Friends, They Are Jewels Pt. 2 Owatonna, MN/Columbus, WI

If you’re bound to see every last brick Louis Sullivan laid atop another, the last century made your job easier. By the 70s, most of Sullivan’s buildings were smashed and scattered, and in a useless bit of serendipity, seeing Sullivans has turned into one-stop shopping. A single Sullivan, the Bayard-Condict Building, exists in New York, while one apiece stand in Buffalo (the Guaranty Building) and St. Louis (the Wainwright). Two of Sullivan’s tombs remain in sight of one another in Chicago’s gracious Graceland Cemetery, while the third beautifully endures at St. Louis’ lovely Bellefontaine Cemetery. Looking for more? The Chicago Loop offers a short walking tour sporting two masterpieces (the Auditorium and Carson Pirie Scott store) and two lesser, but interesting edifices, the Jewelers’ building on Wabash and the Gage Group on Michigan. What we’ve lost in beautiful, inspirational, aspirational architecture, we’ve gained in shoe leather.

The hard part comes with making your way to those buildings showing Sullivan’s clockwork essence—the so-called “jewel boxes.” Prepare to drive through much of the Midwest’s green emptiness to reach these little treasures. In the past few months my wife, son, and I have done just that. Three down, five to go.

Erected between 1908 and 1919. The jewel boxes—all banks, save one—count as the last manifestations of Louis Sullivan’s talent. While partnered with architect/engineer Dankmar Adler in the 1890s, the man turned out literal masterpieces and created a new and vibrant American architecture. Then the rich people decided they didn’t want a new and vibrant American architecture, and Louis was kicked to the curb (not helped by the fact that he was an argumentative cuss). His last few years were spent destitute, drunk, and living on handouts from ex-student/employee Frank Lloyd Wright and the infrequent commission. His books The Autobiography of an Idea and Kindergarten Chats and the jewel boxes account for much of Sullivan’s creative output in his last decade. While none of the banks count as his final work (that would be the facade of the Krause Music Store), they are his last fully realized buildings. Created with limited budgets and far from the grandeur of the Auditorium, Wainwright, or Guaranty, the banks remain little triumphs from dark days.

Making our way to International Falls last week, my wife, son, and I stopped in Owatonna, MN, and Columbus, WI, to see two of the banks.1 While charming towns indeed, there’s not much reason to travel to either place unless you either (a) plan to settle down or (b) have a fetish for doomed Victorian architects. If it’s the latter, you’ll be satisfied.

Listen. Let me communicate what I call The Moment.

When one of the banks comes into sight an hour after exiting the interstate; winding down county roads edged with corn stalks and ramshackle barns; motoring through shiny plastic corridors of fast food restaurants, gas stations, and retail outlets… The Moment takes place. For me, it’s a thrill equal to 20 Christmas mornings. Imagine walking through your neighborhood, turning the corner, and finding the Taj Mahal or Sagrada Família in pocket-sized form. Seeing human potential at its zenith is always affecting.

The National Farmer’s Bank provides The Moment in shimmering, scintillating waves. The bank is big—the biggest of all the jewel boxes—and visually dominates the quaint town center with its monolithic boxiness, stained glass windows, and alien ornamentation. Much is made of Sullivan’s ornamentation, but his sense of placement is overlooked. The National Farmer’s Bank belongs there. Massive and making its presence felt, but not so big as to dwarf the surrounding buildings. It sits on its corner like an elegant grande dame, the ornate green corner cartouches hanging from her like jewelry.

Founded by Mr. Leonard Loomis Bennett, the bank enjoyed enough fat years to warrant a new building. Bennett’s son, Carl Bennett, was an artistic sort who dutifully left behind Harvard’s music school and a potential career as a conductor/composer, to assume control of the family business. To Sullivan’s benefit, Bennett’s studies introduced him to the Chicago architect’s work and ideas. “I want that,” Mr. Bennett may have said, and he commissioned Sullivan in 1909 to work his magic.Bennett shelled out $125,000 for the project, which works out to about $2 million today.

