autobiography and resonates with other aspects of her life. Here she is describing polyamory, which she gets into in her 40’s: “A sort of reverse weightlifting in which the object was to let go: of the ego, of duality, of attachment altogether.” It’s quite amazing how well-crafted this work is and how everything ties back in and relates to itself. The most interesting question with Bechdel before was, “what will she do when she runs out of parents?” She’d written 2 amazing, all-timer graphic novels, can she do this when she doesn’t have a parent as the subject? The answer is yes, Bechdel is still in her prime, still making these auto-biographical graphic novels at the highest level. I’m still interested in what she’ll bring to it next. 60 boflexes