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Harvey Pekar wasn’t<\/strong><\/span> that funny in real life.\u00a0 He was a campe\u00f3n <\/em>del<\/em> mundo<\/em> bitch-moaner.\u00a0 He would drey<\/em> you with pedantic lectures on, say, an avant-garde jazz musician or a neglected writer such as George Gissing.\u00a0 Harvey threw in gobs of “you know’s,” connectors that allowed him to talk for a half-hour nonstop and still retain membership in the Youse Guys Club.\u00a0 The lectures were always about Harvey, with the occasional aside about the neglected artist, who was\u00a0also Harvey.<\/p>\n When Harvey edited his work for his comic books, he distilled a year’s worth of \u00a0harangues and keen journalistic observation into a few thousand words.\u00a0 The comic book — the insights, the dead-on dialogue and the self-deprecating humor — was the opposite of his rambles.<\/p>\n Ray Dobbins (a.k.a. Jim Flannigan), the author of Don the Burp and Other Stories,<\/em> was an ex-Clevelander in New York, who lived in the East Village near a Village Voice<\/em> critic.\u00a0 Dobbins showed Harvey’s early comic books to critic Robert Christgau and his wife, Carola Dibbell, and she wrote up Harvey for the Voice,<\/em> Dec. 31, 1979.<\/p>\n Onward.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Through the ensuing acclaim and fame, Harvey was, still, the Kinsman Road boy who unfortunately attended Shaker Heights High.\u00a0 That move — from proste<\/em> Kinsman to fancy-schmancy Shaker of the 1950s —\u00a0 contributed mightily to Harvey’s me-against-the-world attitude.\u00a0 Read about it.\u00a0 It’s in his comic books.<\/p>\n At my first son’s<\/strong><\/span> bris<\/em> in 1981,\u00a0 Harvey gravitated toward the mohel<\/em>, an Orthodox rabbi.<\/p>\n Harvey told me he was going to write about the bris<\/em>.\u00a0 Something about the mohel<\/em> raising his arms and saying, “Golden hands!”<\/p>\n Pekar saw things<\/span> others missed.\u00a0 And he got it down on paper.<\/p>\n —- [More on Harvey at “Where is My Harvey Pekar Bobblehead?”<\/a>, a Klezmer Guy post from 2\/3\/10.]<\/p>\n
\n[“Drey” is\u00a0 turn\/pester.\u00a0 “Proste” is common\/boorish.]<\/p>\n