Harvey Pekar
Harvey Pekar
Harvey Lawrence Pekarwas an American underground comic book writer, music critic, and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a well-received film adaptation of the same name...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComic Book Artist
Date of Birth8 October 1939
CountryUnited States of America
writing stuff splendor
Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.
call calls writes
Don't call me a curmudgeon. Everyone who writes about me calls me a curmudgeon. I don't know why.
flailing fully jazz liked looking modern realized time
I was 16 years old, and I was just flailing around, looking for an interest. I heard, you know, these jazz records. They were modern records, at the time in the '50s, and I realized that I didn't fully get what was going on. But I liked a lot of what I heard.
level screw wondering work
I want to keep doing as much work as I can, and I want to keep the level high. I'm wondering if something is going to happen to me to screw it up.
major stuff
I've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.'
comics gotten regular
I've gotten more and more cut off from the regular comic-book world, from straight comics and stuff like that. Once in a while, I'll take a look at something.
cannes couple far impact involves life newspapers nice prizes reviews success
The film's success so far involves winning a couple of prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and getting some very nice reviews in newspapers and magazines. That hasn't had a big impact on my life yet.
people valuable
Some of the most valuable stuff I do has to do with my dissenting from the general opinion about people in movements.
amount art comics dawned forms history limited tremendous
It dawned on me that comics were not an intrinsically limited medium. There was a tremendous amount of things you could do in comics that you couldn't do in other art forms - but no one was doing it. I figured if I'd make a try at it, I'd at least be a footnote in history.
art everybody great jazz poet time writer
I'm from the beatnik generation, where everybody wanted to be a poet or writer or something. And at that time, I was a jazz critic, and I was always thinking, theorizing about what makes great art or what's important in art.
art artists arts becomes comics form styles
I'd like to see the comics' style expanded. I'd like to see artists synthesize traditional comics arts style with fine-arts styles or whatever. I like to see innovation. I don't like it when an art form becomes stagnant.
art involved man music trying
I'm trying to get every man involved in art, into experimental music, or painting, or novel-writing.