Best of American Splendor
by Harvey Pekar
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Book Summary Information
Author: Harvey PekarEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-01-25
ISBN: 0345479386
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of Best of American Splendor
Book Review: Chronicler of the quotidian
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Summary of Best of American Splendor
Experience the heartwarming all-American story of a crank and his comic book.What?s a file clerk from Cleveland doing with an Oscar nomination? How did a movie about Harvey Pekar win the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival? The story begins in 1976, when Harvey began publishing his autobiographical, slice-of-downtrodden-life comic book series American Splendor, illustrated by a who?s who of underground comic artists, including R. Crumb, Kevin Brown, Greg Budgett, Sean Carroll, Sue Cavey, Gary Dumm, Val Mayerik, and Gerry Shamray. After self-publishing American Splendor for nearly two decades under less than splendid conditions (and racking impressive accolades in the process), Harvey finally got a break when Dark Horse Comics took over the publication in the early 1990s. It was an opportunity for Harvey to reach a wider audience?which, as it turned out, included a few Hollywood types, too. (Who knew?) But that?s another story. . . .
Now we are happy to bring you the Best of American Splendor, a collection of some of Harvey?s greatest work. Harvey Pekar has been compared to Theodore Dreiser, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Lenny Bruce, but this collection is a true American original. Just like Harvey.
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