Harvey Pekar | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Harvey Lawrence Pekar (1939-10-08)October 8, 1939 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | July 12, 2010(2010-07-12) (aged 70) Cleveland Heights, Ohio, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Education | Case Western Reserve University (dropped out) |
| Genre | Underground comics Alternative comics |
| Subject | Autobiography |
| Years active | 1959–2010 |
| Notable works | American Splendor Our Cancer Year |
| Notable awards |
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| Spouses | |
Harvey Lawrence Pekar (/ˈpiːkɑːr/; October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010)[1] was an Americanunderground comic book writer, music critic, and media personality, best known for his autobiographicalAmerican Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a well-receivedfilm adaptation of the same name.
Frequently described as the "poet laureate of Cleveland",[2][3] Pekar "helped change the appreciation for, and perceptions of, thegraphic novel, the drawn memoir, the autobiographical comic narrative."[4] Pekar described his work as "autobiography written as it's happening. The theme is about staying alive, getting a job, finding a mate, having a place to live, finding a creative outlet. Life is awar of attrition. You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another. I've tried to control a chaotic universe. And it's a losing battle. But I can't let go. I've tried, but I can't."[5]
Among the awards given to Pekar for his work were theInkpot Award, theAmerican Book Award, aHarvey Award, and his posthumous induction into theEisner Award Hall of Fame.
Harvey Pekar and his younger brother Allen were born inCleveland, Ohio, to aJewish family.[6] Their parents were Saul and Dora Pekar, immigrants fromBiałystok, Poland. Saul Pekar was aTalmudic scholar who owned a grocery store on Kinsman Avenue, with the family living above the store.[7] Although Pekar said he wasn't close to his parents due to their dissimilar backgrounds and because they worked all the time, he still "marveled at how devoted they were to each other. They had so much love and admiration for one another."[8]
Pekar's first language as a child wasYiddish and he learned to read and appreciate novels in the language.[9]
Pekar said he did not have friends for the first few years of his life.[10] The neighborhood he lived in had once been all white butbecame mostly black by the 1940s. One of the few white children living there, Pekar was often beaten up. He later believed this instilled in him "a profound sense of inferiority."[11] This experience, however, also taught him to become a "respected street scrapper."[11]
Pekar graduated fromShaker Heights High School in 1957. He then briefly served in theUnited States Navy. After being discharged he attendedCase Western Reserve University, where he dropped out after a year.[7] He worked odd jobs before he was hired as fileclerk at theVeterans Administration Hospital in 1965.[12] He held this job after becoming famous, refusing all promotions, until he retired in 2001.[7][11]
Pekar was married three times. He was married from 1960 to 1972 to his first wife, Karen Delaney.[13] According to fellow cartoonistR. Crumb, who knew the couple socially, "She left him.... She took all the money out of their bank account and ran off.... Never heard from her again."[14]
His second wife was Helen Lark Hall, who appeared (as "Lark") in a number of early issues ofAmerican Splendor.[14] They married in 1977. According to Crumb again (and as dramatized in theAmerican Splendor film), "...she was trying to have a career in academia and Harvey would embarrass her. They'd go to these academic cocktail parties and Harvey would deliberately antagonize these professors. He thought the whole academia thing was bullshit. So he used to embarrass her and she'd become angry at him until finally she gave up on him."[14] They divorced in 1981.
Pekar's third wife, whom he married in 1984, was writerJoyce Brabner[13] who became a regular character inAmerican Splendor and to whom he remained married until his death.
In 1990, as described byPublishers Weekly, "Pekar was diagnosed withlymphoma and neededchemotherapy. By the time the disease was discovered, the couple was in the midst of buying a house (a tremendous worry to Pekar, who fretted about both the money and corruptions ofbourgeois creature comforts)."[15] After Pekar's recovery, he and Brabner collaborated onOur Cancer Year (released in 1994), a graphic novel account of that experience, as well as his harrowing yet successful treatment.
Around this same time, Brabner and Pekar became guardians of a young girl, Danielle Batone, when she was nine years old.[16] Danielle became the couple's foster daughter and eventually became a recurring character inAmerican Splendor as well.[17]
Pekar lived inCleveland Heights, Ohio, with Brabner and Batone.[16][18]
Pekar's friendship withRobert Crumb led to the creation of the self-published, autobiographical comic book seriesAmerican Splendor. Crumb and Pekar became friends through their shared love ofjazz records.[19] It took Pekar a decade to do so: "I theorized for maybe ten years about doing comics."[20] Pekar's influences from the literary world includedJames Joyce,Arthur Miller,George Ade,Henry Roth, andDaniel Fuchs.[21]
Around 1972, Pekar laid out some stories with crude stick figures and showed them to Crumb and another artist,Robert Armstrong. Impressed, they both offered to illustrate.[22] Pekar & Crumb's one-pager "Crazy Ed" was published as the back cover of Crumb'sThe People's Comics (Golden Gate Publishing Company, 1972), becoming Pekar's first published work of comics. Including "Crazy Ed" and before the publication ofAmerican Splendor #1, Pekar wrote a number of other comic stories that were published in a variety of outlets:
The first issue of Pekar's self-publishedAmerican Splendor series appeared in May 1976, with stories illustrated by Crumb, Dumm, Budgett, andBrian Bram. Applying the "brutally frank autobiographical style ofHenry Miller,"[11]American Splendor documented Pekar's daily life in the aging neighborhoods of his native Cleveland.
Pekar and his work came to greater prominence in 1986 when Doubleday collected much of the material from the first ten issues inAmerican Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar,[23] which was positively reviewed by, among others,The New York Times.[24] (1986 was also the year Pekar began appearing onLate Night with David Letterman.)[23]
Pekar self-published 15 issues ofAmerican Splendor from 1976 to 1991 (issue #16 was co-published withTundra Publishing).Dark Horse Comics took on the publishing and distribution of Pekar's comics from 1993 to 2003.
In 2006, Pekar released a four-issueAmerican Splendor miniseries through the DC Comics imprintVertigo Comics.[25] This was collected in theAmerican Splendor: Another Day paperback. In 2008 Vertigo released a second four-issue "season" ofAmerican Splendor that was later collected in theAmerican Splendor: Another Dollar paperback.
Pekar's best-known and longest-running collaborators include Crumb,[26] Dumm, Budgett,Spain Rodriguez,Joe Zabel,Gerry Shamray,Frank Stack, Mark Zingarelli, andJoe Sacco. In the 2000s, he teamed regularly with artistsDean Haspiel andJosh Neufeld. Other cartoonists who worked with him includeJim Woodring,Chester Brown,Alison Bechdel,Gilbert Hernandez,Eddie Campbell,David Collier,Drew Friedman,Ho Che Anderson,Rick Geary,Ed Piskor,Hunt Emerson,Bob Fingerman, and Alex Wald; as well as such non-traditional illustrators as Pekar's wife,Joyce Brabner, and comics writerAlan Moore.
In addition to his autobiographical work onAmerican Splendor, Pekar wrote a number of biographies. The first of these,American Splendor: Unsung Hero (Dark Horse Comics, 2003), illustrated byDavid Collier, documented theVietnam War experience of Robert McNeill, one of Pekar's African-American coworkers at Cleveland'sVA hospital.[23]
Stories from theAmerican Splendor comics have been collected in many books and anthologies.
Afilm adaptation ofAmerican Splendor was released in 2003, directed byRobert Pulcini andShari Springer Berman. It starredPaul Giamatti as Pekar, as well as appearances by Pekar himself (and his wife Joyce, foster daughter Danielle, and co-workerToby Radloff).American Splendor won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film at the2003 Sundance Film Festival, in addition to the award for Best Adapted Screenplay from theWriters Guild of America. At the2003 Cannes Film Festival, the film received theFIPRESCI critics award.[27]American Splendor was given the Guardian New Directors Award at the 2003Edinburgh International Film Festival.[28] It was also nominated forBest Adapted Screenplay at the 2003Academy Awards. Pekar wrote about the effects of the film inAmerican Splendor: Our Movie Year.
