Harvey Pekar
Stan Lee
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The realist vs the idealist: Harvey Pekar VS Stan Lee
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I can't believe people of
I can’t believe people of your generation (I’m 61) are talking about an artist and self-hating Jewish stuff? is Harvey good or bad for the Jews? I though we settled that stuff decades ago with Goodbye Columbus and then again with Portney’s Complaint?
Amazing! Stan Lee is a business man… transformed mainstream comics, ok…inserted a little jewish angst into spiderman, ok. But really?
If it were Harvey vs. Will Eisner on the immigrant experience—then that would have been too close to call. But Harvey has poured his heart out since 1977 or so… He’s ëxposed himself in the best tradition of Philip Roth and Kohelet.
Harvey Peakar. (He pees in a car)
rim
factoids to consider
Pekar’s good friend (and illustrator of many of his stories) wrote and illustrated the short piece “When the Goddam Jews Take Over America!”, which unfortunatley may still be found online. Does that make him an anti-Semite? Probably not —- Crumb later married Jewish cartoonist Aline Kominsky.
Although, Pekar alludes to having once had a sense of Jewish pride, in his comix autobiography The Quitter, he suggests that this is no longer the case (and such sentiment appears elsewhere such as in his short story “The Ride”).
Both Harvey and his wife Joyce Brabner have been critical of the state of Israel.
With “Standing Behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines”, Pekar presented a negative portaiture of Jewish women, barely redeemed by his portrayal of “the exception” he meets at the end.
crumb
i’ve read “When the Goddam Jews Take Over America!”, & thought it was pretty clearly satire, mocking the fears of white supremacists (& calling out white supremacy as more prevalent in america than we’d like to admit). especially as it was part of a series, where the blacks & possibly other groups took over america as well.
& i think crumb gets points for marrying two jews: his first wife, dana, is jewish as well.
"When the Goddam Jews"
It’s ironic that the white supremacists read those pieces at face value, miss the satire and republish them online (without permission and without paying royalties) as a comic showing the “truth” about what will happen if the racists don’t win the “race war”.
And please note that I did ask “Does that make him a racist?” and then immediately answered after that “Probably not”.
I just find it interesting that a guy who married a fairly well-known Jewish cartoonist would have ever published that. The white supremacists aren’t totally humorless , as one wrote, “We eagerly await his When the Goddamn Jew (his wife) Took Over My Life. “
Self-hating perhaps?!
So do you think Pekar is just a run of the mill self-hating Jew or actually someone that considers their heritage in a critical way?
Does not being pro-Israel equate anti-Semitism? Hardly.
I think it’s more of a class issue with Pekar. He doesn’t like uppity yuppies, vaucous in their comfort and status. That’s the segment of the Jewish population that earns his ire. Where, the rest of his Jewish pride derives, I don’t know…but I’ll ask him and report back
self-hating Pekar
Please note that I never actually used the term “self-hating Jew” in my post.
Does Pekar hate himself? He certainly has an air of “I’m a loser” at times, which gives off an aura of self-hatred. Heck, titling his autobiography “The Quitter” instead of “The Winner” doesn’t exactly scream self-confidence.
I think he’d hate himself no matter what his background was because he’s as hard on himself as he is on those around him ; rarely does anything meet his oh-so-high expectations (at least in his writings).
But this is a contest that looks at Jewishness as well as heroism.
So, the question is if he’s not proud of being “a member of the tribe” because most of the Jews he has known in his life are terrible people, if he doesn’t do anything religiously or culturally Jewish (aside from injecting Yiddish into his conversation and writings —- which any New Yorker will do, even if they’re not Jewish), if he feels that the state of Israel was a mistake and the land should be given back to the Arabs —— how are we judging him as Jewish? On account of his being born Jewish?
We could do that, but it seems overly simplistic to me. Especially when there are plenty of Jewish creators and comix characters who are proud of their Jewishness, even when they may be especially critical of other Jews and Israel at the same time (I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive).
You could say that Pekar’s critical eye and identification with “the outsider” are especially Jewish, but that doesn’t ring true with me. There are (unfortunately) plenty of assimilated Jews who are neither critical nor considered to be “outsiders”. There are also critical “outsiders” who aren’t Jewish at all (we Jews don’t have a monopoly on feeling alienated).
Self-segregated Jew
I think of Harvey as the embodiment of self-segregation. Kinda of like a walking talking Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle…so that everything he observes he is alienated from. This includes his friends, himself and his culture. Now we all know the tribe has always been big into self-segregating ourselves from other cults and ourselves (Shout out to the Sagisess and Pharisees!), so I understand Pekar in this vein.
I’ve never got the sense that he hates being Jewish, I think that with Harvey it’s more of a disdain for the upwardly mobile bougy transformation of Jews in the US. It’s a class issue for him more than a religious/cultural one.
Though we have not cornered the market on alienation, Jews have done a good job of capturing the feeling in antiquity (most of the prophets were pretty tweaked out by their roles as the voice of god), in medieval times with Maimonides and in modern times with the work of Roth or even Rav Kook.
So I think we have a justified claim to that theme.