Fans of Roz Chast’s cartoons in The New Yorker will not be surprised to learn that her parents were an unlikely couple: Her mother, Elizabeth, was a bossy perfectionist. Her father, George, was a sensitive man often gripped by anxiety.

In her first memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Chast captures her parents’ long, painful decline and her struggle to deal with their descent—from their cluttered Brooklyn apartment to assisted living and eventually to hospice care. Telling the story with cartoons, text and photos, Chast leaves no aging stone unturned, revealing all the agonizing, humiliating and haunting details of growing old. If you’ve been a caregiver for an aging relative, you’re likely to find every frustrated, ridiculous or desperate thought you ever had reflected in Chast’s heart-rending and often hilarious volume.

The author/cartoonist responded to our questions about the book from her home in Connecticut.

As the book’s title makes clear, aging is not a “pleasant” topic. Why did you decide to write this book?
It wasn’t pleasant, but it was definitely interesting to me. And of course, it’s not just one’s parents who are aging. We’re all heading in that direction. Also, there were some funny, cartoon-worthy events along the way.

What personal qualities do you think you inherited from your mother? From your father?
My mother valued intelligence over looks. She didn’t care about clothes, hair or makeup. I try to care about fashion, but I have the opposite of what Frenchwomen are supposed to have: I make the least of wh­at I’ve got. I deeply wish this were not so and I try to fight it, but it seems to be in my DNA. My father was the most anxious person I’ve ever met. He was the Mozart of anxieties. He makes me look like an amateur.

What moment as a caregiver made you want to throw up your hands and run for cover?
It was pretty much one long moment of that feeling. The question should be what moment didn’t make me want to run for cover. But one of the worst was when I was bringing my mother and father back to their apartment after visiting the terrible Place in Brooklyn and my mother collapsed in the stairwell while my father was having a panic attack because he couldn’t get the key to open the door to the apartment. That was an out-of-body experience for me.

Your parents were extremely close and did almost everything together. Did that make aging easier or harder for them?
It made it easier. They gave each other moral support.

What surprised you the most during the whole saga of caring for your parents?
I was surprised that there were no guidelines. There were no books like “What To Expect When Your Parents Are Dying.” I felt like I was making it up as I was going along.

Did you ever wish you had a sibling to help you get through this?
YES.

This book covers some deeply personal territory. Did you ever waver about holding back parts of the story?
I did think about holding back some parts. But I felt that holding back would perpetuate the problem of not talking about what it’s like to get really, really old. I don’t mean “spry”-old. I mean OLD-old.

Do you talk about “the future” with your own kids?
Not yet!!! But it’s coming . . . down . . . the . . . pike.

What did you learn about your own end-of-life preferences after observing your parents’ decline?
I don’t want to live the last couple of years of my life in bed, drinking Ensure and having somebody change my diaper. No, no, no. On the other hand, who knows what it’s like once you get there?

What one piece of advice would you give to a child-caretaker just starting on this path?
Get their papers in order: their will, all their financial information, who has power of attorney, what their “advance health care directives” are, health care proxy forms, your parents’ social security numbers, what medications they take, and so forth. And, if your kids are writer- or artist-types, it’s all material, so take notes.

I know, that’s two pieces of advice.

Cartoon © 2014 Roz Chast. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author-illustrator Marcelino Truong has penned a follow-up to his critically acclaimed graphic memoir, Such a Lovely Little War. Picking up in 1963, Truong again blends personal narrative with an incredibly well-researched account of the Vietnamese side of the Vietnam War, a history that is little-known inside the U.S. While the first book focused on Truong's early years in Saigon, Saigon Calling finds his Vietnamese diplomat father, French mother and his siblings on the move to London in order to escape the escalating conflict in Vietnam. This poignant, honest account chronicles Truong's early teen years, his search for belonging and understanding, his experience caught between very different cultures and their disparate views on the war.

We asked Truong a few questions about sifting through his memories and filling in the blanks, becoming a self-taught artist, his next project and more.

When you began writing your first memoir, Such a Lovely Little War, did you already have this follow-up planned, or did you discover that you had multiple books worth of material during your writing process?
At first I don't think I had a follow-up planned. My two years in Saigon at the beginning of the 60's, as a child, seemed to me by far the most striking and thrilling period of my childhood. It seemed comparable to me to J.G. Ballard's accounts of his childhood in Shanghai, where he witnessed the Japanese occupation and was fascinated by the Imperial Japanese army.

Only gradually did it occur to me that there might be the material for a follow-up. Probably this realization was helped by the fact that I did quite a few talks and interviews after the first graphic novel was published, and it became clear to me that many clichés formed the mainstream view of the Vietnam war. Also, the first book deals with the early days of the war which was much less known than the American Vietnam war which really began in earnest in 1965, when President Johnson sent the conscripts. Before that, Vietnam had been a professional soldier's war.

