American Splendor (the book by Harvey Pekar)

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?

Once (2007, directed by John Carney, starring Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglovna)

It took me about three days to get over Once after the first time I saw it. I found myself humming the songs, re-thinking the conversations – even working out what I would have said and done differently if I were in the lead character’s shoes.

The film occupied my thoughts and conversations almost unceasingly, and just as my fascination was starting to ebb away my friend Susan gave me the soundtrack – all original songs written by the musicians who play the main roles. That triggered another wave of Once-inspired moments and I just couldn’t seem to escape the grip this Irish film had on my heart.

I guess I’m a glutton for heartache and crying myself to sleep, because I watched it again this weekend with a friend, and it set in motion a whole new wave of melancholy and bittersweet emotions and ideas.

Not that Once is a sad film. It’s not really. It’s an honest story about a brief moment in the lives of two kindred-spirits trying to get by in Dublin. But it’s told in such a sincere, genuine, compelling way that if it doesn’t break your heart your soul is probably dead.

The indie film, directed by John Carney, was shot on a tiny 130,000-Euro budget, which amounts to something like $270,000 Canadian, and the original plan was to make 1,000 DVD copies and see what happened. The film made it into the Sundance Film Festival and won the audience award. It got added momentum when Bob Dylan saw it and invited star Glen Hansard and his Irish band the Frames, to tour with him.

Now the film has people talking about Oscar possibilities and the Frames, who have put out seven albums in 17 years in Ireland but have received little international attention, are finally getting noticed outside of the island.

If you go to see it, which you definitely should, you’ll understand why.

Hansard stars in the film, playing a scruffy 30-something singer-songwriter/vacuum cleaner-repairman-busker struggling to survive in Dublin, which is apparently not much of a stretch for Hansard.

During the day he plays well-known songs that passersby can sing along to, and it’s only late at night when the streets are empty that he plays his own intense, broken-hearted ballads.

It’s during one of these moments, performing Say It To Me Now, a heart-wrenchingly honest tune about, what else, a girl, on an empty Dublin street, lost in the obvious pain of the song, that he meets Marketa Irglova’s character.

A Czech immigrant selling flowers on Dublin’s streets, she’s magnetized by his music and proceeds to enter his life, although he does his best to resist at first.

His protest doesn’t last long, and the two embark on a brief but intense friendship/romance that reminded me of Lost in Translation or Before Sunrise.

Irglova’s character is also a musician, and helps inspire him to follow his heart, both in relation to his music and a long-lost love.

This film is classified as a musical, and the genre wavers somewhere between a documentary, romance or comedy. The simple story is woven around Hansard and Irglova’s songs, which form the backbone to this film, saying just as much or more about the two nameless individuals, than their words.

The songs Falling Slowly, All the Way Down, When Your Mind’s Made Up, Say It To Me Now, The Hill – on their own would make this film worth watching, but on top of that it’s shot simply and beautifully and has a believable, real quality that sets it apart from anything else I’ve seen this year.

I think the fact that neither of the lead characters are played by professional actors just adds to this film. Even their conversations are simple and uncontrived, and just like real life they’re often awkward and painful to watch but compelling too, because they accurately capture real life moments we’ve all experienced.

The subtitle of the film asks the question “How Often Do You Find the Right Person?”

But the story, just like real life, doesn’t set about providing a simple, black and white answer to the question. Instead it says ‘here’s one story about two people, take it and come up with your own answer.’

I’m still working on it…

Go here for videos and to hear the songs: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/once/

'Once' (Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, director John Carney)

Gabcast! audioblogs #1

Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr)

Ten Canoes is a simple, beautiful story that opens a window into a time and culture that is so far removed from my own it could belong on a different planet. But I’m glad it doesn’t, and I’m honoured to have had the chance to glimpse a forgotten, compelling way of life I previously knew nothing about.

I watched this at the Bloor Cinema, which of course is an amazing venue for all and any films, but was particularly well-suited to Ten Canoes, which, like the Bloor itself, hearkens back to a simpler era. (Side note for friends – anyone have any theories about why I’m so enthralled with old stuff?? Any ideas would be welcomed because I’m at a loss to explain it…)

The film is set in a remote corner of Australia, and is said to be the only movie thus far to have been shot in the language of the Ganlabingu people, with the assistance of English subtitles and narration.

The simple veneer of this legend-like tale is a bit deceptive, because it unfolds on several levels.

