Best of American Splendor

American Splendor

by Harvey Pekar, Dean Haspiel

Experience the heartwarming, all-American story of a crank and his comic book...Thanks to the hit American Splendor movie, Harvey Pekar is now known around the world. But how did a former file clerk from Cleveland and up with an Oscar nomination? The story begins in 1976, when Harvey began publishing his autobiographical, slice-of-downtrodden-life comic book, illustrated by a who's who of underground comic artists, including R. Crumb, Frank Stack, Gary Dumm and Joe Sacco. Titan is proud to present our third book from Harvey, an all-new compilation of his best work, featuring 100 per cent previously uncollected material.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Memoir, Graphic Novels Comics, Nonfiction, Autobiography, Humor

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Harvey Pekar was an American writer and comics creator whose groundbreaking autobiographical series American Splendor helped redefine the possibilities of graphic storytelling. Frequently called the poet laureate of Cleveland, he developed a body of work that approached everyday life with candor, humor, frustration, and philosophical reflection. Pekar’s voice became central to the evolution of comics into a medium capable of serious literary expression, and his influence extended to criticism, journalism, and popular culture through his essays, radio work, and memorable television appearances.
Pekar grew up in Cleveland, where his parents operated a small grocery store, and his early experiences shaped much of the sensibility that later defined his writing. His deep love of jazz led him into criticism, and through that world he befriended artist Robert Crumb. Their shared interest in music eventually led him to try writing comics. Pekar wrote his first scripts in the early seventies, sketching out stories with simple figures before passing them to Crumb and other underground artists who encouraged him to continue. With the first issue of American Splendor in 1976, Pekar began chronicling the small battles, anxieties, and fleeting moments that made up his daily life in Cleveland. His day job as a file clerk, his marriages, conversations with coworkers, frustrations with bureaucracy, and the struggle to make ends meet all became material for a series that often blurred the line between observation and confession. Over the years, he worked with a wide range of artists who interpreted his scripts in styles that mirrored the emotional tone of each story.
The success of American Splendor brought Pekar national attention. Collections such as The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar received strong critical praise, and his unpredictable, often confrontational appearances on late-night television became a defining part of his public persona. The 2003 film adaptation of American Splendor, in which Paul Giamatti portrayed him, earned major festival awards and introduced Pekar’s work to a wider audience. He continued to write graphic memoirs, biographies, collaborations, and cultural commentary, expanding his range while maintaining the blunt honesty that characterized his voice. Pekar’s work remains central to the development of literary comics, influencing generations of writers and artists who followed his example.

Reviews

[Jayakrishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this. But isn't Pekar a lower middle class version of John Updike? It is all about his mundane working life. His visit to the dentist. His boring wife. His cancer. His views on Ingmar Bergman. His anxieties. Some political commentary. All delivered while living in some beautiful American suburb.

Sure, he got it done. Got Robert Crumb to draw pictures for his boring life. I guess he is sort of a great. Maybe a prototype for the people who make podcasts today about themselves, and everyone consumes these podcasts instead of reading the classics or listening to the great composers. There are so many online Harvey Pekars out there now.

When I watch culture today, I feel like the ordinary and the mediocre have enough tools/weapons (easy access to video recording devices) to take revenge on the genuinely talented and the extraordinarily beautiful. But every single piece of art we consume today could be revenge consumption or expression of hatred for things we see as slights. You did not like what Brad Pitt said about something? Sure, watch some Paul Giamatti movie. I see Louis CK take down Matt Damon and Goodwill Hunting. You could be some mediocre clerk like Pekar but still find an audience for your grouses and jealousies. Pekar might have unintentionally encouraged the podcasters of today who are like termites to the film industry, the music industry and the publishing industry. Everyone will be a Harvey Pekar in the future, broadcasting their mundane lives on Youtube. We are already there.

[Lobeck · Rating 1 out of 5]

My dislike for this book does not come, as the author suggests, from my need for "lowest common denominator" comics. In fact I like comics with depth and character development and an interesting story line. This is not one of them. Not only was I more or less bored by Mr. Pekar's lack of anything interesting to write about, but I was also unimpressed with the constant complaining about how hard his life was. There were multiple references to the percentage of his income that he would earn in retirement, therefore making retirement not an option, and also many mentions of how no one likes his comics due to the lack of intelligence of the general comic audience. He needs some new material. And then some. I wasn't crazy about the art either.

