Thursday, May 26, 2022

The Secret to Superhuman Strength

Bechdel, Alison. The Secret to Superhuman Strength. 2021. 240p. ISBN 9780544387652.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength

Famous for her comic series published for 25 years, Alison Bechdel delivers a poignant autobiographical story about her life and her relationships, both with people and with exercise. Representing a spiritual journey as much as a physical growth, Bechdel explores the impact that exercise has had on her life, and how it affected both how she views the world and how she thinks of herself.

Discussing parallels between her life and that of literary figures like Beat author Jack Kerouak, poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, writers Henri David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Margaret Fuller, Bechdel presents the truths she discovered along the way. Inspired by buddhism and by the transcendentalism movement, exercise comes to symbolize one's independence from others just as they need others to establish meaningful relationships. 

Fans of philosophy will enjoy watching six decades of a life go by in an illustrated manner.

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