This journal project began in part because my next-door neighbor Lance picked up The Best of American Splendor in the free bin at a garage sale down the street and lent it to me. I didn’t take to it immediately, but I left it on the kitchen table so I could idly browse its stories as I had breakfast.

So I was soon surprised to find myself deeply compelled by the quotidian drama of a file clerk’s bland life. And so I got the tiniest bit obsessed with Harvey Pekar and cast about for information and interviews, largely to find out what he was setting out to do with American Splendor, and I guess also why I was actually drawn to it. Here’s the best quotation I found, from an HBO interview:

Everybody’s like everybody else and everybody’s different from everybody else. So I want them to understand, you know, what we have in common. That’s why I write, so people can understand what we got in common and they’ll see they’re not the only person in the world that’s like that.

A lot of people get worried. They think, Jesus, I’m the only person in the world like this. I’m really fucked. But they don’t know that there are a lot of people that are fucked out there. See? It makes you feel good. It makes you feel good to know that there’s other people afflicted like you.

—Harvey Pekar

Tags: index card, markel, pen, r crumb

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