Харви Пекар: Өмір және шығармалар тарихы

American comic book writer, music critic and media personality

Harvey Lawrence Pekar ('/p//iː//k//ɑr/; October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010) was an American underground comic book writer, music critic, and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a well received film adaptation of the same name. Frequently described as the "poet laureate of Cleveland", Pekar "helped change the appreciation for, and perceptions of, the graphic novel, the drawn memoir, the autobiographical comic narrative." Pekar described his work as "autobiography written as it's happening. The theme is about staying alive, getting a job, finding a mate, having a place to live, finding a creative outlet. Life is a war of attrition. You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another. I've tried to control a chaotic universe. And it's a losing battle. But I can't let go. I've tried, but I can't." Among the awards given to Pekar for his work were the Inkpot Award, the American Book Award, a Harvey Award, and his posthumous induction into the Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

Harvey Pekar and his younger brother Allen were born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Jewish family. Their parents were Saul and Dora Pekar, immigrants from Białystok, Poland. Saul Pekar was a Talmudic scholar who owned a grocery store on Kinsman Avenue, with the family living above the store. Pekar's first language as a child was Yiddish and he learned to read and appreciate novels in the language. Pekar said he did not have friends for the first few years of his life. The neighborhood he lived in had once been all white but became mostly black by the 1940s. One of the few white children living there, Pekar was often beaten up. He later believed this instilled in him "a profound sense of inferiority." This experience, however, also taught him to become a "respected street scrapper." He held this job after becoming famous, refusing all promotions, until he retired in 2001. According to fellow cartoonist R. Crumb, who knew the couple socially, "She left him She took all the money out of their bank account and ran off Never heard from her again." They married in 1977. According to Crumb again (and as dramatized in the American Splendor film), " she was trying to have a career in academia and Harvey would embarrass her. They'd go to these academic cocktail parties and Harvey would deliberately antagonize these professors. He thought the whole academia thing was bullshit. So he used to embarrass her and she'd become angry at him until finally she gave up on him." After Pekar's recovery, he and Brabner collaborated on Our Cancer Year (released in 1994), a graphic novel account of that experience, as well as his harrowing yet successful treatment. Around this same time, Brabner and Pekar became guardians of a young girl, Danielle Batone, when she was nine years old. Danielle became the couple's foster daughter and eventually became a recurring character in American Splendor as well. Pekar lived in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, with Brabner and Batone.

The first issue of Pekar's self published American Splendor series appeared in May 1976, with stories illustrated by Crumb, Dumm, Budgett, and Brian Bram. Applying the "brutally frank autobiographical style of Henry Miller," which was positively reviewed by, among others, The New York Times. (1986 was also the year Pekar began appearing on Late Night with David Letterman.) This was collected in the American Splendor: Another Day paperback. In 2008 Vertigo released a second four issue "season" of American Splendor that was later collected in the American Splendor: Another Dollar paperback. Pekar's best known and longest running collaborators include Crumb, Dumm, Budgett, Spain Rodriguez, Joe Zabel, Gerry Shamray, Frank Stack, Mark Zingarelli, and Joe Sacco. In the 2000s, he teamed regularly with artists Dean Haspiel and Josh Neufeld. Other cartoonists who worked with him include Jim Woodring, Chester Brown, Alison Bechdel, Gilbert Hernandez, Eddie Campbell, David Collier, Drew Friedman, Ho Che Anderson, Rick Geary, Ed Piskor, Hunt Emerson, Bob Fingerman, and Alex Wald; as well as such non traditional illustrators as Pekar's wife, Joyce Brabner, and comics writer Alan Moore. In addition to his autobiographical work on American Splendor, Pekar wrote a number of biographies. The first of these, American Splendor: Unsung Hero (Dark Horse Comics, 2003), illustrated by David Collier, documented the Vietnam War experience of Robert McNeill, one of Pekar's African American coworkers at Cleveland's VA hospital. American Splendor was given the Guardian New Directors Award at the 2003 Edinburgh International Film Festival. It was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2003 Academy Awards. Pekar wrote about the effects of the film in American Splendor: Our Movie Year.

