You are here
Announcements
Recent blog posts
- Male Sex Trade Worker
- Communities resisting UK company's open pit coal mine
- THE ANARCHIC PLANET
- The Future Is Anarchy
- The Implosion Of Capitalism And The Nation-State
- Anarchy as the true reality
- Globalization of Anarchism (Anti-Capital)
- Making Music as Social Action: The Non-Profit Paradigm
- May the year 2007 be the beginning of the end of capitalism?
- The Future is Ours Anarchic
Paul Buhle, "American Splendor"
"American Splendor"
Paul Buhle
Reviewing:
Americn Splendor: Our Movie Year
By Harvey Pekar
Ballantine Books, 174 pp., $16.95
Whoever does not already know the basic Pekar story not only isn't a comics afficianado, he or she hasn't been watching the movies closely enough to spot one of the most attractive and innovative indies of recent years. If "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" brought animation to an adult audience as nothing since the Golden Age of Hollywood, when Bugs Bunny was watched mainly by grown-ups, "American Splendor" (the film, that is) matched actor to human original to animated version. Nothing quite this remarkable may have happened in Cleveland — forget the Rock 'n' Roll Museum, crowning the famous — since Satchel signed with the Indians.Our Movie Year might be accused of self-exploitation if Harvey Pekar had not long been the central subject of his lifelong work. This book contains a dozen strips or so reprinted from the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, several from British and Japanese papers, and more from the local alternative press in North Ohio. The longest of them is published here for the first time. More than half are drawn by Gary Dumm, who did the work in the Times and EW. But the others represent a range of talent, including new talent and ole pal Crumb, who encouraged Harvey in the first place (and vice-versa), way back in the 70s.
We see here some of the heaviest personal material yet. Two Splendor anthologies rehearsed Pekar's Cleveland life from teenhood on, through broken marriages, real and damaged friendships, episodes with David Letterman in the 80s that made Pekar an oddball celebrity overnight and then, on account of his criticisms of NBC, banished him from the spotlight. And so on. Our Cancer Year brought us the story of Harvey and wife Joyce Brabner, arguing and working their way through his scares and chemothearapy amid their daily life. Our Movie Year takes us further into health crisis and beyond.
It begins, naturally enough, with the start-and-stop process, over nearly 20 years of various attempts, of American Splendor the comic becoming the movie. Then it moves to Pekar's being overwhelmed by the prospect of long-delayed success, falling victim to clinical depression, taking early retirement from his day job as a filing clerk for the VA and going to the hospital where he learns that his lymphoma has returned. There, he's treated to shock therapy along with chemo. He has an abundance of life energy as well as getting a lot of emotional support at home, as he explains, or he would never have made it through all this.
But he did, and the movie got made. We learn about the experience of awards at Sundance and Cannes — but daily life unfailingly reasserts itself. His daughter leaves the water in the tub running and he has to clean up. His car gives him a whole lot of trouble. For the first time in his life, he gets real junkets, including a big one to Asia, Australia and New Zealand. But he never really liked to travel and hasn't changed his mind. By the end of the book, Pekar's wondering whether anyone will remember him when he doesn't have a current book out, which, after all, must be the fate of nearly every author or artist most of the time.
His current state of (relative) mellow seems to have been achieved by the surprising realization that an ordinary guy, depicting ordinary people, can actually get some recognition as an artist of sorts; and that his family and (a few) friends, hanging in there, seem to enjoy it, too. The realities that left him so often disappointed also find him still worried simply about making a living, now that the campus gigs have died down — and in far from the best of health. Pekar's resilience lies in the very popular life that he embraced so long ago.
Some of the most charming pages of Our Movie Year recall known greats like Albert Ayler, B.B. King and King Oliver, along with forgotten (and mostly Cleveland) figures like saxophonist Joe Lovano or that "Snake Lady," Willa Mae Buckner. Solidly respecting African-American culture (he grew up around the ghetto grocery store owned by his left-wing parents), he makes no distinctions in embracing white ethnics and postethnics right down to the present-day Sockmonkeys. Making a little income for decades writing record reviews, Pekar never lost his fascination for talent, or a certain modesty in his ability to describe it to readers.
Readers, especially younger readers, are not likely to appreciate the back story of himself and so many other neighborhood hipsters of the 1950s. He lived deeply in neighborhoods destined for "urban renewal" devastation, for a little while seemingly frozen in time, with yard sales full of old, rare (and not yet remastered) "race records," offbeat music clubs only starting to warm up to the folk fare of the 1960s, and above all, old ethnics in neighborhoods — Cleveland was famous for its Austrians and Czechs — along with black newcomers, trying to find a life as the rust belt spread.
One of the most touching strips here treats the revival of a local Workmen's Circle branch by one determined oldtimer. Generations earlier, the Workmen's Circle had been the center of Yiddishkayt, home to the working-class intellectual. Pekar was a continuator of the type, a personal presence in mixed-race neighborhoods whose troubles hadn't driven him to the right or into a love affair with American commercialism and suburban escape.
More complex than the cartoonish figure depicted (however lovingly) in the film "American Splendor," Pekar was the ultimate intellectual autodidact. Self-involved, even self-obsessed, Pekar is never guilty of self-worship, and that is his great strength. His unromantic life holds your interest (if not, he doesn't particularly care, as long as he can make a living) because you are never so far from him, certainty not when he loses a set of keys and spends hours fretting, or takes satisfaction where he can get it, enough from strangers who've seen the film and recognize him on the street. Even if it didn't happen to be us in those movies, we can so easily imagine Harvey as ourselves. The biggest boast that Harvey Pekar can make, after the film got a Drama award at Sundance, is, "They can't take it away from me. I won something big!"
