August 20, 2003
In This Issue
FROM BAY GUARDIAN contributor to international movie star – not many people make this transition, but Harvey Pekar has, and for good reason.
For years Pekar's comic book American Splendor has provided an honest chronicle of his daily life – his job, his family, his love of reading and writing. The result has been some classic tales that have immediate appeal and occasionally the depth of great fiction. Realizing that Pekar's storytelling abilities made him an ideal critic, writer-editor Miriam Wolf hired him to write book reviews for this paper's Lit supplement in the early '90s.
I recently dug through the Bay Guardian archives for some of Pekar's pieces. Among other things, my search revealed links between the books he likes and the books he makes. Whether focusing on Walt Whitman's oft-censored works or calling attention to underappreciated or obscure voices like Mina Loy and Ronald Fairbanks, Pekar brings true passion to subjects that are often neglected. "He delights in each character's experience," Pekar writes about novelist Paul West. "This is one of his great gifts, to appreciate life for the vast complex spectacle that it is." The same can be said of Pekar.
This week's cover story reunites Wolf and Pekar. The occasion is the release of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's film adaptation of American Splendor, which has won major awards at the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. Pekar and his family – wife Joyce Brabner and daughter Danielle Batone – have discussed their lives and the movie with other interviewers, but I think it's fair to say Wolf gets an intimate, direct view of the family that other publications haven't.
On one page of The New American Splendor Anthology, Pekar ventures outside on a subzero Cleveland morning and spies an issue of "a local alternative newspaper" lying in a snowdrift. He digs it out, even though it's last week's edition. Why? Because he doesn't want to miss an issue. The gesture seems to mirror the strong bond between underground comics and alternative papers (in 1994 this paper published a full-page comic by Pekar). Readers and writers like Pekar make it a pleasure to put together the Bay Guardian each week. There aren't any snowdrifts around right now – praise god – but thanks for picking up this issue.