On October 5, 2005, the DC Comics imprint Vertigo published Pekar's autobiographical hardcover The Quitter, with artwork by Dean Haspiel. The book detailed Pekar's early years. In 2006, Ballantine/Random House published his biography Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story about the life of Michael Malice, founding editor of Overheard in New York. In June 2007, Pekar collaborated with student Heather Roberson and artist Ed Piskor on the book Macedonia, which centers on Roberson's studies in that country. In January 2008 the biographical Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History was published by Hill & Wang. In March 2009, he published The Beats: A Graphic History, a history of the Beat Generation, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, illustrated by Ed Piskor. In May 2009 he published Studs Terkel's Working: A Graphic Adaptation. In 2010, Pekar started the webcomic The Pekar Project with the online magazine Smith. In 2011, Abrams Comicarts published Yiddishkeit, co edited by Pekar with Paul Buhle and Hershl Hartman. The book depicts aspects of Yiddish language and culture. Artists in this anthology include many of Pekar's previous collaborators.

Pekar was an assiduous record collector as well as a freelance book, comic, and jazz critic, writing mainly about significant figures from jazz's golden age but also championing out of mainstream artists such as Scott Fields, Fred Frith and Joe Maneri. He published his first criticism in The Jazz Review in 1959. as well as liner notes for Verve Records and other labels. Pekar occasionally wrote criticism about the work of other comics creators. For instance, he famously saw Art Spiegelman's use of animals in Maus as potentially reinforcing stereotypes. Pekar was also disdainful of Spiegelman's overwhelmingly negative portrayal of his father in Maus, From 1986 to 1990, Pekar had a regular column in the comics anthology Weirdo called "Harvey Sez," in which he wrote about the contemporary comics scene. He reviewed literary fiction in the Review of Contemporary Fiction. Pekar won awards for his essays broadcast on public radio.

Pekar's comic book success led to a guest appearance on Late Night with David Letterman on October 15, 1986. Pekar was invited back repeatedly and made five more appearances in quick succession. These appearances became notable for the increasing hostility and verbal altercations between Pekar and Letterman, Despite the ban, more than four years later Pekar appeared on Late Night again — on April 20, 1993, and he made a final appearance on Late Show with David Letterman on May 16, 1994. After Pekar's death, Letterman reflected in 2017 that

Pekar appeared in Alan Zweig's 2000 documentary film about record collecting, Vinyl. In August 2007, Pekar was featured on the Cleveland episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations with host Anthony Bourdain. While there had been earlier American Splendor theater adaptations, in 2009, Pekar made his theatrical debut with Leave Me Alone!, a jazz opera for which he wrote the libretto. Leave Me Alone! featured music by Dan Plonsey and was co produced by Real Time Opera and Oberlin College, premiering at Finney Chapel on January 31, 2009. In 2009, Pekar was featured in The Cartoonist, a documentary film on the life and work of Jeff Smith, creator of Bone.

Shortly before 1 a. m. on July 12, 2010, Pekar's wife found Pekar dead in their Cleveland Heights, Ohio, home. No immediate cause was determined. In October the Cuyahoga County coroner's office ruled it was an accidental overdose of antidepressants fluoxetine and bupropion. Pekar had been diagnosed with cancer for the third time and was about to undergo treatment. His headstone features one of his quotations as an epitaph: "Life is about women, gigs, an' bein' creative." Some Pekar works were to be released posthumously, including two collaborations with Joyce Brabner, The Big Book of Marriage and Harvey and Joyce Plumb the Depths of Depression, as well as a collection of the webcomics that ran as a part of The Pekar Project. As of 2019, however, none of those projects have yet seen print. Working with illustrator Summer McClinton, Pekar, politically a leftist, also finished a book on American Marxist Louis Proyect tentatively called The Unrepentant Marxist, after Proyect's blog. In the works since 2008, the book was to be published by Random House. After a conflict between Proyect and Joyce Brabner, Brabner announced that she would hold the book back indefinitely. In December 2010, the last story Pekar wrote, "Harvey Pekar Meets the Thing", in which Pekar has a conversation with Ben Grimm, was published in the Marvel Comics anthology Strange Tales II; the story was illustrated by Ty Templeton. One of his final graphic memoirs was "Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me" (2013) in which he explains how he lost his faith in the Jewish state. It was illustrated by JT Waldman and the epilogue was penned by his widow, Joyce Brabner.

Circus Parade by Jim Tully. Foreword by Harvey Pekar. Introduction by Paul J. Bauer and Mark Dawidziak. (Kent State Univ. Press, 2009) 978 1 60635 001 0