alibi_shop (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alibi_shop) wrote2010-07-12 12:38 am
alibi_shop) wrote2010-07-12 12:38 am
awakening to the terror of a new day
Rest in peace, good old Harvey Pekar. What a great and brilliant guy.
There are more tributes than I can count or read, but here's Josh Neufeld, Tom Spurgeon, and various people in the comments on this article. (Update: and a lot more from Tom Spurgeon.)
Here's another story, which is self-centered but what the hell:
When I was about 11, my parents started talking about how their friend Joyce was "eloping to Cleveland" because of this weird guy she'd just met. Soon after that, they acquired a bunch of the weird guy's comic books, which were like nothing I'd ever seen. A lot of it was over my head, and off-putting in the same way as grown-up things like coffee or beer that tasted too strong and complicated to be fun... but it was totally fascinating. The writing style was conversational and poetic and dry and angry and jokey all at once, with a strange energy that showed through even in (or especially in) the pauses and empty spaces. The art was hard for me to process; being a kid, I was of course drawn to the more polished and stylized pieces drawn by Crumb and Shamray, but just the variety of different approaches—and the whole idea of drawing such everyday things—opened up my mind in a way I'm still trying to absorb. I read every issue for the rest of the 20th century (I know there are some I've missed since then; the proliferation of titles and mini-series got confusing once he got a publisher).
About a year later, my folks collaborated with Harvey on an American Splendor stage play (not the later one that's depicted in the movie; see tiny photo under 1985-1986 here). This was at their theater in Lancaster, PA, and people there didn't know what to make of it at all: a play based on a comic book? and it's not a proper comic book, it's about regular life?? with swearing??? It was a good piece though, and Harvey got really into it.
He and Joyce came to visit for a little while, and I sort of forgot they weren't theater people, because they were just as eccentric, cranky, generous and interesting as the theater people that I was used to eavesdropping on. They were also obviously made for each other. Although they weren't around after that and I only heard from them through my folks, they always stuck in my mind as sort of a legendary far-away aunt and uncle, fixed permanently at the age they were then (which made it really weird to see the AS movie, because the actors playing the 1980s Harvey and Joyce looked more accurate to me than the older real people). Reading comics about huge events like his bouts with cancer and their adoption of a daughter—a year or two after I had heard about those things as they happened—was strange, disturbing, moving, and instructive. (Sorry about all these lists of adjectives, but that's just how it is.) I couldn't imagine being so open about your own struggles and flaws, and at the same time able to craft them into stories worth reading, more or less in real time.
During the late '90s, as I started to get to know people from my own generation who were making comics, this weird feeling of twice-removed family got even weirder as some of those people started to draw stories for AS. Previously the artists had seemed like an invisible crew of mythological creatures. It took me a little while to realize that Josh Neufeld was the same person as "Josh" in the comic—and I remembered with some embarrassment how I was originally irritated to see this new guy added to the book, just because it was always sort of disorienting to get used to a whole new style, but now he seems like an obvious natural. And Dean Haspiel was the last guy I would've ever imagined to be in it, with his big bold lines and very very non-introverted persona, but he was obviously right too. Although AS was often described as something that had been going on forever just chronicling Pekar's day to day in more or less the same way, it wasn't so; he was always trying new things and following new obsessions, and he seemed to really enjoy figuring out how to play to a new artist's strengths.
It never occurred to me to try to draw for him myself. I wouldn't have dared. I still felt massively validated when a tiny story of mine got into an anthology he guest-edited—and then I panicked, thinking it might be some kind of distant nepotism thing. So it was a huge relief when I finally met him again after that and introduced myself with my real name (the story was under my pen name) and he stared at me for a second like maybe it was some kind of prank, and then he apparently decided it was just one of those things that happens: "Huh! That's you? Huh! Nice to meetcha again. Say hi to ya folks." (This was at a book signing in Berkeley, where the still-alive B.N. Duncan showed up in the front row to Harvey's great delight. The Q&A&A&A that ensued was hilarious and, with their unique vocal qualities, probably unintelligible to anyone more than ten feet away—it sounded like a vacuum cleaner wooing an outboard motor.)
