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
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.
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.
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
critical criticize israel jew jewish jews mentally people saying
I'm just tired of people saying I'm a self-hating Jew because I'm critical of Israel or make fun of old Jewish ladies. I do not hate myself. And Jews who criticize Israel aren't necessarily mentally ill.
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.
concerned guy maybe people
I'm kind of concerned about 'Ego & Hubris' because I'm thinking that people will read it and maybe even be entertained by it, but at the end of it, you know, they'll wonder, 'Why did this guy write this? What was the point of it?'
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.
amazing awkward caused colonial deserve endured frightens horrible israel jews number unusual
Israel's creation was politically amazing and caused by a number of unusual events. And I understand. For centuries, Jews endured horrible suffering, and like other people, deserve the right to self-determination, but the way Israel is going now frightens me. Jews make awkward colonial overlords.
downhill revival
Things improved a little bit in the '80s; there was kind of a revival of alternative comics, but then they went downhill in the '90s.
although copy memorize respect seem stuff suppose work
The way I write is, I listen to things in my head, and then I copy them down. I memorize conversations and things like that; I seem to be able to do that pretty well. I suppose in that respect there's some improvisation, although I work over the stuff after I've got it down on paper.
audience audiences companies follow john movement record since top
A respectable-sized audience hasn't really been able to follow developments in jazz since the free jazz movement in the '60s. Some of them can't even get with John Coltrane. Audiences are diminishing more and more rapidly. Some of the top young musicians with something new to say can't get record companies to put out their stuff.