Exclusive: Alison Bechdel shares the cover for new memoir The Secret To Superhuman Strength
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Alison Bechdel has played a major role in bringing graphic novels into the mainstream, with her 2006 graphic memoir, Fun Home, becoming a commercial and critical hit that spawned a Tony Award-winning musical adaptation a decade later. It’s been eight years since the release of Bechdel’s Fun Home follow-up, Are You My Mother?, but she returns with a new full-length graphic memoir next year: The Secret To Superhuman Strength, shifting focus away from her family to explore the intersection between exercise and creativity in her personal life. The A.V. Club has an exclusive first look at the cover of Bechdel’s new book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, showing the cartoonist stretching in front of the exercise equipment that helps her unlock her artistic mind.
“I knew I wanted to write a book about my lifelong relationship with exercise,” says Bechdel. “But what I kept finding myself actually writing about was my relationship to my creativity, in particular my struggle to be more spontaneous in my work. Pursuing a bodily discipline like yoga or biking is a way of shutting your yammering mind up, which of course is helpful for one’s creativity. But everyone knows that. What I try to do in the book is go in and look at exactly how these two strands intertwine over the course of my whole life, six decades so far, and it’s a long, strange trip.”
Bechdel’s personal journey has aligned with the rise of fitness culture in the latter half of the 20th century, and she’s seen a lot of ridiculous trends in that time. “The most outlandish exercise fad I’ve tried is ‘Insanity,’ Sean T’s maniacal jumping-up-and-down-till-you-can’t-any-more workout,” says Bechdel. “I guess it’s not so outlandish for young people, but if you’re over 50, it’s definitely beyond the pale.”
The subject matter is very different from Bechdel’s previous memoirs, but like those books, The Secret To Superhuman Strength is enriched by the works of philosophers and literary figures. Jack Kerouac’s writing plays an especially integral role as Bechdel similarly seeks self-transcendence in the great outdoors. Readers can preorder the hardcover now and join Bechdel on this quest to enlightenment when The Secret To Superhuman Strength goes on sale May 4, 2021.
13 Comments
Fun Home is a memoir, not a novel.I’m not normally one to nitpick, but as a librarian it’s one of my biggest peeves. Just call them fucking comics. The only reason “graphic novel” exists as a term is because of nonsensical dismissal of comics as a medium that we can only move past if we just call them comics.
Although “novel” itself is a pretty silly term. Novels are only called that because when they first came on the scene in the 1600s/1700s they were new and hence novel. They aren’t novel anymore.
Well I mean etymology is a whole other bag of worms (“comics” aren’t necessarily funny, either); on top of being a librarian I have a background in linguistics so I’m doubly insufferable about this.
I generally say live and let live when it comes to words going against their “true meaning” because etymology=/=definition and word meanings change, but for this one particular thing, it’s annoying as someone who works with kids to put so much effort into teach fiction vs. nonfiction and then whoops nope terminology’s inconsistent because of a comics scare over fifty years ago that made comics a “lesser medium.”
I think comics exist in that same weird library space as photo books, where despite the “literary” value of the medium they too often get chucked onto their own shelves in the back corner and brought out only for special display.
Hey, it’s my favorite librarian! How are you doing today, Jhelter?
“Relatively fine” is my mood of the day/year. You?
Heh. Same. Lotta nervous energy about the upcoming election, and a knee-deep in my Library Science program, which is both exhilarating and exhausting.Glad you’re doing relatively fine, and I hope that gets upgraded to “damn spiffy” as soon as possible.
I had to look it up to confirm: this is, indeed the person after whom the Bechdel Test is named. Just sharing. I honestly wasn’t sure when I read this article.
Thanks for saving me the Google search!
Kids
Where??
Hopefully she will be known for Fun Home and not the Bechdel test. I believe she herself acknowledged the flaws in the Bechdel test later. Some truly great pieces of literature and films don’t pass it, while some other complete pieces of garbage pass it (Sucker Punch is one that comes to mind for example)
It would help if people actually understood that it was supposed to be a measure of the overall lack of female representation in film rather than a litmus test for whether a particular movie was feminist or not.