Can't think what else to say. I thought he would be around for about a hundred years.
There are more tributes than I can count or read, but here's Josh Neufeld, Tom Spurgeon, and various people in the comments on this article. (Update: and a lot more from Tom Spurgeon.)
Here's another story, which is self-centered but what the hell:
When I was about 11, my parents started talking about how their friend Joyce was "eloping to Cleveland" because of this weird guy she'd just met. Soon after that, they acquired a bunch of the weird guy's comic books, which were like nothing I'd ever seen. A lot of it was over my head, and off-putting in the same way as grown-up things like coffee or beer that tasted too strong and complicated to be fun... but it was totally fascinating. The writing style was conversational and poetic and dry and angry and jokey all at once, with a strange energy that showed through even in (or especially in) the pauses and empty spaces. The art was hard for me to process; being a kid, I was of course drawn to the more polished and stylized pieces drawn by Crumb and Shamray, but just the variety of different approaches—and the whole idea of drawing such everyday things—opened up my mind in a way I'm still trying to absorb. I read every issue for the rest of the 20th century (I know there are some I've missed since then; the proliferation of titles and mini-series got confusing once he got a publisher).
About a year later, my folks collaborated with Harvey on an American Splendor stage play (not the later one that's depicted in the movie; see tiny photo under 1985-1986 here). This was at their theater in Lancaster, PA, and people there didn't know what to make of it at all: a play based on a comic book? and it's not a proper comic book, it's about regular life?? with swearing??? It was a good piece though, and Harvey got really into it.
He and Joyce came to visit for a little while, and I sort of forgot they weren't theater people, because they were just as eccentric, cranky, generous and interesting as the theater people that I was used to eavesdropping on. They were also obviously made for each other. Although they weren't around after that and I only heard from them through my folks, they always stuck in my mind as sort of a legendary far-away aunt and uncle, fixed permanently at the age they were then (which made it really weird to see the AS movie, because the actors playing the 1980s Harvey and Joyce looked more accurate to me than the older real people). Reading comics about huge events like his bouts with cancer and their adoption of a daughter—a year or two after I had heard about those things as they happened—was strange, disturbing, moving, and instructive. (Sorry about all these lists of adjectives, but that's just how it is.) I couldn't imagine being so open about your own struggles and flaws, and at the same time able to craft them into stories worth reading, more or less in real time.
During the late '90s, as I started to get to know people from my own generation who were making comics, this weird feeling of twice-removed family got even weirder as some of those people started to draw stories for AS. Previously the artists had seemed like an invisible crew of mythological creatures. It took me a little while to realize that Josh Neufeld was the same person as "Josh" in the comic—and I remembered with some embarrassment how I was originally irritated to see this new guy added to the book, just because it was always sort of disorienting to get used to a whole new style, but now he seems like an obvious natural. And Dean Haspiel was the last guy I would've ever imagined to be in it, with his big bold lines and very very non-introverted persona, but he was obviously right too. Although AS was often described as something that had been going on forever just chronicling Pekar's day to day in more or less the same way, it wasn't so; he was always trying new things and following new obsessions, and he seemed to really enjoy figuring out how to play to a new artist's strengths.
It never occurred to me to try to draw for him myself. I wouldn't have dared. I still felt massively validated when a tiny story of mine got into an anthology he guest-edited—and then I panicked, thinking it might be some kind of distant nepotism thing. So it was a huge relief when I finally met him again after that and introduced myself with my real name (the story was under my pen name) and he stared at me for a second like maybe it was some kind of prank, and then he apparently decided it was just one of those things that happens: "Huh! That's you? Huh! Nice to meetcha again. Say hi to ya folks." (This was at a book signing in Berkeley, where the still-alive B.N. Duncan showed up in the front row to Harvey's great delight. The Q&A&A&A that ensued was hilarious and, with their unique vocal qualities, probably unintelligible to anyone more than ten feet away—it sounded like a vacuum cleaner wooing an outboard motor.)
Can't think what else to say. I thought he would be around for about a hundred years.