The Parable of Harvey Pekar

Well, I'm feeling down these days due to a variety of different things, mostly trying to find a job and keep up with planning this encroaching wedding of mine.  That being the case, I thought I would discuss someone I turn to for artistic inspiration.  Some of you may know about this man, but if you don't, I advise you look him up. Hopefully, you'll come away from my shpeel at least feeling a little bit better about yourself and a little more encouraged to keep doing what you do. More importantly, maybe I will too.

Harvey Pekar was a man so ordinary, it's painful just to look at him.  Google a picture of the guy:  he could literally be anybody. Your doctor, your nurse, your dad, your uncle, a mugger, a rapist, a delivery boy, a senator, anybody you could name.  He's the type of dude who would disappear in front of a beige wall, who vanishes into crowds everywhere he goes.  Born Jewish in Cleveland, Harvey would work his entire life at odd jobs, finally ending up as a file clerk at a VA, a job he would hold for his entire life.  He was the embodiment of the phrase "some dude", the personification of a blank space.

But Harvey had one thing going for him:  he wanted to be creative.

In the early seventies, Harvey Pekar met an underground comic artist named Robert Crumb, a name that to this day lives in infamy due to its association with some of the most fascinating and vulgar 'toons ever put to paper.  The two loved jazz, and the two both had an interest in stretching the boundaries of what comics could actually do.  Harvey had been working on a theory in the back of his mind, day in and day out, that comics "could do whatever movies could do".  They could even be used to tell the story of a man's life.  Harvey pitched an idea to Bob Crumb that any Average Joe would consider stupendously stupid and that any market exec would laugh themselves into tears over:  Harvey wanted Bob to make a comic about his day-to-day experiences.

Well, if you know Robert Crumb, you'll know he's a man who (at least creatively) will try anything once.  Using some crude sketches and story boards provided by Harvey, Bob drew some of Harvey's ideas into being.  This culminated into a self-published work called American Splendor, which was a series of comics based around Harvey's every day life and observations.  It featured his philosophical outlook, rants about every day things, and vignettes dealing with his struggles to make it as an independent writer.  The public should have rejected it, according to common sense, but the reverse turned out to be true.  The underground comics crowd found Pekar's life something they could relate to, even something that was comical in the nihilistic sense. 

That's right gang:  before Seinfeld and Louis CK, there was Harvey Pekar.

Years later, after seventeen volumes of American Splendor, several appearences on David Letterman, and movie based on his rise to fame starring Paul Giamatti, the late Harvey Pekar finds himself a legend.  He was an ordinary man who added something small to the world by putting himself out there and striving to do something creative.  He entertained millions with nothing more than his own daily observations and the story of his mundane existence, showing that human beings aren't just attracted to profound talent:  we like what we can relate to first and foremost.  That's something, I think, which anyone who strives to be creative can learn from.  

Just because what you have to say isn't profound, that doesn't mean it's not important.  

Well, I hope maybe you've all come away with something. I know I have.  Best wishes to you all, and again, thank you all for reading.

Yours,
RJR