[Marxism] Quitters

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

I first learned about Harvey Pekar in a New York Times Sunday Book 
Review dated May 11th, 1986. The reviewer, David Rosenthal, summed up 
Pekar’s debut work, “American Splendor: the life and times of Harvey 
Pekar”, as follows:

"Mr. Pekar’s work has been compared by literary critics to Chekhov’s and 
Dostoyevsky’s, and it is easy to see why. His stories, as he puts it, 
are about 'the cosmic and the ordinary,' about the working stiff’s 
search for love and transcendence, the bleak reality of life in a hard 
town and the reflections of a volatile, passionate sensibility that 
vibrates with everything around it."

Unlike Chekhov and Dostoyevsky, Pekar’s medium was the comic book, which 
made it even more imperative for me to track down. Like many baby 
boomers (technically speaking, I am a pre-baby boomer since I was born 
before the end of the war), comic books were as central to my early 
childhood as the Internet and video games are to today’s kids. Each new 
issue of Mad Magazine was a major event. I would pick up the latest copy 
from Abe’s Candy Store in Woodridge, New York and rush home to devour 
it. Next I would call a fellow 11 year old, who was hip enough to get 
Mad Magazine’s subversive sense of humor, and discuss it as if it were 
the latest Woody Allen movie (in the 70s, to be sure.)

full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/quitters/

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