The narrator explains that he is telling a story that belongs entirely to him and his people. It begins with a group of men setting out to a far-off forest that contains trees with bark suitable to making canoes, which the men will then use for a goose-hunting expedition.

Among the group are two brothers. The elder has three wives and is a respected and stately leader, while the younger is single, just becoming a man, and has a deepening crush on his older brother’s youngest and prettiest wife.

The sojourn is rendered in a timeless, epic fashion. From the ghostly, remote forests that provide the canoe-making materials, to the swamp where the men sleep on log platforms tied to the trees to protect them from crocodiles, each frame is a work of art in itself, and I was riveted to the screen despite the somewhat meandering storytelling.

It felt like every details was authentic, from the language to the locale to the Aboriginal actors, and as though it took as long to make the film as it did for the actual expedition to happen – because every detail is just so right.

During the trip, the older brother, Minygululu, begins telling his sibling Dayindi a folk-tale about two of their ancestors, also brothers, who found themselves in a similar situation, with the younger developing feelings for one of his elder brother’s wives.

He is patient and gentle as he unfolds the story, telling it in installments as their expedition progresses. One chapter is told while they strip bark from the trees, another as they shape the canoes, another as they stand motionless in their flimsy boats in the middle of the swamp, waiting for geese, another resting on the high platforms out of harm’s way.

The film switches effortlessly between eras as the story is related, with the different time periods rendered in black and white, and colour, to indicate what strand of the story is being followed at any given time.

This is quite helpful, since actor Jamie Gulpilil plays the younger brother in both stories… make sense?

In the more ancient strand of this story, a tribe led by older brother Ridjimiraril (Crusoe Kurrdal), runs into trouble when a stranger -- offering to trade “objects of magic” -- shows up from another region, causing worry and distress among the villagers even though he is quickly sent away.

Shortly afterwards, Ridjimiraril’s second wife disappears, and he links the two events, assuming the stranger kidnapped her, which eventually leads to the accidental spearing of another stranger by Ridjimiraril, out for revenge.

This means Ridjimiraril must follow tribal law, and take part in Markaratta, which can be translated as payback, and will involve the great warrior standing target for the other tribe’s spears until he is struck.

But in a true showing of brotherly love, Yeeralparil (Gulpilil) joins his brother and the two become like ghosts evading the spears, until Ridjimiraril is eventually struck, but is proud enough and strong enough that he walks home, nursing his wound.

Later, in what is the most gripping scene of the film, he takes part in a mystical warrior’s dance, induced by his wound, and it becomes clear that this story is rooted in Aboriginal oral tradition. That it is essentially a tribal legend passed from generation to generation until the truth and mythical aspects have melded indistinguishably into one another, and it no longer really matters which is fact and which is fiction.

The scene is beautiful and powerful and makes up in spades for any slowness in the storytelling to that point.

The end of the tale, like most legends passed down through oral cultures, doesn’t tie up all the loose ends in a nice package you can take home with you – it leaves many unanswered questions, but in such a way that your imagination can fill in the gaps, and indeed I think that’s the point.

“And they all lived happily ever after,” says narrator David Gulpilil, deadpan, before breaking into raucous laughter. “Naaah, I don’t really know what happens after that.”

It’s a perfect ending for the story. No clear answers were spelled out for Dayindi by his elder brother’s history lesson, but the culturally transcendent tale still has the ability to change his life forever.

Watch this movie because it is thoughtful and compelling and provides a new window into a culture that is probably as strange to you as it is to me. But also because its lessons about people are as relevant to our culture as they are to that of Australia's Ganlabingu, or magpie goose people clan.

And do yourself a big favour and see it at the Bloor Cinema.

"I Heard the Owl Call My Name" (Margaret Craven, 1967)

I first read “I Heard the Owl Call My Name” in Morocco. I was at the end of a year-long stint doing volunteer and missions-type work in that country, and my teammate James passed it along to me after he had read it.

It was a fitting time to read such a beautiful story, because it reminded me of how much I had learned during my year in that culture, and how much my perspective, my outlook on the world, had changed from a year earlier.

The story is set on B.C.’s rugged northern coast in a small, isolated Indian fishing village, where Mark, a young Anglican vicar has been sent to serve as minister.

Before he sets out, Caleb, his mentor and wise old predecessor tells him, “Don’t be sorry for yourself because you are going to so remote a parish. Be sorry for the Indians. You know nothing and they must teach you.”

And the story, told beautifully in simple, concise sentences and paragraphs that paint a compelling picture of the people and the landscape of the region, describes the process as Mark goes from stranger to family member as the village gradually embraces him – and teaches him.

