American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar Review

Rating: 5/5

Synopsis: American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar collects the two anthology 
collections of Pekar's autobiographical series published from the mid-70s to mid-80s.

My Thoughts: Like most American Splendour books I've read, this one composes of various anecdotes relating to Pekar's life along with those surrounding his life while touching upon profound themes of loneliness, insecurity, existential crisis, etc, making all the putatively ordinary individuals in his stories fascinating in some way or another. Likewise, the art style ranges were diverse, each adding their own unique flavor to the stories from the likes of R. Crumb, Gary Dumm (who generally collaborated with Greg Budgett), Sue Cavey, etc. Nevertheless, what struck me as sui generis was the use of colloquialisms (such as 'pad' for apartment and 'bread' for money) which has seemed to fizzle out of his speech in later works, most of which take in the suburbs rather than the ghettos. Of course, since there was an extensive myriad of tales to go through, I will sum up my overall sentiments by gathering my personal top 5 stories:


5. Read This - No, this is not me demanding you to finish reading through my review despite being utterly bored by my painstaking critique (for which the antidote is to simply skip through with it) but the actual title of the story centering around Harvey's initially so-so relationship with a rather conservative jazz record collector. The ending was a sagacious reminder that one's true friends can often be the ones who we tend to look over due to their somewhat hostile exterior with one of the most memorable quotes being from Harvey himself stating directly to the audience:
 
"Friendliness is not one of the first things I look for in a friend. The most important things are honesty an' reliability. Gimmie a sour-faced buddy who returns phone calls, shows up when he's supposed to, an' pays his debts when they're due."

4. The Young Crumb Story - The second tale in this collection was an interesting one about how R. Crumb (who illustrated this very story) and Harvey Pekar met.

3. An Argument at Work - A tragic chronicle of the life of Herschel, an underappreciated intellectual. Keep in mind when I say tragic, I don't mean it in its conventional literary sense, but one that fits into the context of a series mundane slice-of-life vignettes as such here where Herschel, despite having written high-end articles for well-reputed periodicals, remains a lonely individual due to his peers' superficial views of success. Worse yet, he still has to work a dead-end 9-5 job which he dislikes just to make ends meet since writing alone wouldn't help him. I subsequently ended up feeling quite terrible about his dismal position.

2. I'll be Forty-three on Friday (How I'm Living Now) - Harvey begins to introspect his life in profound ways, to paraphrase a Goodreads's reviewer words, many 'real' novels and, to add, graphic novels fail to capture.

And my all time (for the nonce at least) favorite story of mine is__

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1. An Everyday Horror Story - This harrowing anecdote shows horror can come in forms extending beyond the supernatural or even true crime stories. Here, we learn about Harvey's months-long struggle with laryngitis which unfortunately took place during his honeymoon. One cliché but true insight gained here was that true love can survive through the many hindrances of life. However, the most important lesson I found here was not to abuse one's voice even if my annoying 5-year sister is constantly annoying me as I am writing a book review.

Final Thoughts: While I did get into American Splendor starting with Harvey's later work, I still can confidently say I highly recommend a new reader to begin with this book as a foray into his opus since it allows readers to witness the writer's slow character evolution.