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Virtual Macedonia Bookstore - The Quitter
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List Price: $12.99
Our Price: $5.99
Your Save: $ 7.00 ( 54% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vertigo
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN: 9781401204006
ISBN: 1401204007
Label: Vertigo
Manufacturer: Vertigo
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 104
Publication Date: 2006-09-06
Publisher: Vertigo
Release Date: 2006-09-06
Studio: Vertigo
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: It's not easy being Harvey Pekar
Comment: Although almost all of Pekar's work is autobiographical, The Quitter is the most sustained memoir he's given us. Much of what Pekar develops here has been gestured at in earlier issues of American Splendor. (I was particularly intrigued to read more about the famous knife/chair tussle between Pekar and his father that took place when Harvey was still in his teens.) But The Quitter offers a fuller, more developed narrative of the first 23 years of Pekar's life than found elsewhere.
What makes this memoir fascinating for an audience wider than Pekar fanboys are the psychological questions it raises and the incredibly insightful artwork of Pekar's collaborator, Dean Haspiel.
Pekar's entitles his life story The Quitter for a good reason: his self-perception is that he's always been so frightened of failure that he walks away from any project or possibility that doesn't offer easy and quick success. Raised by a demanding, never-satisfied mother and a distant, moody father, shy to the point of incoherency around girls, paranoid when it comes to high school coaches (perfectly certain that they were out to get him), trying to establish an identity by becoming a street thug--but clearly conflicted in making a name for himself by hurting other people--taking a series of undemanding but also unsatisfying jobs, cracking up in the Navy, walking away from college: Harvey's first two decades attest time and again to the fact that he's a walking catalog of neuroses. Insecure, paranoid, self-handicapping, and obsessive-compulsive: it's not easy being Harvey Pekar.
But here's the thing: one suspects that without the neuroses, Pekar couldn't have been able to create the incredible art he has. American Splendor celebrates the everyday, finds "splendor" in the quotidian, but also chronicles the everyday anxieties (losing car keys, worrying about a leaky faucet, making room for books) that can temporarily overwhelm us. Pekar's paranoia and obsessive-compulsiveness makes him an acute observer of others and himself. So The Quitter is of interest to students of psychology (and especially the psychology of creativity) as well as Pekar fans.*
Haspiel's artwork captures Pekar's neuroses with clarity and expressiveness, nicely blending past and present in contiguous panels. Representative is a two-page spread, with the mature Harvey's profile on the margins of both pages and the middle section filled with "memories." It's not simply clever paneling. It's sensitive artwork.
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* Although perhaps obvious, it's important to point out that Pekar in fact isn't a "quitter" when it comes to his passions. He's been a music critic since 1959, he's continued with American Splendor through the lean as well as the fat years, and he throws himself into his passions (such as literature) wholeheartedly. He seems devoted to his wife and daughter. And let's not forget that he stuck out his VA job for thirty-odd years.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A great pre-quel to the Pekar oeuvre
Comment: Anyone who has encountered portions of *American Splender* knows just how cranky its eclectic protagonist can be. Pekar isn't warm and fuzzy, and his illustrators haven't tried to soften the edges. In *The Quitter*, a more continuous narrative than Pekar typically produces, the reader encounters a three-dimensional portrait the artist as a young man. For this reader, the depth of character development, and Haspiel's thoughtful artwork, with its steady lines and half-tones, give *The Quitter* a depth that I found particularly satisfying.
To my pleasure, this is not a sob story of early life: as it turns out, young Harvey was deeply flawed, hot-tempered, and pugnacious. But the humanity of the story and its narrator are moving, and they provide a satisfying backstory for a man who later chose not to leave his (extraordinarily undemanding) job as a file clerk. Especially interesting is the evolution of Pekar as a jazz critic and true working-class intellectual, alienated from academia by the bourgeois values of American college students but also constitutionally unable to overcome his anxieties and stick with anything once challenged.
If you're someone who has recognized the merits of Pekar's work but you've struggled to "like" it, read this book. For die-hard Pekar fans, be aware that the book will be a departure, far more narrative and continuous that the usual fare. Some such readers tell me they do not like *The Quitter* nearly so much as the more typical Pekar vignette.
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Summary: Tremendous and honest writer paired with an excellent artist
Comment: 2005 saw the release of some terrific graphic novels. There was new and collected work by Dan Clowes, Joann Sfar, Charles Burns, Will Eisner, Chris Ware and many others. But my favorite is the new book by Harvey Pekar, drawn by Dean Haspiel: The Quitter. I didn't know what to make of it when I heard Pekar's next book was being published by Vertigo/DC. I like the vast majority of stuff they publish, but they lean toward genre material and I couldn't see Pekar writing Sandman-style dark fantasy or horror. I would have given it a try, though, because Pekar's a tremendous and honest writer and Haspiel is an excellent artist.
The Quitter is the story of Pekar's childhood and young adulthood. It details the events and influences that have shaped his life, which he has chronicled in "American Splendor" for the past 30 years. It's quite a catalog of neuroses, the sort of thing only someone who has come to terms with the mistakes and misjudgments of his life could write. Haspiel's art evokes the period well. And if it ends a bit abruptly, well, many of the stories Pekar glosses over near the end have been told in the various "American Splendor" series and collections.
By the way, if you want to see what Pekar can do with genre material, he has a story in the new issue of "The Escapist" published by Dark Horse Comics.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Personal Best
Comment: For every boy who feeled he failed his father..For Every man who lived in his father's shadow..For every son who craved his father approval and never recieved it..For those sons who felt the guilt of not living up to expectation of his parents... this book is your story
American Splendor's Harvey Pekar writes another autobiographical graphic novel about his childhood with his father and family. Labeled the Quitter, this brutual honest piece speaks volumes.
Its poignancy, as Pekar Splendor stories, are worth its weight in gold. With Dean Haspiel's art, thgis Pekar tale is given a new liveliness
all I need to say is that Vertigo books, who publishes this one, should do more of Pekar's work...and Harvey, when is another Splendor collection coming?
Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD
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Summary: My Only Complaint is That It's Too Short
Comment: This is a completely enjoyable book that I'm glad I own. Dean Haspiel's art style is clean, clear and very mature. When I first received the book and flipped through it, the images seemed too stark and simplistic for Pekar's writing, but he really won me over after several pages. Pekar's storytelling is great, as usual (although since he has become a bonafide celebrity and a recognized master of his craft, we no longer have the feeling of being the confidant of a nondescript Cleveland file clerk). So I recommend the book, with one complaint: The story ends very abruptly, at a point where you really want to hear more. For instance, we're introduced to Pekar's first wife, and then she just vanishes with no explanation of how the relationship ended. For that reason, although I loved the book, it left me feeling unsatisfied.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Harvey Pekar, the acclaimed creator and subject of the American Book Award-winning biopic American Splendor, tells the story of his troubled teen years when he would beat up other kids just to win the approval of his peers in this paperback edition of his virtuoso graphic novel. When he failed to impress, whether on the football team, in math class, in the Navy or on the job, he simply gave up. This true tour-de-force is the universal tale of a young man’s search for himself through the frustrations, redemptions and complexities of ordinary life.
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