On October 5, 2005, theDC Comics imprintVertigo published Pekar's autobiographical hardcoverThe Quitter, with artwork byDean Haspiel. The book detailed Pekar's early years.
In 2006,Ballantine/Random House published his biographyEgo & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story about the life ofMichael Malice, founding editor ofOverheard in New York.[29] In June 2007, Pekar collaborated with student Heather Roberson and artistEd Piskor on the bookMacedonia, which centers on Roberson's studies in thatcountry.[30] In January 2008 the biographicalStudents for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History was published byHill & Wang. In March 2009, he publishedThe Beats: A Graphic History, a history of theBeat Generation, includingJack Kerouac andAllen Ginsberg, illustrated by Ed Piskor.[31] In May 2009 he publishedStuds Terkel's Working: A Graphic Adaptation.
In 2010, Pekar started thewebcomicThe Pekar Project with the online magazineSmith.[32] In 2011, Abrams Comicarts publishedYiddishkeit, co-edited by Pekar withPaul Buhle and Hershl Hartman. The book depicts aspects of Yiddish language and culture. Artists in this anthology include many of Pekar's previous collaborators.
Pekar was an assiduousrecord collector as well as a freelance book, comic, and jazz critic, writing mainly about significant figures from jazz's golden age but also championing out-of-mainstream artists such asScott Fields,Fred Frith andJoe Maneri. He published his first criticism inThe Jazz Review in 1959.[13][11] Pekar wrote hundreds of articles forDownBeat,JazzTimes,The Village Voice, andThe Austin Chronicle;[33] as well asliner notes forVerve Records and other labels.[34]
Pekar occasionally wrote criticism about the work of other comics creators. For instance, he famously sawArt Spiegelman's use of animals inMaus as potentially reinforcing stereotypes.[35] Pekar was also disdainful of Spiegelman's overwhelmingly negative portrayal of his father inMaus,[35] calling him disingenuous and hypocritical for such a portrayal in a book that presents itself as objective.[35] Pekar furthermore wrote thatMaus' portrayal of Poles is unbalanced — that, while some Poles are seen as helping Jews, they are often shown doing so for self-serving reasons.[36] From 1986 to 1990, Pekar had a regular column in the comics anthologyWeirdo called "Harvey Sez," in which he wrote about the contemporary comics scene.
He reviewed literary fiction in theReview of Contemporary Fiction.[37] Pekar won awards for his essays broadcast onpublic radio.[38]
Pekar's comic book success led to a guest appearance onLate Night with David Letterman on October 15, 1986. Pekar was invited back repeatedly and made five more appearances in quick succession. These appearances became notable for the increasing hostility and verbal altercations between Pekar andLetterman,[26] particularly on the subject ofGeneral Electric's ownership of NBC. The most heated of these was in the August 31, 1988, episode ofLate Night, in which Pekar accused Letterman of appearing to be ashill for General Electric and Letterman promised never to invite Pekar back on the show.[39] Despite the ban, more than four years later Pekar appeared onLate Night again — on April 20, 1993, and he made a final appearance onLate Show with David Letterman on May 16, 1994.[40] After Pekar's death, Letterman reflected in 2017 that...