This occurs in a setting where it rains almost continuously, where rugged mountains line inhospitable shorelines, where fishing and logging are essential means to survival, and in a village that is struggling with its identity in a changing world that threatens to sweep it up in its path or leave only the tattered remnants in its wake.

It’s not surprising that IHTOCMN, though written by an American, has become a classic in Canada and can be found on the shelves of English classrooms across the country. Timeless in its delivery, and with a message that should resonate with all generations and cultures, it refuses to preach but still somehow irresistible calls on the reader to place new importance on values such as family, faith, patience and unconditional love.

Mark, though he is sent to the village implicitly to teach, becomes the student, as his values and priorities are reshaped by the villagers – and somehow, through the process of learning and being molded by the village, he also has a deep and profound impact on those that live there.

The lessons he learns are perhaps described best by the Bishop who comes to visit:

“Always when I leave the village,” the Bishop said slowly, “I try to define what it means to me, why it sends me back to the world refreshed and confident. Always I fail. It is so simple, it is difficult. When I try to put it into words, it comes out one of those unctuous, over-pious platitudes at which Bishops are expected to excel.”
They both laughed.
“But when I reach here, and I see the great scar where the inlet side shows its bones, for a moment I know.”
“What, my lord?”
“That for me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world.”
“And that, my lord?”
“Enough of the meaning of life to die.”

Those words, and the rest of the story, brought me back to the emotions I was feeling when I was preparing to leave Morocco. They reminded me of the wrong notions I had going in, about all that I could teach the people there. And the way that I had to take a steep, hard fall from that position before I realized I was the student, I was the one sent there to learn, not to teach.

And I was taken back to the sharp, deep new appreciation I had, upon leaving that part of the world for simple things such as family, faith, love, friendship, and loyalty.

And how God taught me so much and planted in me such a new set of values, forged in fire with two good friends.

And as my heart broke for the second time as I re-read the book recently, my heart also weighed heavy with the realization that those values have faded for me, lost some of their brilliance. Simplicity is in short supply here in Toronto, and as a result the beauty of a less complicated lifestyle often gets lost in the confusion and speed and chaos all around.

IHTOCMN reminded me I have to find the simple beauty that still exists here. That I need to put aside the distractions and focus on what is important – as Mark was forced to do in that tiny Indian village in order to survive, and as I was once forced to do in Morocco for the same reason.

You should read this book.

I will lend you my copy.

A Man Without A Country (Kurt Vonnegut, 2007)

The critic’s quote on the cover of “A Man Without A Country” reads: ‘This may be as close as Vonnegut ever comes to a memoir.’ And it was. Vonnegut died earlier this year, and AMWAC was his final work.

I finished reading it today, and I am still trying to make out what I think of it. One thing I am sure of is that I enjoyed it immensely. A collection of essays and personal thoughts, anecdotes and even poems, it’s completely different from anything I’ve read by the author of “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Cat’s Cradle.”

And it provides a new insight into Vonnegut’s personal thoughts, musings, beliefs and ideas on subjects such as capitalism, war, President Bush and the environment – notions that are presented much more subtly in his other works and can only really be guessed and grasped at. But in AMWAC, they are presented clearly and concisely in the same language and style that he has used effectively to tell his previous stories.

So, what follows is a collection of the passages from the book that affected me the most and, I think, give the most compelling picture of who Vonnegut really was.

* While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.” Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.

* If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or how badly is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a good friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

* Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

* Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.

* When you get to my age, if you get to my age, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, “What is life all about?” … I put my big question about my life to my son the pediatrician. Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

* Abraham Lincoln said this about the silenced killing grounds at Gettysburg:

"We cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract."

Poetry! It was still possible to make horror and grief in wartime seem almost beautiful. Americans could have illusions of honour and dignity when they thought of war.

* James Polk was the person Representative Lincoln had in mind when he said what he said. Abraham Lincoln said of Polk, his president, his armed forces’ commander-in-chief:

"Trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory – that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood – that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy – he plunged into war.
Holy shit! And I thought I was the writer!"

On responding to a woman who wrote to Vonnegut about being 43 and pregnant with her first child:

Don’t do it! I wanted to tell her. It could be another George W. Bush or Lucrezia Borgia. The kid would be lucky to be born into a society where even the poor are overweight but unlucky to be in one without a national health plan or decent public education for most, where lethal injection and welfare are forms of entertainment, and where it costs an arm and a leg to go to college. … But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.

