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There's a new series of American Splendor coming out from Vertigo now. Sales, I guess, will be very low. Some movies, books and art have a cult following because nobody's discovered them yet. Other stuff has a cult following because it isn't, and never will be, for everybody. Harvey Pekar's definitely in the latter category. In attempting to start a discussion on him here, it's important that be kept in mind. He's a minority taste like lime-and-liquorice tablets. if you don't like him, it will be almost impossible to see why others do.
Two of grant's rules:
2. You must have nothing better to do; for instance, visiting a friend in another town, you have no car, the friend must go run an errand leaving you alone for an hour or two.
3. You must read a quantity - generally half a TPB collection - before hearing an audible "click."
describe with uncanny accuracy my introduction to the work of Pekar. It was the first big collection, bought just before the movie came out. The friend had gone to the gym. I was reading it, not enjoying it, putting it down and picking it up because there was nothing else to do. Harvey was standing around in the park, musing about getting older in a short story devoid of any action or visual interest, and click. That was it. The first hundred pages of Harvery I read I wondered why he never did anything. I've read probably a thousand pages since just to see what he doesn't do next.
There are short stories where Harvey goes to the market and buys fruit, or drives to the airport early. I've read at least two where he has a dull day at work when everyone else is at home. Waiting for a plane, anticipating a package, going for an appointment of any kind fills him with anxiety. His stories are about nothing, the tinest events and commonplaces and disappointments, and yet they capture something nothing else I've read ever has. Part of it is Harvey himself, a unique character, and the world he surrounds himself with. Part of it's what he sees, the stories he finds himself in or attracted to.
FinderWolf: I've been curious about his new upcoming book, OUR MOVIE YEAR. I always like reading about behind-the-scenes Hollywood stuff, and I think Harvey Pekar's take on such would be especially fun.
It was disappointing, a load of different pieces including a set of two-pagers on jazz musicians thrown together into a book. All the stories about Harvey's anxiety over the movie premiere and the power cuts on its first night were good, there were CD inlays and party invites and magazine covers done in the Splendor style, and the final eponymous story about the world tour Harvey and family take off the back of the film is good, but otherwise it was too random.The Quitter, the recent "secret origin of Harvey Pekar" OGN from Vertigo, is one of his first works to leave me cold. I could just be out of the Pekar groove, though. And I'm waiting for the trade on the current mini, where Harvey gets to work with a higher quality of artists than ever before.
Anyone else got the Harvey habit? |
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