It became clear to me that a second book was a good idea, because there was so much to say about the point of view of the non-communist Vietnamese, all too often dubbed the "Saigon puppets" by the Vietnamese Communists and many Western progressives, to our dismay.

As you sifted through your memories and your childhood experiences during your writing process, did you have any surprising or unexpected revelations about yourself?
I began to wonder what I had found so nice about Saigon and life in South Vietnam because the situation was already very grim. The revolutionary war conducted by the Viet Cong, remote-controlled by Communist Hanoi, and the counterinsurgency warfare it triggered in retaliation was killing about 1000 people every month, most of them civilians.

Of course most of the killing took place in the countryside, but Saigon and other cities of South Vietnam had their share of bombings, grenades thrown in cinemas or restaurants, assassinations, and the occasional coup d'état attempts. I discovered there was probably something in my personality that found some sort of interest in such uncommon, disturbing situations.

When we arrived in England in 1963, at first I found British life rather dull and tasteless. Things picked up later with the pop counterculture revolution, but even though that revolution was flowery and hedonistic, somehow I preferred the atmosphere of Saigon, which was both martial and addicted to pleasure.

What sifting through my memories in Such A Lovely Little War and Saigon Calling revealed to me is how far the war has shaped my life and my psychology.

Alongside your personal history, you offer a very detailed timeline of the events of the Vietnam War that is truly eye-opening for Western readers. How much historical research did you have to do for this book?
I did lots of research, but you know, the Vietnam war started around 1957, the year I was born. I heard about it at home: My father took part in it in his own way, as a civil servant, and many of my uncles and aunts were involved in that conflict, on both sides. So they are an invaluable source of knowledge about the Vietnam War. They will tell you more about the reality of war in five minutes than many lengthy books written by journalists or academics. Although I greatly enjoy reading the works of journalists and academics, being an academic myself through my training, I must say that firsthand witnesses have a blunt way of putting things that provide many shortcuts to understanding history. But I do like academics and journalists. I was groomed become an academic. I have never been to art school. I am a completely self-taught artist. I went to law school in Paris and then to the Sorbonne, to study English literature. This training helps me a lot with my research. I have no fear of reading dry articles and dense essays.

You spent many of your formative years living amongst very different cultures—Saigon, London, Saint-Malo. How did this shape the way you see the world today?
I am a strange product of three different cultures: the Vietnamese culture, the British culture and the French.

This shapes the way I see the world in that I cannot help seeing the differences in attitudes and thoughts between Europe and Asia, and between Protestant and Catholic countries, or northern and southern Europe. There is also an undeniable mutual fascination between East and West, and many bridges between North and South. I like both and tend to think I'm getting the best of both worlds. But I feel really privileged to have lived in all these different countries and to have friends and family all over the world.

You've said in previous interviews that you're a completely self-taught artist. When did you start drawing? Did your artistic brother Dominique spark your interest?
Oh it's a long story. To put it in a nutshell, let's say I slowly drifted towards the world of illustration, painting and comics after having had no idea for years that this was what I was going to be doing as a job.

I started illustration work and comics at the age of 25, with only a few pencil or color drawings I'd done in my spare time. Dominique influenced me indirectly with his bohemian way of life. He was a hippie, an outcast. I felt very square and straight compared to him, and choosing the life of an artist, after having achieved all the studies that were expected from me, was, I suppose, my way of being bohemian and slightly rebellious in my turn.

My mother was also an influence. She painted, drew and had a passion for ceramics, and later enamels, and was really good at sewing and music. She could play Chopin's Nocturnes perfectly. Unfortunately for her, her manic depression hindered her considerably in her artistic undertakings. I think she was an artist at heart, but in those days, when you came from the modest lower middle-class, it wasn't easy to come out as an artist. It seemed like a futile thing to do.

"Graphic storytelling allows you to do stuff you can't do in writing. Graphic novels are easier to read, I suppose, and more forthcoming."

Which artists have had the most influence on you stylistically?
My mother used to love Gauguin, who almost went to Vietnam instead of the French islands in the Pacific. He is indeed an artist whose works I really admire.

Hergé is also an obvious influence, because there weren't that many comics around in London, in the 60's and 70's, and I really enjoyed Tintin. One of my favorite illustrators is a Chinese artist called He Youshi.

But I'm basically a book guy. I studied English and American literature quite a bit at the Sorbonne, and we read novels, or plays or poetry, which we studied in depth, many of them great classics, and none of them were comics of course. So that sort of shaped me.

When did you first discover your love for comics and graphic storytelling?
For me the graphic novel is a great way to tell a story. The pictures make the story easier to grasp. The visuals allow you to get an immediate impression, whereas a book, well you have to read it, don't you?

I suppose I could have written Such a Lovely Little War or Saigon Calling as regular memoirs, but graphic storytelling allows you to do stuff you can't do in writing. For instance, the graphic novel genre allowed me to inject a dose of humor in my storytelling. Written in prose, the book may have been too serious. Graphic novels are easier to read, I suppose, and more forthcoming.