* Requiem:

The crucified planet Earth
Should it find a voice
And a sense of irony
Might now well say
Of our abuse of it
“Forgive them, Father,
They know not what they do.”

The irony would be
That we know what
We are doing.

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

Our Man in Havana (Graham Greene, 1958)

My friends Logan and Amanda just got back from Cuba. Along with a care-package of 50 Cohiba and Monte Cristo cigars they also brought vivid pictures and memories of their brief but fascinating exploration of the Cuban capital.

Logan described Old Havana in sharp detail, painting a mental image of ornate architecture experiencing the slow but steady decay that sea salt combined with a lack of upkeep, causes. He said it looked like it had been under water for 50 years and resembled his idea of the mystical sunken city of Atlantis.

Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” paints a similar picture. In fact, the image Logan conjured up while we sat in Jet Fuel in Cabbagetown last week was a perfect match for Greene’s description of Havana in the 1950s, so I guess not much has changed.

I love the premise of this book. James Wormold, the middle-aged ‘hero’ of the story, is a soft-spoken, mediocre Englishman who has lived in pre-Castro Havana for 20 years running his small, struggling vacuum cleaner shop. He has one friend with whom he spends about six minutes each day, is still in love with the wife who left him a decade earlier, and the possessions he cares about would fit in a single crate.

That sounds like an incredibly boring start, but Wormold has a pretty, spunky 17-year-old daughter named Millie who keeps things interesting right from the beginning. Most of his energy is spent worrying about her and trying to protect her – though she seems capable of handling herself just fine.

When the opportunity to join the British MI6 spy agency comes literally walking though the door of his shop, he decides he needs the money – and probably the distraction --badly enough to join up.

One of his key responsibilities is to recruit Cuban agents to supply intelligence, but rather than doing so Wormold sets about inventing fictional characters to fill the roles, picking names randomly from a list of country club members. The problem is, he does too good a job and his colourful cast of non-existent spies begin bringing in information that makes his superiors in London sit up and take notice.

In response to his good work London decides to boost his bureau staff, and sends Beatrice, a female agent, to work as his secretary along with Rudy, a radio operator disguised as his bookkeeper.

This is where things begin to become complicated for Wormold. His until now seemingly harmless charade suddenly becomes serious, as he needs to strengthen the web he has created around his fake agents in order to make them stand up under scrutiny.

This, he also does well – so well that Beatrice begins to fall in love with Raul, the alcoholic Cuban airline pilot Wormold has ‘recruited’ to fly surveillance missions and collect images of the massive, non-existent military constructions his spies have reported on. One of Wormold’s more colourful character studies, Raul has lost his wife in a massacre during the Spanish civil war and has become disillusioned with both sides, especially the communists, making him an ideal recruit – and an sparking intrigue in Beatrice.

This is a problem for Wormold, who has fallen in love with her and becomes irrationally jealous over the fictional character he invented as a reflection of some of the romantic aspects of his own personality.


Sometimes Wormold felt a twinge of jealousy towards Raul and he tried to blacken the picture.

“He gets through a bottle of whisky a day,” he said.

“It’s his escape from loneliness and memory,” Beatrice said. “Don’t you ever want to escape?”

“I suppose we all do sometimes.”

“I know what that kind of loneliness is like,” she said with sympathy. “Does he drink all day?”

“No, the worst hour is two in the morning, When he wakes then, he can’t sleep for thinking, so he drinks instead.” It astonished Wormold how quickly he could reply to any questions about his characters; they seemed to live on the threshold of his consciousness – he had only to turn a light on and there they were, frozen in some characteristic action.”


But soon, Beatrice’s fascination with Raul becomes the least of his problems, as Captain Segura, a feared member of the Havana police, becomes suspicious of Wormold, and as some of his star spies begin to meet with fatal coincidences, eventually leading to the complete collapse of Wormold’s carefully constructed world and a hasty departure.

Entertaining and clever, OMIH is partly a satirical mockery of the British secret service, and partly a criticism of Cuban corruption in the 50s.

Greene was well positioned to provide first-hand descriptions and criticisms of both. He actually served as an MI6 intelligence agent during the Second World War, attempting to send spies into global hotspots and later working in counter-espionage in Portugal, according to an Amazon review. He also had first hand experience in Cuba and actually met Fidel Castro, whom he supported. All that lends a sophisticated, genuine quality to a comedy of errors story that also works as a political commentary.

I recommend this book and I plan to read more Graham Greene very soon.