Bechdel

[psocoptera]

The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel, 2021 graphic memoir. I can't find my review of Are You My Mother, but I remember not liking it as much as Fun Home - too navel-gazy, or rather the circle of navel-gazing pulled too tightly and looped too many times, looking at the writing process and therapizing-processing processes themselves. Enh. This one I liked more, maybe because I was more interested in the historical-comparisons bits about the Transcendentalists and stuff, or maybe because I had a better idea of what to expect. Interesting stuff about grappling with the aging body and the inevitability of death and loss and such, as well as the cultural evolution of exercise fads over Bechdel's lifetime. None of this is ever going to mean as much to me as, like, that post-Trump-election Dykes strip where we got to check in with how everyone was doing - I mean, I guess this book was a chance to check in with how *Bechdel* is doing, but she's a real person presenting a memoir-itized version of her life, it would feel rude and invasive to feel attached in the same way - but, anyways, recommended if you like thinky stuff about work-life balance and mind-body relationships and Bechdel's art. (But do all her girlfriends have kind of the same hair on purpose? Is it a joke with that also being Sydney's hair, the way Mo had Bechdel's hair? Is it just that only cartoon-Bechdel gets to have dark hair for contrast and easy identification? Also I spent way too long on page 72 trying to figure out whether the tent depicted in an outdoor store in the 1970s could actually have been being sold in the 70s. Was anyone actually doing dome tents in the 1970s that had clips onto the poles instead of sleeves? Apparently yes or at least possibly, but that would not have been my intuition.)

Comments

[isis]

Hah, I don't need to see the images to know what you're talking about, and I don't remember seeing dome tents with clips rather than sleeves until late 1990s if that early. 1980s and 1990s were all sleeve types in my experience, anyway, and I remember being "oh my god this is so much easier!" when I first saw a clip tent in the late 90s (or possibly early 2000s).