Harvey Pekar
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Harvey Pekar (born October 8, 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American underground comic book writer. His friendship with Robert Crumb led to the creation of the autobiographical comic book series American Splendor, later adapted as a movie, for which he is best known. Pekar's comic book work became successful enough to get him eight guest appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the late 1980s. However, his confrontational style and overt on-air criticism of General Electric (which owned NBC) led to the show banning him as a guest until the early 1990s.
On October 5, 2005, the DC Comics imprint Vertigo released Pekar's autobiographical hardcover The Quitter, with artwork by Dean Haspiel, a frequent Pekar collaborator. The book detailed Pekar's early years, and was created in part to reward Haspiel for his role in introducing Pekar to the producers who went on to make the American Splendor movie a reality.
In addition to writing American Splendor, Pekar is a prolific jazz (jass) and book critic. He has also won awards for essays broadcast on public radio.
Pekar is married to writer Joyce Brabner, with whom he collaborated on Our Cancer Year, a graphic novel autobiography of his struggle with cancer which won a Harvey Award for Best Graphic Album of Original Work. He won the American Book Award for his 1991 collection The New American Splendor Anthology. He lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
Pekar is Jewish.
American Splendor documented daily life in the aging neighborhoods of Pekar's native Cleveland, Ohio, where Pekar worked (thoughout his life, including after gaining fame) as a file clerk in a large Veteran's Administration hospital. Pekar tends to document without much interpretation difficult living conditions ("keeping an old car alive in a Cleveland winter") and marginal people including his friend Toby, an adult male with Asperger's Syndrome, who fills a life (initially appearing rather empty) with a variety of projects including fandom and inexpensive computers.
Since Pekar doesn't draw, his work is necessarily collaborative. This may be why Pekar successfully resisted the allure of stardom and the Letterman show. One of Pekar's most powerful works was co-authored with his wife, Our Cancer Year.
Pekar, prior to the related midwestern phenomena of The Onion and The Baffler, may have represented a growing heartland resistance to the corporatization of satire as seen on Letterman and Saturday Night Live, where the humor has long sought out safe targets and exalted an ironic smirking uber-individualism. Then again, Pekar and the Onion may do no such thing.
External links
- Personal homepage (last updated in 2003)
- Interview on The Sound of Young America: MP3 Link
- Harvey Pekar at the Internet Movie Databasede:Harvey Pekar
