![]() ![]() But I am more struck by their detachment, their motionlessness, and the way those things illustrate a kind of physics of autobiography: it’s easier to define that which is not moving, and that which is separate from you. These junctures, full of the anticipation and terror of becoming a person, are notable for their ambivalence. The preceding pages are a blur of activity, but here the world stands still. ![]() ![]() “I sensed my whole life spooling out before me,” she writes. And in Bechdel’s newest book, “ The Secret to Superhuman Strength” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), preteen Alison, poised on top of a ski slope, regards the pristine expanse of the Allegheny Plateau. The deep water is “murky” she hesitates and then, overcome by what she describes as “a sublime feeling of surrender,” jumps in, her body sinking through the darkness. “ Are You My Mother?” (2012) opens with a dream sequence, in which an older Bechdel pauses by the bank of a river. (The gastrointestinal discomfort, Bechdel writes, is “worth the moment of perfect balance.”) When Alison looks down, her father’s gaze meets hers: a mirror. “ Fun Home” (2006) begins with young Alison raised above her father, arms spread, while he holds up her stomach with socked feet. In each of Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoirs, there’s a moment, early on, when she is physically elevated-and seems to survey the sprawl of her own story below her. ![]()
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