[Eve Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Pekar because his anger is palpable. I can relate to many of his issues but also how he looks at things. It's admirable that he acknowledges that he is a difficult person to get along with or to live with. I think I know hardly anyone who admits that about themselves so wholeheartedly. That being said some of these were just chronicling events of his life or stories that go nowhere so as far as comics go I'm not sure what the point of each one is.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was enjoyable reading about perhaps the greatest of all “underground comics writer”. I use the term loosely, as Pekar wasn’t really underground/counter culture figure by the end of his life. Well, he wasn’t mainstream either…I don’t know how to classify him, so I won’t.
Pekar’s stories are fun to read, and I get what he’s doing with the “slice of life stuff”. But between 1) the strip where he’s eating an orange and his co-worker moves the trashcan closer to him so he can spit out the pits (and that’s it, nothing else happens) and 2) the blow-by-blow account of what happened with all the Letterman nonsense…I don’t know, I think he’s no longer an artist at that point. I mean, when you’re chronicling everything that happens in your life…Is that still art? Or is it nonfiction and journalism?

[Mark Plaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thick and heavy trade paperback, The Best of American Splendor collects various comics by Harvey Pekar somewhere between the time of Our Cancer Year and Our Movie Year. As with the usual theme of American Splendor, Pekar writes autobiographical comics. However, Pekar writes occasional stories of people he knows or meets and usually make just as interesting reading as his autobiographical material. His stories about Kapitan Kartoon provide good example of this. As far as his autobiographical writing goes, Pekar's days of semi-retirement, raising a foster child, and finally getting a movie deal strengthen his writing more than anything. Less work and required rest recovering from his cancer treatment fails to stop Pekar from pursuing his goals. Such things certainly add hardship but like great blues singers, the more life brings him down, the more his writing skills go up. Many describe Pekar as delightfully ordinary and undoubtedly he could be any of us but as plain as his stories seem in their cool delivery the more I want to read. I never met Pekar but after 23 years of reading the man's comics every time I read one I feel like I'm checking in on an old friend.

As always, Pekar uses several artists for his comics and the quality of the art varies per artist. Personally, I prefer the tight drawing and ink styles of the artists R. Crumb, Gary Dumm, Joe Zabel, and Josh'2K over the loose sketchy styles of Frank Stack and Scott A. Gilbert. However, the art styles never seem to take away from Pekar's writing. So even when I pick up a new American Splendor and see art I don't like I know I can buy it and get a good read out of it.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the way to read Pekar -- in book form. If I read these pieces individually, they probably would have just rattled around in my head and dropped away. But reading one after the other of these mundane, brainy, complainy, funny strips -- some just one page long, others much longer -- I got this sense of Pekar and his outlook on the world that I really liked. The artwork, especially the trove of stuff by R. Crumb, is great, too.

[Julien V · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic. Pekar is so wired, anxious and depressed that no matter how low you feel, you'll end up feeling cheered by our shared "human condition", and the beauty of our lives without punchlines.

[Immigration Art · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harvey Pekar (the taunts of his grade school tormentors remind us it is pronounced "what car comes after the Dining Car? THE PEE CAR!") is a V.A. Hospital File Clerk during business hours, and a Renaissance Man who commands extensive knowledge about jazz styles & artists; boxing; Counter Culture Comic Books; the Cleveland Browns; philosophy; and marching to the beat of a different drummer. He appeared often as a guest on the David Letterman show.

Harvey is also crippled by a gnawing anxiety and ever present depressive mood. The glass is half empty. If something could go wrong, it will. And DO NOT PISS HIM OFF about delayed planes out of Chicago O'Hare.

He and the famous R. Crumb hung out as young men and shared an interest in collecting jazz on vinyl and creating alternative comics. They encouraged each other.

At one point, in one panel of a comic, Harvey asks himself, what person " . . . would want me? What could I offer 'em? A bundle of neuroses, that's what I am."

BUT THAT IS PRECISELY what he offers -- a neurotic prism through which to view the humdrum daily life of a file clerk. Harvey Pekar portrays simple things common to getting through another day of urban life: a spat at work; commuiting by bus; shopping at the grocery story; repairing an unreliable car; driving in a snow storm; WAITING ON A DAMN PLANE DELAYED because of the SCREW-UPS at O'Hare!

And Harvey's portrayal, filtered through his neurotic world view, is noble and tortured; funny and bittersweet; and it is the story of the Urban Everyman. Harvey PEKAR is brilliant. I relate to this guy more than I'd care to admit. Especially the neurotic filter which shapes the narrative!

