pekar: Ex-curmudgeon catastrophizes!
October 9, 2005
"Don't call me a curmudgeon," Harvey Pekar insists with a smile. "Everyone who writes about me calls me a curmudgeon. I don't know why."
Pekar, right, poses with the Hollywood version of himself, Paul Giamatti.
Getty Images
Reassuring words from someone whose scowls over life's simplest setbacks led to comic books, guest shots on David Letterman and the movie American Splendor.
Now retired from his work as a file clerk at a Cleveland VA hospital, Pekar, 66, with illustrator Dean Haspiel, is back with a graphic novel, The Quitter (DC/Vertigo, $19.99), which he calls "the best thing I've ever done." USA TODAY sat down with the former curmudgeon:
Q: Are you and David Letterman still friendly?
A: We never were friendly. There's not a lot of love lost.
Q: When you and Letterman had your famous confrontation over GE, it was pretty raw stuff. Was that just schtick or...?
A: No, no. no. What I did was a logical decision based on the way I had been dealt with on the show. They wanted me to be the butt of Letterman's jokes, this rumpled guy from the Rust Belt. It didn't fit into my plans at all. I thought: What is GE, a company that is making parts for nuclear weapons, doing owning NBC News? It was a total conflict of interest, so by the sixth show I actually cursed him. I didn't realize how much of an establishment guy Letterman was. He'd make little jokes about GE and lightbulbs, but not the really hardcore political stuff. After the program, Letterman said you just (messed) up a great thing. I have that on front of one of my comic books, Letterman saying that to me.
Q: In your work, you relate slices of ordinary life. Why that direction instead of fiction?
A: Because nobody else was writing about it. Because 99% of the writers were concentrating on only 1% of life. I had a real ordinary type of life. I got up, went to work, came home, went to bed. But I thought all kinds of interesting things were happening to me anyway. I was always freaking out over little things, like losing my keys and stuff. So I hoped people would identify with that. I mean, that's the substance of life — arguing with supervisors, things like that. So I wrote about that because that's all I could write about.
Q: You give a lot of dignity to the people you write about.
A: Well, to me, everyone's on the same level. I mean, everybody deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Q: Your comic books are very journalistic. How do you resist the temptation to embellish?
A: A story always seems best to me if it's told as accurately as possible. I just want to make it the way it was, and if I do that, it will speak for itself. People can recognize the situation and they can recognize the characters and it will hit a spot.
Q: Did American Splendor change your life?
A: I made real good money from the movie, but I put it aside for my daughter. If I get any good money or anything I put it aside for her.
Q: Why Cleveland?
A: Because I was born there. I never had pretensions to go off and be a poet in New York or anything like that. I always thought I was doing good if I could just hold a job. When you read The Quitter, you'll see that everything would spook me about jobs. I'd agonize so much I would quit the job before I even started it. But the civil service, that was comfortable. I figured they'll keep me because there were people there who were worse than me. So I sorta stuck out. I'd get plaques for outstanding worker. The job was so simple that I didn't have to, you know, have to go home and think, "Oh, did I do the right thing or not?" It was great. I just tried to live a two-tiered life, supporting the artistic side of me with the civil service job.
Q: A couple more questions.
A: Take all the time you want. I have nothing to do.
Q: Why do you think you focus so much on things like, "Where are my keys?"
A: Because I'm an obsessive-compulsive kind of person. I'm always ruminating and thinking. Everything is a big deal to me. The other day I locked my keys in my car. The guy who came to help couldn't open it. It was too tricky. I was just flipping out. I had to walk home, which was like three miles, and get a key from my wife and walk back, and I was just catastrophizing every step.
Q: Catastrophizing?
A: Thinking, you know, people will walk past the car, see the keys dangling from the ignition, throw a rock through the window and drive it away. I imagine everybody's got certain fears about a few things, but I seem to be afraid of just about everything. So when I write, it's like I can't strike out. There's bound to be someone a story like that will strike a chord with.