Admittedly, I have not been familiar with American Splendor for that long a time. In fact, I only happened to notice them in the fiction section of my county library (unlike the other libraries in the county, they haven't created a separate section for non-juvenile graphic novels & manga) maybe a couple of years ago only because the series was on a higher shelf & and across from Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture.
Not too much long after, I began looking for new comics & manga that I'd never heard of and remembered those tall trade paperbacks that I'd neglected before. One of which had a picture of Paul Giamatti on the cover (which I'd later find out was the movie poster), another was subtitled "Our Cancer Year," a third was called "Our Movie Year," the fourth had a grungy-looking male character on the cover, and a far slimmer tale told about a black guy's experience in Vietnam. Not being too excited about a biography, but curious about Vietnam stories (I had read Punisher: Born not long before that) and wanting to err on the side of caution, I chose the Vietnam tale.
What I read was not at all what I was expecting. There weren't any gory tales - the man hadn't actually seen very much in the way of battle. Nonetheless, it was very straightforward in a way that I had never seen before. This prompted me to want to read more of these stories. Instead what I found out as I began to read the trade paperbacks was that this "
American Splendor" was actually a rough autobiography. The author/main character was a cantankerous old man named Harvey Pekar. The previous straightforwardness that I had appreciated in his side tale about his co-worker, Bob McNeill was amplified in his own story. He wasn't looking to become famous, but he didn't want to be a nameless statistic in history. He wanted to earn enough to live, but had no interest in being rich. Both of these were traits I could understand and relate to. I noticed that he saw life for what it truly was. He knew that optimism & hard work don't necessarily get you anywhere and most people will never see a happy ending. It was a relief to finally be able to point to a real living, breathing person and say, " See?! HE gets it!"
Coincidentally, not too long after I finished "Our Movie Year," which details the storyline & what it was like behind the scenes of the American Splendor movie, IFC or Sundance (I forget which) suddenly started showing American Splendor. Not surprisingly, I loved that as well. It was probably somewhere around this point that I realized that I HAD to meet Harvey just to tell him how amazing his story was to me.Not because he triumphed over some major issue, not because he rose against the odds and defeated some form of internal demons, and certainly not because he perservered over some kind of tragedy. In the grand scheme of things, most people might look at American Splendor and ask, "What's so special about this? There's nothing interesting about his story." And that to me is where the interest lies. Harvey Pekar set out to prove that not everyone is going to have an amazing life. Not everyone can or wants to live the "American Dream." And this is why he became one of my personal heroes.
To add to that, as I write this and think about the traits that we share I'm realizing that he just may have had Asperger's, which would explain many of the traits that he noted were a bit "abnormal" as well. This would give me an even bigger reason reason for me to respect him.
Unfortunately, I will never get the chance I so hoped for - to share my appreciation with him, as he just has passed away. His wife, Joyce Brabner, found him dead this morning at 1am. Goodbye to an American legend.
Harvey Lawrence Pekar
October 8, 1939 - July 12, 2010
