April 20, 2006

By ADAM HYLA
Editor

Harvey Pekar labored in the trenches of obscurity for three decades, and now that fame has visited — in the form of the 2003 movie about his work in underground comics, American Splendor — he’s found that things are pretty much the same. Still the same Cleveland home, still the same scramble to make a living. “Either I’m not much of a celebrity,” he says, “or, for a celebrity, I get surprisingly little play.”

Though he’s only recently gained notoriety, the subject of Pekar’s new biography has always thought of himself as a person of great import. The creator of the popular website OverheardInNewYork.com, Michael Malice provided the recollections for Pekar’s book while still in his late 20’s. He’s a man apart: an Ayn Rand fan who refuses to bend to others. Quitting a terrible temp job, he turns most of his neckties into armbands as a reminder “that things should never reach that point again.” As Malice has an incompetent co-worker fired, or steadfastly refuses to speak to his relatives, he may seem like a royal prick. To which he’d say — not unfairly — “Who cares what you think?”

There’s no redemptive ending to Ego & Hubris (Ballantine Books, $19.95,) but neither is it needed, since Pekar has truthfully profiled a man who’s been gentle and mean, vicious and sweet, in the vein of his autobiographical comic book series American Splendor.

RC: I’m turning on my tape recorder now, and that brings me to my first question because I read somewhere that you don’t use a tape when you’re talking to someone like Michael Malice, who your new book is about. Is that true?

Harvey Pekar: I don’t use tape recorders; I’m kind of a Luddite. Actually, I don’t know where Luddite ends and mechanical incompetent begins, but I’m both. Probably if I was better with, you know, gadgets and stuff, I wouldn’t mind it so much.

RC: You get such wonderful and exact testimony from people. How did you get Michael’s story without a tape recorder?

Pekar: Well, first of all I’ve got a pretty good memory; I write things down soon after they happen. That’s how I do most of the stories that don’t involve the amount of dialog that Michael’s did. With Michael, we communicated through the mail and he gave me a couple big chunks of autobiographical material which I was able to use. I got some stuff from conversations initially, which he later verified when he wrote me. I don’t think I got much material dialog from him just by listening to him talk. What I did do was call him and ask him about the text.

RC: Did he ever question, why me? Why am I important enough to be the subject of a biography?

Pekar: No.

RC: Why not?

Pekar: Well, Michael’s got a lot of confidence in himself and he probably thinks it’s self-evident why he should have a biography written about him.

RC: Can you tell me how you and Michael are alike? Are there things that are similar about you?

Pekar: Yeah, well, we’re both kind of — well, o.k., we’re both Jewish. Our parents both came from Eastern Europe, though mine came from a Yiddish-speaking culture and his came from a Russian-speaking culture, from the USSR. We read a lot — we have read a lot; I don’t read much these days but I used to read like a monster; we have a respect for scholarship; we’re pretty antsy about details, we want to get the details right —

RC: Tell me more about that. What does that mean to you?

Pekar: Well, I want to get the dialog right. If you’re one word off, you can make a really telling statement an innocuous one. It’s about timing the narrative and placing a certain amount of words in a panel: not too many and not too few, and sometimes using dialog-less panels. Timing is important to me in the same way as timing is important to storytellers and stand-up comedians. You want to highlight the right word at the right time, place it in the best place it can be.

RC: OK, yeah. Did you have anything more to say about how you two are alike?

Pekar: Well, yeah — I mean, we’re both kind of nervous and a little bit excitable. He doesn’t just accept stuff, like from teachers and stuff, and think that it’s right.

I’ll give you one example from the book that I had thought. A girl in his class once said that it’s better to give than receive, and he almost laughed out loud. I thought that too, especially when I was a kid: that it was better to receive than give. People were nuts if they thought otherwise. But you know when a teacher asked me whether it was better to receive or give I’d say give, you know — keep her happy.

RC: What seems to be going on in the movie is a guy who’s struggling with his own sense of consequence, of making an impact. You’re having conversations with cartoonist R. Crumb about leaving a legacy and stuff. And Michael never has those questions; he assumes he’s really important. Do you think that’s accurate?

Pekar: Well, he says in the book that he used to read these children’s authors, like the Oz stories. And he says that most people might think they’re escapist, and kids like escapist literature. But he goes on to say that that’s not the case: the real reason is that “I’ve always felt there’s something magical in my life, I believe in this magic and I think I’m going to benefit from it.” That’s what he said.

Having said that, he is working to make a name for himself, to make a mark. He’s not waiting around for someone to touch him with a wand. He’s got one of the more popular web sites in New York City. It’s where people hear other people say nutty things in the street and they send these snatches of conversation in to him, and he posts them on the web. That’s been working out real well for him.

RC: I saw in another interview that you’re pretty concerned with making ends meet at home. How is that going?

Pekar: Well, the movie was a big shot in the arm for me. I never thought any power on earth, including the movie, would ever make my books sell, because it used to be that they didn’t sell very well at all, very badly as a matter of fact, like most underground cartoonists. But what I’m just hoping is I’m putting out a lot of work lately. I had a graphic novel that came out a half year ago and I got this one now, and I’ll have another one in another half year, if the publisher lives up to their commitment. I’m working on another one, a history of SDS in collaboration with a guy; I’m going to be working on a history of the Beat Generation. You know, the work comes in and….

I used to get these real plum jobs: HBO would call and say “We’re having an American Splendor party, can you and [Cleveland artist] Gary Drumm get us up some invitations to the party? We’ll give you $500 apiece.” That doesn’t go on forever.

My stuff has been selling at a decent level, from what I can tell: well enough to give me extra income. I’d like to be able to maintain that, and without it all I have is my pension and Social Security and that’s not very much.

RC: How many other working-class intellectuals are out there? Do you tend to work with other people who don’t have a whole lot of formal education but have really educated themselves?

Pekar: I don’t think people like that are that common. I mean I don’t know, I can’t give you a numerical count, but I don’t run across a lot of people like me who really enjoy learning and spend a lot of their time doing it. n

[Reading]

Harvey Pekar reads and signs books at Town Hall Seattle, Eighth and Seneca St., on Wed., April 19, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 and available at Elliott Bay Book Co., First and Main in Pioneer Square, or call (206)624-6600.