Harvey Pekar, B.C. (Before Cancer)

Review by Bob Pavlik
Free Press Contributor


The New American Splendor Anthology
by Harvey Pekar, et. al.
Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991


This is a book for anyone who drinks Chock Full o' Nuts, eats at McDonalds, and likes to savor a cold can (or two) of Pabst Blue Ribbon or Blatz. Off the streets of Cleveland comes Harvey Pekar, file clerk at the Veterans Administration hospital in that rust belt city and a prolific author of existential comics.
Of course, these are no ordinary comics, nor will they be gracing the funny pages of the Post-Intelligencer anytime soon. For one reason, they're not funny in the "ha-ha' sense of the word. For another, they are not cutesy stories that revolve around dogs, children, or crotchety (but adorable) grandparents. They are depictions of the life of a balding, middle aged man living in an edgy industrial city in the midwest in late twentieth century America.
Pekar writes all the text, and he recruits (or is solicited by) a stellar range of comic artists to depict the scenes that he describes. Robert Crumb, Drew Friedman, Rebecca Huntington, Gary Dumm and Joe Zabel are just some of the artists that appear in this volume. The artwork alone is worth the price of admission, but combined with the text, it is a winning combination.
Harvey Pekar... cool, calm, and collected.
At times the stories appear to have no beginning or end, and Pekar is always at center stage. His entire life constitutes material for his work. One episode tells how his father hit him so hard he was knocked out for an interminable amount of time; when he awoke, his only concern was missing the first few innings of the Cleveland Indians baseball game. End of story. Another relates an ongoing conversation between Pekar and a fellow employee whose life outside of work revolves around movies depicting "nerds" as heroes. Pekar tries to tell the young man with the thick glasses and the pocket protector that those images are created in the minds of Hollywood producers and don't reflect the lives of "26 year old file clerks who live with their grandparents in a small apartment in an ethnic ghetto." The man just laughs at Pekar, secure in his conviction that his fantasies will soon come true.
Pekar recounts one of his visits to the Letterman show, where the smartass host tries to use the clerk as a foil for his cynical witticisms. Pekar, however, launches a diatribe against NBC's corporate parent, General Electric, which only makes Letterman uncomfortable and defensive. After the show, Pekar rejoices, "AAAAH, I finally got into some heavy stuff." One comes to realize that he is not only doing it for himself, but for all of us who would like the opportunity to get on national television and ream the corporate powers that wield such immense and crushing control over our lives.
Where did Pekar come from, and how did he ascend to such a lofty height? Born and raised in the Paris of northeastern Ohio, Pekar reminds us that the wellsprings of creativity are plentiful and widespread, and that personal motivation is the key to artistic and literary (if not commercial) success.
Come to think of it, perhaps Pekar's nerdy friend was laughing because he realized that Pekar had somehow fulfilled the dream of everyman and everywoman - to triumph over their tormentors - and he doesn't even know it.


Editor's note: Copies of this 1991 book may still be in circulation; more recent compilations are Our Cancer Year by Pekar and Joyce Brabner with art by Frank Stack (1994); and Bob and Harv, a current collection of stories written by Pekar and drawn by R. Crumb. American Splendor, published by Dark Horse Comics, provides more timely updates on the life of Pekar, for those who can't wait for the bound anthologies to be issued.

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Contents on this page were published in the January/February, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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