"In 2015 the cartoonist... Eleanor Davis set off on a bicycle ride from her parents’ house in Tucson, Arizona to her home in Athens, Georgia, a distance of 1,800 miles or so..."

"... riding a bike her father had built for her. When people asked her why she was making the journey, she’d tell them that she was thinking of having a baby and so it was now or never. But really, as she confesses in You & a Bike & a Road, her playful, poignant graphic book documenting the ride, 'I was having trouble with wanting to not be alive. But I feel good when I’m bicycling.' I worked as a bicycle messenger in London for years, and it was striking how many of my colleagues, many of them mentally unwell, felt similarly. Cycling—the intensity of focus it provides, the joyous fatigue—can be good for the mind as well as for the body...."

That's Jon Day in a NYRB review. Here's "You & a Bike & a Road" and I just bought it, based on the many drawings you can see at the NYRB link.

But after deciding to buy the book, I almost backed out when I noticed 2 words that I elided from the quote so as not to put you off. It really reads: "In 2015 the cartoonist and activist Eleanor Davis...."

My reaction when I see that an artist is identified as an "activist":

Good! I like a good art and politics mix.

Good! I get the message that the artist is on my side politically (which is, the left).

Bad. It obviously means left-wing, and that's not my kind of politics.

Bad. I like art art, not political art.

It's a youthful quirk to want to be "activist," but it's mostly meaningless. I'll look past it and see if I like the art and if I do, I'll ignore the attempted puffery of "activist."

 

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