[Chelsea Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first I wasn't enjoying this one as much as other anthologies of the comic... I think this is because the structure has too many stories from the same period lumped up at the beginning, and thus too many of them have the same preface about Pekar needing to write more and more comics because of his health problems, inability to live off pension alone, and foster parenthood. Not to discount these things! And maybe they are at the beginning to give context to a person coming to the comics after seeing the movie (i'm one of those people but there was a 15-year stretch between seeing the movie and reading the comics... and this isn't the first compendium of his work that I have read). Anyhow, if you keep going the stories get more varied in theme and time period.

I think you get a better sense in this collection of how much Pekar has written about music and how knowledgeable he is.

My favorites were:
Ameritech
Peeling and Eating a Tangerine
Oh My Goodness!
Violation
A Story About a Review
Why I Haven't Visited the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame
Inky Dies
Self Justification or Anticipating the Critics
Recycling
Candor
Cell Phones
Huckster
Interviewing the Interviewer
Danielle

[Kyle Smucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title and cover of this collection are misleading. This collection only covers stray works from the Cancer Year / Movie Year era, and doesn't feature Crumb. While I enjoyed many of the comics, it's hard to shake the feeling of being fooled. Not Harvey's fault, I'm sure. Many of these comics would probably only be "essential" to completists who are interested in the sometimes boring meta and rants Harvey has - a comic about why the comic you're reading took so long to write for example. The best bits are stories about people he meets in his everyday life, including a transcendent guest comic by a man on the autism spectrum.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

God, this was just awful. I skimmed or skipped most of the comics. Walls of text!! So boring. Drawings were SO busy as if the text wasn't overwhelming enough. Joe Sacco was the only artist I liked. Just all around insufferable.

[Tosin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am glad to have read American Splendor this way taking in the best of Harvey Pekar. In this “Best Of” you get a great sense of who he Pekar is. In many ways, he is an exhausting man whose neuroticism exhausted me. Those comics where he is in his own head for 3+ pages frustrated me the most. However, the stories where he interacting with folks at work or on the bus were so delightful. Stories focused on Joyce (his wife) and Danielle (his foster daughter) were my favorite. Those comics gave me the best sense of who he is and trying to be. Because on first read Pekar is a depressed paranoid man, but as you get a fuller sense of who he is, he really is a man who is doing his best.

What’s not to love about that?

[Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this is titled a "best of" book, it's not really -- "best of" seems to imply it was selected as the best from his entire body of work, while the comics in this collection are all from around 1993 to 2000. That said, I enjoy Pekar's work, and even when some of his stories become dull and meandering, I can't look away. I just like the guy. I can't believe he's been gone for nearly a decade now. This was enjoyable to revisit.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Jonathan Ames's The Alcoholic and finding it a bit wanting, I'd wanted to take on this innovator and master of autobiographical comics. This is a collection of the odds and ends of his long running comic, with most material coming from the 90s. It's very low key stuff. Reading the book feels like nothing more or less than simply like spending time with Harvey. He'll tell you about books he's reading, his neuroses, his encounters in the workplace, through stories that don't particularly go anywhere. Sometimes, though, he'll give homespun wisdom that makes you want to tear out certain pages and put them above your desk. He works with a variety of artists of varying quality, from very expressive Dean Haspiel, whose work I admired in The Alcoholic, to the solid but not spectacular art of Gary Dunn and Joe Sacco. Most of the stories, though, are illustrated by the underground comics stalwart Frank Stack, whose art, while expressive, is also very sketchy and impressionistic. At its best it lends an immediacy and verve to the stories, but more often than not, Harvey and his surroundings look a bit ill-formed and lumpy.

This volume is a bit odd to read in that most of the stories rotate around Our Cancer Year. You get stories referring back to his time with cancer and how it affected his body, his career, and his marriage, but not the full details of that year itself. As such, The Best of American Splendor comes off as more of a supplement to that book than a volume that stands on its own. It's interesting in its own right, but not essential.

[Helmut · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tagebuch eines langweiligen Alltags

Hm, also Freunde von amerikanischem oder europäischem Mainstream-Comic werden hiermit keine Freude haben. Freunde von Geschichten mit interessantem, spannendem, witzigem oder überraschendem Plot auch nicht. Leute, die Comics wegen den Zeichnungen kaufen, auch nicht.

Ich kann mit diesem selbstbessessenen Comic nicht viel anfangen. Der Autor ist nur damit beschäftigt, seinen langweiligen Lebensalltag zu beschreiben - ohne erkennbare Linie, ohne Ziel. Das mag Leute reizen, die gerne Biographien oder Tagebücher anderer Leute lesen, dann kann man sich bestimmt für diesen Autor interessieren und sollte einen Blick wagen.