He didn't have to compromise his art or his politics, after all.
"American Splendor"
Paul Buhle
Reviewing:
Americn Splendor: Our Movie Year
By Harvey Pekar
Ballantine Books, 174 pp., $16.95
Whoever does not already know the basic Pekar story not only isn't a comics afficianado, he or she hasn't been watching the movies closely enough to spot one of the most attractive and innovative indies of recent years. If "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" brought animation to an adult audience as nothing since the Golden Age of Hollywood, when Bugs Bunny was watched mainly by grown-ups, "American Splendor" (the film, that is) matched actor to human original to animated version. Nothing quite this remarkable may have happened in Cleveland — forget the Rock 'n' Roll Museum, crowning the famous — since Satchel signed with the Indians.Our Movie Year might be accused of self-exploitation if Harvey Pekar had not long been the central subject of his lifelong work. This book contains a dozen strips or so reprinted from the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, several from British and Japanese papers, and more from the local alternative press in North Ohio. The longest of them is published here for the first time. More than half are drawn by Gary Dumm, who did the work in the Times and EW. But the others represent a range of talent, including new talent and ole pal Crumb, who encouraged Harvey in the first place (and vice-versa), way back in the 70s.
We see here some of the heaviest personal material yet. Two Splendor anthologies rehearsed Pekar's Cleveland life from teenhood on, through broken marriages, real and damaged friendships, episodes with David Letterman in the 80s that made Pekar an oddball celebrity overnight and then, on account of his criticisms of NBC, banished him from the spotlight. And so on. Our Cancer Year brought us the story of Harvey and wife Joyce Brabner, arguing and working their way through his scares and chemothearapy amid their daily life. Our Movie Year takes us further into health crisis and beyond.
It begins, naturally enough, with the start-and-stop process, over nearly 20 years of various attempts, of American Splendor the comic becoming the movie. Then it moves to Pekar's being overwhelmed by the prospect of long-delayed success, falling victim to clinical depression, taking early retirement from his day job as a filing clerk for the VA and going to the hospital where he learns that his lymphoma has returned. There, he's treated to shock therapy along with chemo. He has an abundance of life energy as well as getting a lot of emotional support at home, as he explains, or he would never have made it through all this.
But he did, and the movie got made. We learn about the experience of awards at Sundance and Cannes — but daily life unfailingly reasserts itself. His daughter leaves the water in the tub running and he has to clean up. His car gives him a whole lot of trouble. For the first time in his life, he gets real junkets, including a big one to Asia, Australia and New Zealand. But he never really liked to travel and hasn't changed his mind. By the end of the book, Pekar's wondering whether anyone will remember him when he doesn't have a current book out, which, after all, must be the fate of nearly every author or artist most of the time.
His current state of (relative) mellow seems to have been achieved by the surprising realization that an ordinary guy, depicting ordinary people, can actually get some recognition as an artist of sorts; and that his family and (a few) friends, hanging in there, seem to enjoy it, too. The realities that left him so often disappointed also find him still worried simply about making a living, now that the campus gigs have died down — and in far from the best of health. Pekar's resilience lies in the very popular life that he embraced so long ago.
Some of the most charming pages of Our Movie Year recall known greats like Albert Ayler, B.B. King and King Oliver, along with forgotten (and mostly Cleveland) figures like saxophonist Joe Lovano or that "Snake Lady," Willa Mae Buckner. Solidly respecting African-American culture (he grew up around the ghetto grocery store owned by his left-wing parents), he makes no distinctions in embracing white ethnics and postethnics right down to the present-day Sockmonkeys. Making a little income for decades writing record reviews, Pekar never lost his fascination for talent, or a certain modesty in his ability to describe it to readers.
Readers, especially younger readers, are not likely to appreciate the back story of himself and so many other neighborhood hipsters of the 1950s. He lived deeply in neighborhoods destined for "urban renewal" devastation, for a little while seemingly frozen in time, with yard sales full of old, rare (and not yet remastered) "race records," offbeat music clubs only starting to warm up to the folk fare of the 1960s, and above all, old ethnics in neighborhoods — Cleveland was famous for its Austrians and Czechs — along with black newcomers, trying to find a life as the rust belt spread.
One of the most touching strips here treats the revival of a local Workmen's Circle branch by one determined oldtimer. Generations earlier, the Workmen's Circle had been the center of Yiddishkayt, home to the working-class intellectual. Pekar was a continuator of the type, a personal presence in mixed-race neighborhoods whose troubles hadn't driven him to the right or into a love affair with American commercialism and suburban escape.
More complex than the cartoonish figure depicted (however lovingly) in the film "American Splendor," Pekar was the ultimate intellectual autodidact. Self-involved, even self-obsessed, Pekar is never guilty of self-worship, and that is his great strength. His unromantic life holds your interest (if not, he doesn't particularly care, as long as he can make a living) because you are never so far from him, certainty not when he loses a set of keys and spends hours fretting, or takes satisfaction where he can get it, enough from strangers who've seen the film and recognize him on the street. Even if it didn't happen to be us in those movies, we can so easily imagine Harvey as ourselves. The biggest boast that Harvey Pekar can make, after the film got a Drama award at Sundance, is, "They can't take it away from me. I won something big!"
He didn't have to compromise his art or his politics, after all.