{"id":2653,"date":"2011-07-13T12:20:37","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T10:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/?p=2653"},"modified":"2013-05-20T11:26:23","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T09:26:23","slug":"harvey-pekar-et-american-splendor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/harvey-pekar-et-american-splendor\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvey Pekar and “American Splendor”."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

A year ago, almost to the day, died Harvey Pekar<\/strong>, who was an eminently important author in what is known today as Comic Art\u2019s history.<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nAt the end of the 1960s, Harvey Pekar\u00a0meets Robert Crumb, other leading light of underground Comic Art, who is then at the very beginning of his career. Both\u00a0men have a passion for Jazz Music and collect rare and precious first pressings. They quickly become friends, good enough for Harvey, seduced and convinced by the large range of possibilities offered by Comic Art but \u201cincapable of drawing the least straight line\u201d (according to himself), to propose Crumb a collaboration. It was, all casually, one of the very first time that comic art was taken away from its usual sphere of activity (fantasy, adventure, science-fiction, and other genres well used in US comics\u2019 industries).
\nIn 1976, Harvey Pekar starts to publish \u201cAmerican Splendor\u201d, which was to become one of the most important comics series, if you take a look at how it evolved ever since. Harvey Pekar narrates his own life, in an autobiographical way that has been exploited too much afterwards (for instance, during the last 15 years, the Belgian and French have produced plethora of authors dealing with their everyday life…). His frankness, his honesty, and a good critical mind (towards society and himself), would sooner make his work a success.<\/p>\n

Besides Crumb, many other illustrators accepted to collaborate with the author from Cleveland, who shall write until the narration of his fight against cancer in 1995 (\u201cOur cancer year\u201d, made with his wife Joyce Brabner). Pekar appears to be definitely human, which may be the reason of his work\u2019s success. Dealing with his dismal everyday life and with the difficulty in carving out a place for himself in a society that considers him a freak who will always be a loser, Pekar just talks about many people\u2019s reality.<\/p>\n

And what does Harvey Pekar have to do with Pierre Feuille Ciseaux, besides the fact that he\u2019s one of the greatest authors of this Comic Art we stand up for ? Actually, during the weekend of opening to the public (Saturday the 8th<\/sup> and Sunday the 9th<\/sup> of 2011), you might attend the screening of the movie “American Splendor”<\/em><\/a>, very ambitious adaptation combining documentary and fiction, images from real life and actors…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recounting Pekar\u2019s path including its numerous steps, the movie is made of episodes and displays many stratagems to inscrease the standing of Pekar\u2019s thought about Comic Art\u2019s relevance. Pekar himself (as well as his wife, his colleagues, etc) and professional actors play one or the other\u2019s part: it gives us the opportunity to see Pekar (the real one) have a conversation with Pekar (the cartoon) or Pekar (the fake one, played by Paul Giamatti, very good at putting on the clothes of this real (or not) misanthropist that Pekar was. Such a nice film, actually! And we\u2019re very happy to present it to you ( huge thanks to both Jean-Michel Cretin, cinema programme planner at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de L\u2019Espace, and Diaphana Films<\/a>\u2019team).<\/div>\n
Of course, you will find the essential French versions of \u201cAmerican Splendor\u201d at La Bouquinerie<\/a>. They\u2019ve been published by \u00c7\u00e0 Et L\u00e0<\/a>, and the third volume should be available in every good bookshop in the middle of September. Let\u2019s leap at the opportunity to greet on this editor\u2019s work, which we really appreciate.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
And before you decide to (re-)throw yourself into one of Harvey\u2019s books, we encourage you to have a squint at the great tribute that Dean Haspiel<\/a> (illustrator of \u201cThe Quitter<\/strong>“, written by Pekar), Set Kushner<\/a>, and a few others pay to him by clicking on the following picture :<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year ago, almost to the day, died Harvey Pekar, who was an eminently important author in what is known today as Comic Art\u2019s history. At the end of the 1960s, Harvey Pekar\u00a0meets Robert Crumb, other leading light of underground Comic Art, who is then at the very beginning of his career. Both\u00a0men have a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pierre-feuille-ciseaux-3-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2653"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4846,"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions\/4846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pierrefeuilleciseaux.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}