Graphic novels are usually less stuffy than some very learned academic essays.

What are you working on next?
My new project is a fiction graphic novel, or one might call it a "faction" comic, meaning a mix between fact and fiction, covering the end of the French Indochina War as seen from the Viet Minh side. The Viet Minh was the name of the coalition of Vietnamese nationalists and patriots fighting for independence under the banner of uncle Ho Chi Minh. Uncle Ho's Vietnamese Communists, supported by the Soviet Union, and especially by Maoist China after 1949, very quickly dominated this coalition of patriots.

My story will begin in Spring 1953, just one year before the end of the war, which was marked by the famous battle Dien Bien Phu. My main character is a young Vietnamese artist from Hanoi who is press-ganged, so to say, or conscripted into the People's Army. We follow him through the war.

Author photo by Sébastien Ortola. 

In The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel writes, “My bookish exterior perhaps belies it . . . but I’m a bit of an exercise freak.” You name it, she’s tried it: running, hiking, biking, snowshoeing, weightlifting, running, paddleboarding, karate, in-line skating, aerial yoga and more.

At the start of my call to Bechdel’s home outside of Burlington, Vermont, I suggest that we should be doing something like cross-country skiing instead of sitting on our bums, chatting. “Although I’m sure I couldn’t keep up,” I add.

Bechdel laughs and says, “For all my bragging in that book, I’m not super fast or skilled at anything.”

She has her limits, Bechdel admits—increasingly so. The last time she did aerial yoga, for example, “I got up too fast and I ended up having a weird vertigo thing for two days.” She turned 60 in September 2020 and has noticed that “I’m still putting in the work, but I’m getting slower and weaker. I can’t do stuff I used to do, and it’s very disconcerting.”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Secret to Superhuman Strength.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength is a book with so many layers that it’s hard to describe; even Bechdel struggles to put it into words. Basically, she says, “It's the chronological story of my life through the lens of my fitness obsessions.” She began the project in 2013, “with a desire to write something about mortality and getting older”—an idea perhaps reinforced by her mom’s death that year.

On the heels of her previous graphic memoirs, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, about her father, and Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama, Bechdel initially thought she might be in the mood for a change of pace. “I felt like I wanted to take a break from all of the intensely personal, introspective books,” she says, “but I don’t seem to be able to do that.”

Bechdel theorizes that her compulsion for candor may stem from her Catholic upbringing. “The notion of confession was always a very powerful experience for me as a kid,” she says. “I feel like I'm still confessing—like I'm going to receive some kind of absolution if I do it accurately enough. But I will have pangs afterwards. ‘Oh my God, I can't believe I revealed this,’ or, ‘Oh my God, my poor family.’”

“I wanted to capture some of the vitality and the exuberance of just being alive.”

Like all of her books, The Secret to Superhuman Strength is not only enlightening but hilarious, with a multitude of unexpected delights. Bechdel is the first to admit that it “veers into many different areas that you wouldn't think were necessarily connected to exercise.” Take, for instance, transcendence—how exercise gives her “the feeling of my mind and body becoming one.” To explore some of these ideas, she relies on repeated appearances by literary greats such as Jack Kerouac, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

One writer led to another, she explains, “like a chain reaction. . . . I started seeing ways that their actual lives informed mine—the ways they struggled with relationships or struggled with drinking too much or struggled to establish themselves as an author.” She’s thankful that “graphic narrative allows you to weave together some pretty complex material in a way that feels easily digestible.”

Visually, this is Bechdel’s first book in full color; previous books were simply tinted, with shading. “I wanted to capture some of the vitality and the exuberance of just being alive,” she says, “and that seemed to demand color.” Her wife, Holly Rae Taylor, is also an artist and helped with the extensive coloring. Bechdel calls this a good pandemic project—one that kept the couple “entertained and busy.” “If I hadn’t been home all day, every day, working for 18 hours, I wouldn’t have gotten the book done,” she says.

Bechdel’s creative process is a workout in its own right, largely because she takes photos to use as references for each sketch.

Throughout composing The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Bechdel kept up her running regimen, but weightlifting fell by the wayside. Her creative process, however, is a workout in its own right, largely because she takes photos to use as references for each sketch. “It makes drawing into a kind of a physical activity. I'm not just hunched over a drawing board,” she explains. “I'm posing. I'm sketching. I'm running outside with my bike to set a scene up. So it's all drawing, but it wouldn't look like drawing to someone watching.”

Now that the book is done and Bechdel finally has some free time, who would she want to work out with if she could choose anyone, dead or alive? She says her first thought is “hanging out with Rachel Carson and looking in tidal pools . . . but that’s not really a workout.”

Eventually Bechdel decides she would love to hike with 19th-century journalist Margaret Fuller: a climb up Maine’s tallest peak, the 5,267-foot Mount Katahdin, famed for its precarious Knife Edge Trail. “It seems scary to me,” Bechdel says, “but I think Margaret and I would push each other to do it.”