I first learned about Harvey Pekar in a New York Times Sunday Book
Review dated May 11th, 1986. The reviewer, David Rosenthal, summed up
Pekar’s debut work, “American Splendor: the life and times of Harvey
Pekar”, as follows:
"Mr. Pekar’s work has been compared by literary critics to Chekhov’s and
Dostoyevsky’s, and it is easy to see why. His stories, as he puts it,
are about 'the cosmic and the ordinary,' about the working stiff’s
search for love and transcendence, the bleak reality of life in a hard
town and the reflections of a volatile, passionate sensibility that
vibrates with everything around it."
Unlike Chekhov and Dostoyevsky, Pekar’s medium was the comic book, which
made it even more imperative for me to track down. Like many baby
boomers (technically speaking, I am a pre-baby boomer since I was born
before the end of the war), comic books were as central to my early
childhood as the Internet and video games are to today’s kids. Each new
issue of Mad Magazine was a major event. I would pick up the latest copy
from Abe’s Candy Store in Woodridge, New York and rush home to devour
it. Next I would call a fellow 11 year old, who was hip enough to get
Mad Magazine’s subversive sense of humor, and discuss it as if it were
the latest Woody Allen movie (in the 70s, to be sure.)
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/quitters/
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