I think many writers and artsy types in general often find themselves frustrated by the lack of appropriate medium or venue to tell the simple but compelling stories of everyday life. I know I often feel that way.
The other day I was driving down Dundas Street just around the corner from my house. While I was stopped at a red light at Parliament, I noticed an older black man on the far corner of the intersection. We made eye contact, and he gestured to the north in a questioning manner, and it was pretty obvious he wanted a ride somewhere. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I called him over. He hopped in and we had a really interesting conversation about his experience growing old in St. Jamestown and the Cabbagetown neighbourhood we both call home.
After I dropped him off at Bloor Street I couldn’t help but feel somewhat inspired from the conversation, and wished desperately for the means to tell the story in a way that people could easily access –- and it’s a feeling I get about once a week, usually due to some interesting, chance encounter I’d like to share before it fades away into a vague anecdote.
Harvey Pekar has found a way to do it. If you’ve seen the film ‘American Splendor’ starring Paul Giamatti you have a bit of the back-story, and you understand a little bit about this complicated writer/hospital file clerk from Cleveland. You should watch the film, definitely, but more importantly, I think, you should read his comic books.
My friend Phil recently loaned me an anthology of American Splendor comics, and I spent about three straight days locked up in my house, unable to put the book down. I ended up feeling like Harvey Pekar was someone I had known for years.
That’s to be expected, I think. Pekar’s stories are always about his everyday life, and they’re brutally, bravely honest, completely willing to be vulnerable and exposed. He describes his life and the people in it exactly the way he sees them.
He once said his stories focus on the mundane moments in life and how they add up to make an impact in the long run: “If you’re of the misery-loves-company persuasion, chances are you’ll find it comforting,” he added.
R. Crumb, an old friend of Pekar’s and one of the artists who illustrates his work, summed it up pretty well in the introduction to the book:
“The subject matter of these stories is so mundane it verges on the exotic! It is very disorienting at first, but after a while you get with it. Myself, I love it. Pekar has proven once and for all that even the most seemingly dreary and monotonous of lives is filled with poignancy and heroic struggle. All is takes is someone with an eye to see, an ear to hear, and a demented, desperate Jewish mind to get it down on paper,” Crumb says.
“It takes chutzpah to tell it exactly the way it happened, with no adornment, no great wrap-up, no bizarre twist, nothing. Pekar’s genius is that he pulls this off and does it with humour, pathos, all the drama you could ever want, and in a comic book yet.”
I once interviewed Todd McFarlane, the creator of Spawn and one of the artists to illustrate Spiderman -- pretty much a giant in the comic book world. He had a slightly different perspective on Pekar’s work.
"I don't know if it's necessarily the heroism we relate to, I think it's the flaws," he told me. "We understand that our life is completely imperfect, and these guys are completely imperfect, but somehow they're getting along and it's just called life at the end of the day and it's not meant to be perfect."
American Splendor is mostly autobiographical, with Pekar sharing anecdotes from his life in Cleveland – everything from the old Jewish guy who drives him to work, to a conversation between a veteran bus driver and the new, young driver he is training, and quite often his stories chronicle his struggles with the women in his life.
And it’s all so deeply personal. In one story he goes into great depth about losing his voice for several months, just after getting married, and all the anger, depression and worry this caused him.
“I felt anxious and guilty. My wife hadn’t known me very long before we got married. I lost my voice on the first day of my honeymoon and had barely talked for weeks after that. What kind of a husband was I? Would she forget what I was like when I could talk? What if there was something bad wrong with me?”
In another story he describes his desperate addiction to buying records and the internal battle he waged to overcome the weakness. In another, he describes helping an acquaintance that he didn’t care for all that much, to move, and how he later received a favour in return from this person.
You get the feeling that all the embarrassing parts are left in –- the self-doubt, the bad habits, weaknesses and addictions – nothing is skipped over. The stories are told with a level of transparency and honesty that gives Pekar’s writing credibility and adds integrity and value to what he has to say because he’s willing to expose so much of himself to his readers – something few writers, including myself, are willing to do on a consistent basis.
The few times I have been that honest still haunt me, and I still get butterflies thinking about how I’ve put myself out there publicly on one or two occasions. It’s scary to do that, and much easier to present a version of yourself that is slightly smarter, slightly better looking, and has fewer bad habits. I think the fact that Pekar seems to do the opposite to this, all the time, is partly what makes it so unique and intriguing.
It also helps that he has somehow convinced some really credible artists -- often by begging, harassing and cajoling – to illustrate his stories, following his pages of scribbles and stick-figure diagrams to come up with some truly beautiful works of art.
I know American Splendor isn’t for everyone and I understand why. It’s rough, really intimate, and resembles in no way the Hollywood style of storytelling most of us have been force-fed our entire lives. But that’s refreshing to me. That’s why, I think, this type of work is valuable. It takes an honest look at life, even if it’s through the eyes of one pretty unimportant, normal guy who has worked mediocre jobs and barely scraped by for years in order to just keep telling his stories and putting his work out there. Hmmm. I think there’s something honourable about that…I take it back. These stories ARE for everyone. We can all learn something from them, and we should – even it’s the simple lesson that there’s beauty and poignancy in all those little life moments and they’re worth sharing with someone else…
This is my promise: I’ll listen to your story about standing in line at the grocery store, or the streetcar drivers who held up traffic both ways to talk about a party they were both at last week, if you'll listen to mine. Those moments are important, they're inspiring and they're worth sharing. I think we’ll all be better off if we make an attempt. Who’s with me?
