Harvey Pekar, R.I.P.
He was a great and original jazz critic, an entertaining movie inspiration and "star," the smartest and sharpest of David Letterman's 1980s gang of real-world curiosities, and the prime original creative force and inspiration for one of the most important (though its dominance is sometimes overstated) trends in modern literary comics, the quotidian autobiography.
He was Harvey Pekar, and he died very early this morning at his Cleveland home.
Pekar was one of the few writers of whom I can say I can and do read everything he writes with great pleasure, whether it's about the music of Sonny Stitt, the writings of I.J. Singer, or his trip to the market to buy bread.
I reviewed Pekar's graphic biography of libertarian troublemaker Michael Malice at Reason Online.
See him jousing with Letterman in the good old days, in their final battle:
