Alison Bechdel

I love it when essayists are able to weave together seemingly disparate strands of thoughts in way that makes you wonder why you didn't make the connection yourself. Sometimes it's because you're being introduced to knowledge new to you, sometimes it's because you can't see the nose in front of your face, and sometimes it's because they don't fit together at all, like a musical mashup that doesn't truly work but sounds interesting on its own. The Secret to Superhuman Strength is kind of like show more that.

Though I'm about a decade younger than Bechdel, my age cohort is close enough that I found much of it relatable. Girls of my time had few outlets for athletic prowess other than the playground or gym class, and that was true for everything. Band? Clarinet or flute. Home Ec yes, shop class no. Driver's ed yes, but only automatic, not manual.

As someone who revels in fitness endeavors but is never as fit as I’d like to be, I enjoyed Bechdel’s observations about how the drive for physical transcendence is really a desire for more other worldly experience, a different kind of transcendence. Each fitness fad arrives in its in own zeitgeist, a reflection of the times in which it is born, embraced, and fades away. This also mimics the life experience: peaks eventually become valleys and subsequent peaks may not be as high.

So too the book: Bechdel’s memoir eventually reaches 2020, a year that for many is still hard to reconcile. Also at this point, she has lived well over half a century. She admits to not knowing how to wrap up the endeavor that is this book, but has also shown us that knowing your limits is a strength all its own. 3.5 stars show less

Alison Bechdel had an unusual childhood, raised by intellectuals in a very small town where they helped run the family funeral home, sometimes called “fun home”. She recreates her childhood in comics form, based on her own extensive journals but with incisive hindsight. She pays special attention to her father, a very flawed, closeted queer man, who died in an accident (or possibly suicide) shortly after Alison came out as a lesbian in college.

I understood going in that this was a show more pioneer of graphic memoirs and was prepared to appreciate it in that context, but even by today's standards Fun Home is a piece of art. The simple drawings never distract from the story she's telling, and she is open about her attempt to bring her father to life through the illustrations. I especially enjoyed the narration, through captions, which made it feel like Alison was showing me a story instead of expecting me to get lost in the illustrations, which I find hard to do. The story itself is very moving, and as a memoir alone it’s incredibly adept. If you’ve been putting this one off, don’t forget about it, because it really holds up. show less

I’m a fan of Bechdel’s comic “Dykes to Watch Out For,” so I don’t know why I waited so long to read this highly acclaimed memoir. It certainly deserves the accolades. It’s a moving and heartfelt contemplation of Bechdel’s relationship with her father, primarily. Her father died while she was in college, just after she came out as a lesbian, and it’s not clear whether his death was an accident or a suicide. The puzzle of her father’s own sexuality, his relationship with his show more family, how he felt about his closeted life in their small town running the family business (a funeral home, a.k.a. “fun home”) are all examined this way and that, as Bechdel clearly tries to make sense of her fraught relationship with him. It’s frank, funny, and tragic in turns. For a graphic novel (of which I don’t read many and about which I think I have some prejudices) it’s surprisingly literary, and I have to admire Bechdel’s honesty. show less

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/spent-a-comic-novel-by-alison-bechdel/

Alison Bechdel, who we have met in three previous books, is now running a sanctuary for abandoned goats in rural Vermont, while her partner Holly is becoming an internet influencer thanks to her use of power tools for carpentry. Meanwhile Alison’s successful first memoir, Death and Taxidermy, has become a hit TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch as her father, but veering further and further from Alison’s own lived show more experience. Her old friends live down the road and are going through their own emotional transformations – there’s a fair bit of over-sixties sex in this book – and incidentally the world is going to hell, with Trumpists threatening civil war, climate catastrophe looming, and incidentally Alison’s MAGA sister writing her own autobiography to set the story straight.

I loved this, and laughed out loud several times on the London Underground and the train while reading it, much to the dismay of fellow passengers. The funniest scene perhaps is when the goats… no, I won’t spoil it for you. There are some serious points as well, both about the state of the world and the limited effect that one individual can have (which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try), and also about Life as Art and Art as Life. Recommended. show less