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
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.
based buying charts chord hear jazz kept music pop records relationship solos structure swing underlying
I kept on buying records and listening to them. Finally, I was able to hear the relationship between the jazz improvisers' solos and the underlying structure that it's based on, the chord progression. That was pretty easy to do in the swing era, y'know, when jazz was, like, pop music, you know. It had made the charts and everything like that.
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.
act good jazz people
I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, 'What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.'
hero jazz kenny
Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz’s unsung heroes
change
There hasn't been enough change in comics to suit me. I don't know why exactly.
record shook
I'm always shook up and nervous and I've got the hospital record to prove it.
Letterman... he got his problems. We don't get along too well.
anyone funny
We're as interesting and funny as anyone else.
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.
establish far liked people work
It didn't take long to establish myself, as far as people thinking my work was good. They liked it from the start.
people valuable
Some of the most valuable stuff I do has to do with my dissenting from the general opinion about people in movements.
comic looks typical work
My work looks like a comic book in form, but it's not a typical comic book in content. I write autobiographical stuff.
incidents life
I write about my life, choosing incidents that I think will be, for one reason or another, significant to people. Often because they may have experienced the same things.