Best of American Splendor

There are times when we want to leave the world in which we live and escape for awhile in literature or films that transport us to situations quite different from our own. But there are also times when we long to make contact with literature or film which reassures us that our everyday lives, with all their joys and triumphs, headaches and failures, are the same as everyone else's. We want to revel in our normalcy, or we want to be at least accompanied in our normalcy. Harvey Pekar is the country's very best chronicler of the quotidian. His American Splendor comix are pulled from the stuff of everyday life: the fact that our work is sometimes dull and a pain-in-the-keester, but can also be a place where we build community; that marriage is joyful and also sheer hard labor; that small things--bender-fenders, late mail, waiting for a bus in the rain--can be occasions for huge anxieties, even as small things--the eccentricities of co-workers, the enthusiasm a bus driver has for botany, the smile of a foster child--can also be occasions for huge joys. Harvey Pekar, for all his own idiosyncracies, lives a life that's very much like our own. His American Splendor not only reassures us that we're not alone; it also serves as a prism for us to put our lives in perspective. The Best of American Splendor collects Pekar's work from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s. The pieces include not only the straightforwardly autobiographical comix for which Pekar is famous--including those that honestly portray his less pleasing qualities, such as his penny-pinching, his self-pity, and his occasional bouts of megalomania--but also a couple of comix essays on Russian modernist literature (pp. 39-40) and Django Reinhardt (pp. 123-124) that underscore just what a natural intellectual Pekar is. His "Hitherto Untold" story (pp. 128-138) is a touching parable of historical memory and heroism. A very nice bonus in this collection is a comix written British author Colin Warneford that details his autism, which Pekar incorporates into his own "Transatlantic Comics" (pp. 96-118). Warneford, by the way, claims that his major influence is R. Crumb (whose only artwork in this collection is the cover), and it would be easy to mistake his darkly hatchworked artwork for Crumb's. Finally, old favorites like Toby and Mr. Boats make appearances, although only brief ones. A great introduction to those readers who are only now discovering Pekar, and a great collection of his recent work for longtime fans.

Harvey Pekar is one of the people who helped begin the gradual broadening of acceptable subject matter for comics in the U.S. Starting in the 1960s, a number of comics creators began producing "underground comics" -- comics which had nothing to do with the typical subject matter of comic books. Harvey Pekar entered this arena in 1976 with his autobiographical series American Splendor. This volume contains stories culled from recent decades of American Splendor. One of the most striking things about the book that's visible right away is the variation in the artwork. Various artists have illustrated his stories over the years, and this book is a showcase of styles, from the rounded, almost kanji-like drawings of Frank Stack to the thin line realism of Joe Zabel. The stories themselves vary quite a bit in nature, but all revolve around Pekar's life in Cleveland as a file clerk at a V.A. hospital. They have all the pluses and minuses of stories of anybody's daily life, but in each Pekar finds something meaningful to say that elevates it above the status of mere episode. The author is known for being downbeat and combative, and many of these stories deal with the pains and anxieties of real life, with no positive resolution. If you enjoy the fiction of Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, or maybe Charles Bukowski, you'll enjoy these stories of Harvey Pekar's life.

It's not just the fact that Harvey was the first to put the everyday into comic-book format, it's the fact he has a literary knack for observation (and I mean that in a good way!). Plus also, the everyday, for Harvey, is rarely what the rest of us mean by the term -- these vignettes into his life are highly interesting happenings. Also, the fact he also uses illustrators other than Crumb -- some equally good but very different -- allows you to get more of a sense of the man doing the writing, 'cos all these illustrators see him a little bit differently. That said, I would start with the anthologies ('American Splendor (The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar)' and 'The New A. S. Anthology') first -- they're a little bit better (and this collection contains no Crumb at all -- not that it matters all that much).

There are certainly moments when I'm astounded by how well I can relate to some of these stories. For instance, Harvey has a pretty keen ability to sense "the beginning of the end" of a relationship. In other instances, he struggles to rationalize the stereotyping that occurs in his stories, sometimes relying on a sort of tacit understanding that, even though the line is clearly visible from where he stands, he hasn't quite crossed it just yet. On the other hand, you have to be careful not to try and read one of these volumes all the way through in one sitting. Somehow it just doesn't work so well that way. There's a certain flow to his stories that seems to be interrupted at certain points throughout the compilation. At moments like that you need to set the book down and come back to it later. I preferred the other two trade paperback compilations to this one, but it has its moments too. I got into Pekar via the HBO movie of a few years ago, and one of the amusing aspects of these books is observing the subtle ways in which the comics differ from the film. If I'm not mistaken, the movie makes no mention of the fact that Harvey is in the midst of moving into a new house when he discovers he has cancer. If you are already familiar with the peculiar charms of an American Splendor comic, then you'll probably find what you're looking for here.