{"id":152420,"date":"2021-05-10T12:49:57","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T16:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=152420"},"modified":"2021-05-10T12:49:57","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T16:49:57","slug":"climbing-desolation-peak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2021\/05\/10\/climbing-desolation-peak\/","title":{"rendered":"Climbing Desolation Peak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alison Bechdel\u2019s new graphic memoir, <\/em>The Secret to Superhuman Strength<\/a>, follows the artist through a lifetime of fitness and exercise. These memories and musings are interspersed with transcendentalists, Romantics, Eastern philosophers, and other literary figures who shed light on our obsession with transformation and transcendence. In the excerpt below, Bechdel follows in Jack Kerouac\u2019s footsteps up the Matterhorn, only to find the hike to be far more difficult than expected, and with surprising lessons in store.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Alison Bechdel\u2019s cult following for her comic strip<\/em> Dykes to Watch Out For\u00a0expanded wildly for her best-selling memoirs, <\/em>Fun Home, adapted into a Tony Award\u2013winning musical, and <\/em>Are You My Mother? Her many honors include being named a MacArthur Fellow and Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont.<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpted from\u00a0<\/em>The Secret to Superhuman Strength<\/a>, by Alison Bechdel. Copyright \u00a9 2021 by Alison Bechdel. Reprinted by permission of HMH Books & Media. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this excerpt from Alison Bechdel\u2019s new graphic memoir, the writer attempts to ascend the Matterhorn in a climb inspired by Kerouac\u2019s \u2018The Dharma Bums.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30980],"tags":[67827],"class_list":["post-152420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nClimbing Desolation Peak by Alison Bechdel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In this excerpt from Alison Bechdel\u2019s new graphic memoir, the writer attempts to ascend the Matterhorn in a climb inspired by Kerouac\u2019s \u2018The Dharma Bums.\u2019\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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