Biography for
Harvey Pekar More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

8 October 1939, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Date of Death

12 July 2010, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, USA (prostate cancer)

Spouse

Joyce Brabner

(? - 12 July 2010) (his death) 1 child

Trivia

Winner of the 1987 American Book Award for his autobiographical comic book American Splendor.

Radio commentator for WKSU-FM in Kent, Ohio.

Writes about jazz and books for various publications.

Lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Politically Harvey has described himself as "a strident leftist".

Works as a file clerk to support himself.

Writes a comic book called American Splendor. Various artists draw the artwork for the comic book scripts Harvey writes.

Contributing columnist for the Cleveland Free Times

Paid $100 for his first appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman" (1993). He joined AFTRA some time afterward and was paid $600 for his final appearance.

He and his wife, Joyce Brabner, are the legal guardians of teenager Danielle Batone.

At the time of his death, he had been suffering from prostate cancer, asthma, high blood pressure and depression.

Personal Quotes

(On first meeting Paul Giamatti): "You'd better be the man your father was". (Bart Giamatti, who was a professor of Renaissance Literature at Yale and was Commissioner of Baseball when Pete Rose was banned from the game).

(On friend and collaborator R. Crumb (aka Robert Crumb): "He has a good eye and ear for the way people are and the way they talk. And he draws better than just about anybody in the world".

I very frequently get letters from people that say, "Yea, I went through that myself, and I really got a lot of comfort from your story." That makes me feel good. People who've had lousy experiences like to read about somebody else going through the same crap, so they find out they're not the only ones. Misery loves company. There's a lot to that.

As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. not the traumas. Yet, because they are common, writers ignore them as not being fit to write about. I take the opposite point of view. I think you can find all the elements that you can find in great literature in mundane experiences. You can find heroism everyday, like guys working terrible jobs because they've got to support their families. Or as far as humor, the things I see on the job, on the street, are far funnier than anything you'll ever see on TV.