R.I.P. Harvey Pekar

I was so sad to read that Harvey Pekar, the comic book writer of the American Splendor series has passed away at 70. I loved how he embraced being ordinary, midwestern, awkward, and how he found humor in very ordinary experiences. The Washington Post has a piece about Pekar that includes this quote about his writing philosophy:

"The humor of everyday life is way funnier than what the comedians do on TV," Mr. Pekar once said. "It's the stuff that happens right in front of your face when there's no routine and everything is unexpected. That's what I want to write about."

If you've ever felt like a misfit, you've got to read Pekar's work or at least rent the movie American Splendor which stars the actor Paul Giamatti.

What Readers are Reading and Watching

I'm reading and loving Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun. The Nigerian born writer also has a story collection that came out this spring titled The Thing Around Your Neck. Watch a video of her talking about the collection here.

Books that I've spied being read on the light rail: Angels and Demons, The Life of Pi, The Virgin Suicides.


Interested in the most popular books being read right now on NY subways? Go here.

A recommendation from the world of film. I recently watched the movies "Twelve Angry Men" and "12" back-to-back. The first flick, adapted from a play, came out in 1957 and stars Henry Fonda. It's about a jury of twelve men deliberating on a murder case where the suspect is a poor boy accused of killing his father. The remake (2007) is set in contemporary Russia and the suspect is a young Chechan boy accused of killing his stepfather. Both movies explore ideas about class, ethnicity, innocence, and guilt.

When I Say 'Writer,' What Do You See?

I watched "The Squid and the Whale" last week as I caught up on movies that I missed at the theater. The movie is disturbing, funny, and true to a specific Brooklyn community in the 1980s. But I couldn't help but feel a weary deja vu about the portrayal of writers in the movie. The writers are a married couple who are extremely dysfunctional in a familiar way. He's an arrogant professor with a scruffy beard who seduces his students. The wife's neglected and thus sleeps around. They let the kids drink beer. They live in New York. They're very bohemian. They're white.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this pop culture cliche when it comes to writers. We have more than enough movies that depict writers as brilliant but obnoxious, crazy, neurotic, addicted, philandering, self-destructing white men. Don't get me wrong, I love some of these movies ("Adaptation" and "Deconstructing Harry" are two of my favorites) but I want to see a movie that challenges the usual ideas of what it means to be a writer in the U.S. Many writers aren't dysfunctional (screen)writers like in "Leaving Las Vegas" or gentleman writers who drink cocktails and publish in The New Yorker magazine. That last example may be from a previous generation but it persists, if not on film, in our public imagination.

What about writers who are gay or black or expats? James Baldwin was all three. Or writers who write as single parents like Toni Morrison. Or who, like the poet Lucille Clifton, wrote while raising lots of kids? The movie "Author! Author!" from way back is one movie that dealt with this reality. By the way, is there a movie version of "Dust Tracks on the Road"? And if no, why not? Zora Neale Hurston's life was larger than life itself.

For movies that break out of the usual mode when it comes to writers, I recommend "American Splendor" and a documentary, "Born into This," about Charles Bukowski that I got from Netflix. Yeah, the writers are men with emotional issues and in Bukowski's case alcoholism. But both films made me think about what it means to be a working class American artist.

What movies with writers do you recommend?