Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land
edited by Harvey Pekar & Paul Buhle with Hershl Hartman
Abrams Comicarts, 240 pages
It always seemed to me like mine was the last secular “Jewish generation” in America. Born in the mid-1950s, in the depths of Brooklyn in a neighborhood adjacent to the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Crown Heights, surrounded on all sides by three generations of family, including grandparents and great-grandparents born in the old country, the entire world seemed Jewish. Even when my family moved (briefly) to West Virginia (population 5,000, only seven of which were Jews), then back to Brooklyn, to Canarsie and East Flatbush, the feeling of Jewishness never went away. The neighborhoods were now a mix of Irish, Italian, and Jewish, even a sprinkling of Afro-Americans, but when the family gathered, Yiddish was still spoken among the adults when the topic wasn’t fit for kinder, children. As a result,...
edited by Harvey Pekar & Paul Buhle with Hershl Hartman
Abrams Comicarts, 240 pages
It always seemed to me like mine was the last secular “Jewish generation” in America. Born in the mid-1950s, in the depths of Brooklyn in a neighborhood adjacent to the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Crown Heights, surrounded on all sides by three generations of family, including grandparents and great-grandparents born in the old country, the entire world seemed Jewish. Even when my family moved (briefly) to West Virginia (population 5,000, only seven of which were Jews), then back to Brooklyn, to Canarsie and East Flatbush, the feeling of Jewishness never went away. The neighborhoods were now a mix of Irish, Italian, and Jewish, even a sprinkling of Afro-Americans, but when the family gathered, Yiddish was still spoken among the adults when the topic wasn’t fit for kinder, children. As a result,...
- 9/1/2011
- by Paul Kupperberg
- Comicmix.com
Comic book writer who penned the autobiographical American Splendor
Harvey Pekar, who has died aged 70, was the writer of American Splendor, an autobiographical comic in which he wrote about the everyday, often mundane, aspects of his life. Pekar experimented with the narrative form and used a shifting roster of artists on his comics, but it was the sheer ordinariness of the stories that slowly earned him a strong following, critical acclaim and comparisons with Chekhov and Dostoevsky.
Set in the rundown neighbourhoods of Cleveland, Ohio, American Splendor's world was revealed without exaggeration or self-aggrandisement. Pekar, opinionated and curmudgeonly, was often the most frustrating and aggravating character to appear in his books. The writer became a regular guest on the talkshow Late Night With David Letterman, but his confrontational style led to him being banned from it.
In 1990, Pekar was diagnosed with lymphoma and underwent chemotherapy. Heavy medication led to hallucinations and occasional paralysis,...
Harvey Pekar, who has died aged 70, was the writer of American Splendor, an autobiographical comic in which he wrote about the everyday, often mundane, aspects of his life. Pekar experimented with the narrative form and used a shifting roster of artists on his comics, but it was the sheer ordinariness of the stories that slowly earned him a strong following, critical acclaim and comparisons with Chekhov and Dostoevsky.
Set in the rundown neighbourhoods of Cleveland, Ohio, American Splendor's world was revealed without exaggeration or self-aggrandisement. Pekar, opinionated and curmudgeonly, was often the most frustrating and aggravating character to appear in his books. The writer became a regular guest on the talkshow Late Night With David Letterman, but his confrontational style led to him being banned from it.
In 1990, Pekar was diagnosed with lymphoma and underwent chemotherapy. Heavy medication led to hallucinations and occasional paralysis,...
- 7/13/2010
- by Steve Holland
- The Guardian - Film News
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