Can someone explain Harvey Pekar to me? I read the wikipedia entry about his life, but I don’t understand why his work was popular.
I first heard of him in the 80s with his appearances on Letterman. That’s probably true for a lot of people who then checked out his work and enough liked it to sell some comic books. What else is there to understand?
His comics weren’t that great but he was a quirky personality that people loved to watch.
His first Letterman appearance. I doubt you will ever see someone so unimpressed by being on the Letterman show.
He’s a character. The kind of off-beat guy who says and does the unexpected and is fun to get to know. We went through this phase for awhile there where we were actually interested in different types of people, how they thought, and what their lives were like. I miss it.
For being “famous”, he was incredibly accessible. His number was listed in the Cleveland phone book, and he was a regular sight around Cleveland Heights diners and supermarkets. He blended into the crowd, and you really had to be familiar with his work to know it’s Harvey sitting at a table at Tommy’s.
That was the first I’d heard of him and loved his appearances there. Never met him but did see him in a store once. It was nice to have someone famous yet not stuck up.
I’m not an Pekar expert. Read a long article in a comics journal long ago, read a few issues of American Splendor, saw a few Letterman appearances…
I have a great love for fantasy and science-fiction, but I also hugely respect writers that can make everyday life as emotionally involving as actual everyday life can be.
Harvey Pekar could do that. Very few comics writers (particularly when Pekar started out) even attempt such a thing.
Work, health, friends, hobbies, relationships. Pekar could make you feel his happiness and misery. And (a major point) he cared about conversation. The words that came out of people’s mouths seemed real. I would guess that he notebooked interesting turns of phrase, and ethnic expressions.
Sometimes interesting expressions seemed to be the starting point for stories.
Pekar also had R. Crumb doing art for him. Crumb is one of the geniuses.
I didn’t know of him until watching American Splendor, and I grew up near Cleveland. I really enjoyed the portrayal of him by whatshisname…
Watching those clips really brings back how great Letterman once was.
I’m 98% sure I didn’t see those Letterman clips until well after I had seen Paul Giamatti play Pekar in American Splendor (2003), which is my first exposure to Giamatti that I can place. I seem to recall an interview with Pekar(radio, most likely Terry Gross on Fresh Air) at about the same time that the movie came out. Before that, I had never heard of the guy. The interview, as best I can recall, didn’t do much to persuade me I ought to know more about Pekar.
I’ve somehow fused him in my mind with R. Crumb of “Keep on Truckin’” fame and underground comics. Maybe even a little with Zippy Pinhead comics. I never got into that sort of thing as such, just became aware of it on the side. Wonder Warthog is another of them, for what that’s worth.
Pekar, to me, is a lot like Paris Hilton and the Kardashians: famous for being famous.
Well, Crumb drew some of Pekar’s comics and I don’t think the comparision to Hilton is fair. Pekar produced a body of work, he’s known for that work. You might not care for it, but he has produced art that some people hold in regard, you can’t really say that about Hilton.
IIRC Pekar’s comics were kind of unique in that they really laid out the kind of low level existential angst, swallowed fury, and fretting about intimate personal minutiae that ordinary people who are grubbing through their lives go through. He and Crumb were a perfect match for depicting that. I don’t recall having that type of introspection being depicted that precisely before his comics.
Yes. I will concede that at least Pekar did something besides getting born to warrant some of his fame. The Letterman exposure probably lifted him out of obscurity (to whatever extent that was true for the general public) and the movie and interview (perhaps more than the one that I heard) in promotion of it were enough for even more people to recognize him for some of his talents.
The Hilton and Kardashian comparison is unfair. You’re right.
Crumb and several other noted comic artists were positively eager to work with him. He was bringing something new and interesting to the table in the context of graphic comic art. If people who are noted as transformative graphic artists can see something you can’t see, assuming that it’s all BS because you can’t put your arms around it might be a bit presumptuous.
I decided to try to locate that Fresh Air interview with Pekar and found several pages of stories on the man at NPR Search : NPR
and I’m pretty sure the one I heard is at
Underground Comic Book Writer Harvey Pekar : NPR
which you may be able to hear directly by way of
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=1674648&m=1674649
Everybody in the thread so far is wrong.
Pekar was famous because he was an artist who produced great art. Obviously, it isn’t art that appeals to everyone (what is?), but there are plenty of us who found it to be really well observed and occasionally moving. The movie , and Letterman before that, raised his profile, but the reason he had a profile to be raised, and the reason that people who first encountered him through these outlets stayed with it, was because of the quality of the work.
–Cliffy
Agreed with this. I was actually surprised the OP had to ask the question. It’s also kind of obvious that most of the people replying in this thread have only seen his Letterman appearances or the movie and not actually ever picked up a copy of American Splendor so why they feel compelled to comment on someone whose body of work they are unfamiliar with is strange to say the least, particularly when said comments have nothing interesting to say.
You need some help in reading comprehension.
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I read one issue of American Splendor, but just didn’t really find it all that great. The whole angle of “ordinary working guy” just didn’t strike me as original. Just seems like a cliche to create something from the POV of an average, lower middle class person. Is the new thing meant to be that the creator in this case actually was an average person in many respects?
Yeah, I only heard of him through the film, which is one of my favourites. It turns out my older brothers had some of his comics prior to that which I’ve since read. The best of his stuff, writing and artwork wise is excellent but there’s plenty of mediocre strips too.