Wie schon an anderer Stelle geschrieben: Während Robert Crumb praktisch dasselbe macht, hat er wenigstens eine irre Form der Kauzigkeit, die seine Comics interessant und unterhaltsam macht. Das geht diesem Titel hier völlig ab.

Das großformatige Softcover mit gutem Papier und Bindung präsentiert die schwarz-weiß-Zeichnungen aber zumindest ansprechend.

[Ollie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yep! After holding off for so long, I finally got the Best of American Splendor as my first taste of Pekar. In this book, Pekar goes over the minutia of his every day life as a file clerk, an indie comic star, a father, a husband, and as a generally neurotic human being.

What I found most interesting about Pekar is that his stories don't have a beginning, middle, and end, but are basically all middles. Even so, it's a lot of fun to get Harvey's take on what his life is like. He's clearly an underdog hero of sorts, and you can't help rooting for him.

The Best of American Splendor also features art by some fantastic artists. Even though R. Crumb's art hardly makes an appearance, the volume of Joe Sacco art makes up for it. I did find Frank Stack's art to be underwhelming and sloppy, and found it hard to take in the stories that he drew, probably because the art was distracting to me.

However, this shouldn't take away from the fact that the Best of American Splendor is a fun, bitter-sweet at times, and inspiring read for anyone. Even if it means that misery loves company.

[Antti Rask · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew of Harvey Pekar way before I read any of his work. In fact, I had borrowed this same book from the library a few years ago, but for some reason I didn’t end up reading it until now.

Perhaps I thought the book to be too wordy and about too heavy subject matters, accompanied by somewhat harsh black-and-white illustration. Now, I was right about all this, but the book is not just that. It’s that and much more.

The parts that I did enjoy the most were the times he was writing about jazz. You could tell that it was a real passion of his and that he had a lot of original thoughts about the matter. And although I did also like his rants about various things, I have to say it was a pleasure to read about the more positive aspects of his life.

A lot could be said about the art and the various artists involved, but I’ll just say that I liked some more than the others. And had the art been more consistently good, I would’ve given this the fifth star.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another set of comic gems from Pekar. I thought that the "American Splendor" with Paul Giamatti on the cover was the collected works of all that Pekar had written, and boy was I happy to discover I was wrong. I never thought I'd use the words "psyched" and "cancer" in the same sentence, but I'm really psyched to read "Our Cancer Year" by Pekar and his wife. One more thing: Giamatti makes Pekar out to be a much more pathetic character than he is in this book. Sure, he's disgruntled, BUT HE ALSO WORKS OUT. Woah - really does wonders for the character development, and I don't mean that in a dirty way.

[Vaughan]

I bought this at a great new/used bookstore in Denver simply because the guys running the place were so nice, I wanted to buy as much as I could from them rather than give my money to the chains...And it's good-- a nice overview of Pekar's world view, whether you've seen the movie or not. Any one read OUR CANCER YEAR?

August 2010: I'm pretty sure I finished this at some point this past school year as I really got into reading graphic novels at school during SSR, and Pekar just died--wonder if they'll be another AS?

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing life changing, but I enjoyed this collection of American Splendor. Pekar is extremely open in his writing and it's interesting to see how another person thinks and reacts. I'm slightly annoyed with his anxiety and emotional issues, but it's clear that he is too. Fun to see a bunch of different artists as well.

[Sara Zia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is an enjoyable read--though if you are the kind of person that needs stories with a clear arc (beginning, middle and end with conflict in between or a punch line) I would not recommend Pekar's work. His work is really just honest snapshots of the human condition, gritty and real--anxieties, ways we try to control things, how we all survive while working.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was another enjoyable collection of autobiographical stories by Pekar. He has his engaging and distinctive style which makes me forgive that there were quite a lot of ruminating over the upcoming movie and not having enough money in this book. It is when he tells about everyday incidents like trying to get an old car repaired that he is at his best.

[Ledena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I worked in medical records too. The horror!

[Joselynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first graphic novel. understated eloquence.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

he's a wonderful writer about the human condition. so honest

[Rachel Chernick · Rating 5 out of 5]

He was a treasure. RIP Harvey Pekar.

[Thaddeus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good blend of strips, but they're so much more enjoyable in their original sequences.

[Pádraig Mac Oscair · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a lot better than a grumpy old man in Cleveland's diatribes have any right to be.

[Sarah Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would like to read earlier American Splendor, Our Cancer Year or Our Movie Year, as this was a bit disjointed and skewed towards his later stuff.

[Knut Sigurd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eg er stadig ingen fan av Frank Stack, men så har vi jo Robert Crumb og Joe Sacco og mange brae.