"He was great.... He would just go after stuff. He ... would go after me, he would go after the network, he would go after everything, in a very committed way. It wasn't a gag, it wasn't an act, he would really go to work on you.... [Pekar] wasanti-establishment in a way that you don't see guys like that anymore. And that used to really upset me, because I just thought 'Come on Harvey, don't do this to us, just play the game, blah blah blah blah.'... I'm a completely different person now. And I would be so much more better equipped to view the immediate surroundings of that show now, than I was [then].... Now, jeez, I wish I could have had Harvey on every night."[41]
Starting in 1999, Pekar recorded occasional commentaries for theKent, Ohio, public radio stationWKSU, on such topics as his name, turning 60, speeding tickets,Veterans Day, and his appearances on David Letterman's show.[42]
Pekar appeared inAlan Zweig's 2000 documentary film about record collecting,Vinyl.[43] In August 2007, Pekar was featured on the Cleveland episode ofAnthony Bourdain: No Reservations with hostAnthony Bourdain.[44]
While there had been earlierAmerican Splendor theater adaptations,[45] in 2009, Pekar made his theatrical debut withLeave Me Alone!, ajazz opera for which he wrote thelibretto.Leave Me Alone! featured music byDan Plonsey and was co-produced byReal Time Opera andOberlin College, premiering atFinney Chapel on January 31, 2009.[46]
In 2009, Pekar was featured inThe Cartoonist, a documentary film on the life and work ofJeff Smith, creator ofBone.[47]
Shortly before 1 a.m. on July 12, 2010, Pekar's wife found Pekar dead in their Cleveland Heights, Ohio, home.[7] No immediate cause was determined.[48] In October theCuyahoga County coroner's office ruled it was an accidental overdose ofantidepressantsfluoxetine andbupropion.[49] Pekar had been diagnosed with cancer for the third time and was about to undergo treatment.[7]
Pekar was interred atLake View Cemetery in Cleveland.[50] His headstone features one of his quotations as an epitaph: "Life is about women, gigs, an' bein' creative."
Some Pekar works were to be released posthumously,[51] including two collaborations with Joyce Brabner,The Big Book of Marriage andHarvey and Joyce Plumb the Depths of Depression, as well as a collection of the webcomics that ran as a part ofThe Pekar Project.[52] As of 2019, however, none of those projects have yet seen print. Working with illustratorSummer McClinton, Pekar, politically a leftist,[53] also finished a book on American Marxist Louis Proyect tentatively calledThe Unrepentant Marxist, after Proyect's blog. In the works since 2008, the book was to be published by Random House. After a conflict between Proyect and Joyce Brabner, Brabner announced that she would hold the book back indefinitely.[54]
In December 2010, the last story Pekar wrote, "Harvey Pekar Meets the Thing", in which Pekar has a conversation withBen Grimm, was published in theMarvel Comics anthologyStrange Tales II; the story was illustrated byTy Templeton.[55]
One of his final graphic memoirs was "Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me" (2013) in which he explains how he lost his faith in the Jewish state. It was illustrated by JT Waldman and the epilogue was penned by his widow,Joyce Brabner.
Frequently described as the "poet laureate of Cleveland,"[2][3] Pekar "helped change the appreciation for, and perceptions of, the graphic novel, the drawn memoir, the autobiographical comic narrative."[4]
According to Los Angeles Times columnist David Ulin,American Splendor "remains one of the most compelling and transformative series in the history of comics."[56] In addition, Pekar was the first author to publicly distribute "memoir comic books."[57] While it is common today for people to publicly write about their lives on blogs, social media platforms, and in graphic novels, "In the mid-seventies, Harvey Pekar was doing all this before it was ubiquitous and commercialized."[57]
In October 2012 a statue of Pekar was installed at the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Library, a place he visited almost daily.[58][59]
On July 25, 2015, the city of Cleveland Heights, Ohio dedicated the corner of Northwest Coventry Road and Euclid Heights Boulevard to the life and legacy of Harvey Pekar. This area is now known as Harvey Pekar Park.[60]
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He was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, and also suffered high blood pressure, asthma and clinical depression, which fueled his art but often made his life painful.
John O'Brien, ... editor ofThe Review of Contemporary Fiction, home to many of Pekar's articles...
A spokesman for the Cuyahoga County coroner's office said that no cause of death had yet been determined. Capt. Michael Cannon of the Cleveland Heights Police Department, which was summoned to Mr. Pekar's home by his wife, Joyce Brabner, told The Associated Press that Mr. Pekar had suffered from prostate cancer, asthma, high blood pressure and depression.
Notable exchange inThe Comics Journal between Pekar and critic R. Fiore on such topics asliterary realism, Pekar's comics,Art Spiegelman'sMaus, theHernandez brothers, and theunderground comix era:
