LITTLE ROCK — DEATH is like any other foreign country in this respect: They do things differently there, in that undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveler returns. Just how differently must be left to surmise, but that hasn’t kept the poets from speculating, the best of them in ways that would put any theologian preaching pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die to shame.
The ever jaunty Walt Whitman assured us that “to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” He even left a forwarding address: “If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”
Instead, we turn to his songs so full of life that you could scarcely say he was dead. For he still speaks to us. If we would but listen.
But who’s got the time? Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me/ The Carriage held but just Ourselves/ And Immortality. Emily Dickinson is not likely to be silenced by Death, either. That’s how art goes on long after the artist has had a change of residence.
See the different kind of comic books-excuse us, graphic novels-that Harvey Pekar produced. His death at 70 ended a remarkably unsuccessful and yet successful life, the burden and saving grace of which was his inability to make the kind of healthy adjustment that a Dale Carnegie or any other motivational expert in the all-American vein might recognize.
Who would have known that this little nebbish “from off the streets of Cleveland,” to quote the sub-title of his magnum opus, American Splendor, had so much to say? And that so many would listen, though his work was an acquired taste?
IN HIS own graphic way, Harvey Pekar was a poet, too-of the quotidian malaise that covers life like a dull patina. By describing it, he shattered it. And demonstrated that American Splendor wasn’t entirely an ironic title.
On their death, other artists might be described as having attracted a wide audience. Harvey Pekar’s obituary in the New York Times referred to those of us fascinated by his work as just a “cult following.” Even in death he was déclassé.
Little Harvey grew up getting beat up as the isolated white kid in a tough black neighborhood, where his immigrant parents had a little grocery. The experience stood him in good stead (he developed an impressive left hook) but it seemed only to deepen his inferiority complex, which was but one of his encyclopedia of hang-ups. The list is too long to cite here; let’s just say they would have provided a lifetime of work for a shrink, if only Mr. Pekar could have afforded one when he was just another starving artist. You could have started the list with paranoia, obsessivebehavior and general insecurity.
Van Gogh would have understood him. Or maybe not. Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, capital of what was the rust belt for much of his life, wasn’t exactly full of starry nights at its and his low ebb. Which may be why it’s hard to imagine a writer of his unlikely genius flourishing anywhere else, and he had the good sense to stay put. We love our city, as Chesterton pointed out, not because it is the greatest or finest, but because it is ours, and Cleveland was Harvey Pekar’s.
Unable to find a job he could handle, young Pekar went into the Navy and couldn’t handle it, either. He was too “inflexible” and couldn’t pass inspections.
Mr. Pekar wound up working as afile clerk for the Veterans Administration, where he stayed for close to 40 years and had the wisdom to turn down all offers of promotion. As just another drone, he didn’t have to take the job home with him, the way highpowered, upwardly mobile all-American successes do.
Mr. Pekar’s day job was just a means to an artistic end. It supported him, and let him stay in Cleveland and write. He himself couldn’t draw, but his work drew illustrators who could. When he teamed up wth R. Crumb, with that master’s eye for the American sordid, the result was a perfect expression of their worldview, or rather grimy neighborhoodview.
FOR A guy who titled his biography Quitter, Mr. Pekar showed remarkable staying power. For he failed at quitting, too. He kept writing even if he had to publish the first 15 issues of American Splendor himself. In addition to his exemplary attendance record at the VA, his third marriage took, produced a daughter, and for a while he was even a regular on the David Letterman show-till he went off on a street person’s rant against General Electric, NBC’s parent company. And was declared artist non grata.
No wonder some of us tried to read every issue of American Splendor. Though they weren’t easy to come by. An artist, he knew you didn’t defeat the ordinary uglinesses of life by pretending they didn’t exist, as if you were a copywriter on Madison Avenue employing snob appeal to sell everything from mouthwash to beer. Instead, he overcame everyday despair by depicting it. You’ve got to love somebody who can do that on a deadline-if loving him wouldn’t embarrass him too much.
JOE GARRISON had a day job, too-teaching poetry to young misses at storied Mary Baldwin in Virginia, where he would need all the patience (and impatience) that being a memorable teacher requires.
But as with Harvey Pekar, it was the work Joe Garrison did after hours that would endear him to readers he never met. Like this poem he wrote as he approached the end of his life:
When we take time to make our
place in a place, a thought
takes hold, rooted deeper
than honeysuckle or pines
and more secure than hinges.
We no longer move in straight
lines, going from door to door,
hand to hand. There is no need
to be anywhere where we are.
We learn to grow like grass
or timothy, seeding in season.
We take off our skins, tell
time by heart, learn to bear
down over the solid center
of the place that finds us.
Amen.
Maybe death really is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier. And gentler. And more illuminating than the constant busyness of life. Even the presence of death seems to elevate us, putting things in perspective. For love is stronger than death, as the good book tells us, and as every mourner learns.
Editorial, Pages 80 on 07/25/2010