As mentioned, Louis didn’t work alone.  George Elmslie—a Sullivan protege helped with the drafting and design. Greatly helped, in  fact, as some references I’ve encountered state that he may have designed most of the bank—arguably, however, Sullivan’s influence and eye rule. The stained glass was created by Chicago artisan Louis J. Millet while the murals of horses, farmers, and a cabal of staring cows were painted by muralist Oskar Gross. By most accounts, Sullivan didn’t play well with others. He must have had some rapport with Elmslie, Millet, and Gross, because it all fits together. Hell, it breathes.

The Rust Belt and Iron Range don’t lack for depressed towns, but while Owatonna and Columbus display the usual historical downtown stagnation (few new or even late 20th century buildings), they seem to be doing all right. At the least they appear to appreciate what they have in the banks and take their custodianship seriously. I’m reminded of that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when they find the knight who’s both guarded and been sustained by the Holy Grail for centuries. Funny that. I don’t want to suggest that Christ’s love has preserved the bank—that would be nuts—but Owatonna does give off a Christian vibe. This wasn’t helped by the guitarist who sang about the Nazarene in the park’s bandshell across the way. Nice town square, I must say, with a beautiful, old, Gothic fire station. If we had more time I would have liked to explore the town further (I had the same experience as this fellow, discovering that two  Elmslie homes were nearby. Shucks). 2

(Note: The below photos are reversed. The first 18 photos are of the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Columbus, WI. Just FYI.)

Ah, the bank, yes.

The bank was impressive on the outside, but walking through its low and flat lobby and entering the main chamber was breathtaking. I felt myself choke up for a moment as I beheld the bank’s Elmslie-ornamented clock; four massive and resplendent, 2.25 ton, cast-iron electroliers; gold-stenciled arches; and the unbelievable illuminated symphony of green and amber light cast by the Elmslie/Millet stained glass windows. Maybe it was momentary Stendahl syndrome. Enter a particularly pretty church from the good old days and you’ll get the same sensation.

The National Farmer’s Bank hasn’t arrived in the 21st Century wholly intact. Some misguided attempts to upgrade the bank’s interior over the years led to the removal of ornamentation, some of which has been replaced. The lovely teller window grates aren’t originals, for instance, but are instead well-crafted repros (an original screen can be seen at the Sullivan photography exhibit currently at the Art Institute, But you won’t… you just can’t be disappointed when you ascend the staircase to the balcony behind the Elmslie clock and check out the view.

I’m not one for exaggeration, but the building is damn near perfect. It has balance, warmth, and soul, and was created with human beings, not drones, in mind (a teller I spoke to said she looked forward to working there every day). I have seen many buildings and my share of Sullivans, but never a building so emblematic of the man’s ideas. It’s almost autobiographical. Gazing about, you can peer back a century and read his mind.

*****

On our way back to Chicago we encountered sweltering heat, and I was worried that I might have to sweet talk Mike and her father (who was traveling with us) into making a stop-over in Columbus, WI. Fortunately, I was cheated, CHEATED!, by the Fates and Gods of Travel over a handful of other sites I wanted to see (the Frank Lloyd Wright gas station—the only one he ever designed—and several Paul Bunyan statues I knew about in Brainerd, MN. Yes, I have many strange levels.), and I (easily) convinced them I was due another bank. I kid. Both were as impressed with the Owatonna bank as I was and willingly supported my madness. But lordy, lordy, it was HOT.

If the Owatonna bank is Sullivan’s church, the Columbus bank is his chapel. Slim, petite, sedate, and meditative. I don’t want to try to read Sullivan’s mind too much, but it’s as if the man who said a skyscraper should be “Every inch a soaring thing.” and whose works are often described as symphonies in stone, began looking inward. To use another Sullivan quote—recalled and beautifully illustrated by the recent documentary Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture—”Remember the seed germ.” By which Sullivan meant, I think—to look to nature, and consider what can grow from a bare idea. A hundred or so Farmers and Merchants Banks could fit snugly into the Auditorium, yes, but if, of all of Sullivan’s works, this single bank survived, we could still look at it, grasp the gist of his philosophy, and mentally “rebuild” his lost works. Plus, it’s mighty cute.

The Farmers and Merchants Union Bank isn’t just the last of the jewel boxes, it was Sullivan’s final building, and the only edifice he put his full name to, on the terra cotta facade, chiseled beneath the bank’s name and painted in gold on the marble lintel (Sullivan got cute and placed his initials on the Carson Pirie Scott Building’s rotunda).

Built a decade after the National Farmer’s Bank, despite the falling of Sullivan’s fortunes his talent remained undiminished. The outside is more “jewel boxy” than the Owatonna bank—compact and seemingly delicate, while retaining a sense of restrained power and solidity—Bruce Lee versus Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sullivan was commissioned by bank owner J. Russell Wheeler, who, according to the bank’s Web site, was leaning toward the humdrum but popular Greek/Roman temple look for his itty-bitty bank. His wife Mrs. Anna-May Wheeler disagreed, bless her heart. Having seen photos of the Ohio and Minnesotan banks, she talked her spouse into hiring Sullivan. It seems likely that Mr. Wheeler never mentioned his desire for a wee temple. The three became good friends, despite Sullivan’s acidic and sarcastic rant in Kindergarten Chats (as Lynn Becker reminded me), insisting that if bankers demanded Roman temples, the banker should “…wear a toga, sandals, and conducts his business . . . in Latin.” Sullivan stayed with the Wheelers whenever he was in town to supervise construction.

If there was nothing else behind the facade, that would have been fine. The red to blue brick provides cool, shady gravitas to the building. The leafy, fractalling ornamentation by Elmslie, of course, is vintage Sullivan, albeit with a couple of lions and eagles that seem oddly out of place for the anti-classicist. Entering, the coolness continues with a long, hall-lake interior, making the most of the lot’s oblong shape. Up and to the right, the stained glass lets sea-green and amber-tinged sunlight shine in and wash over the brown brick and green marble teller stations. What a beauty. A very nice lady who worked at the bank took us up to the balcony, the only admonishment being that we couldn’t take shots over the teller line. Fine with me. I took a nice shot of the stained glass, and walked about admiring the cluttered displays of documents, recovered fragments, and shots of Johnny Depp posing with bank employees when he was there, filming Michael Mann’s plodding Public Enemies. The footage wasn’t used: more fool Michael Mann for doing so. Special treat, the bank has Sullivan’s blueprints on display.

As a final note, a pretty bronze lamp stands on corner table. Sullivan donated the lamp to the bank upon completion of the project, placing it, according to the sign, on that very spot. While I’m guessing the lamp was moved or stored during renovations and suchlike, it’s a thoughtful tradition, compared to the wholesale slaughter Sullivan’s buildings have experienced in his adopted  city. And what a perfect gesture, leaving an illuminating device at the heart of the last architectural jewel he ever “cut.”

1. We visited the bank in West Lafayette, IN, not too long ago. It was disappointing, for obvious reasons. I do advise stopping by, if only to see the (sadly truncated) exterior.

2. Hardcore architectural travelers may wish to consult this page of Prairie School architecture before heading out.

3. The Columbus Public Library, designed by Elmslie, is also worth a look-see if you happen to be town for the bank. Just take a gander across the street.3.

“The male mice’s testicles were no longer pink.”

My cat has been having trouble with his eyes, so he’s made several visits to the vet in recent weeks. Vet visits are an in and out proposition, but this time Nate was with us, so I minded him while Mike consulted with the vet. Having a little more time to spend in the waiting room, I picked up a copy of Tails (“celebrating the relationship between pets and their people.”). Thank goodness I did, because when I reached the back cover I saw this giant scoop of mindfuck. It’s a dog food ad. I say this because its ultimate purpose appears to be selling dog food. Unlike Purina, however, these folks aren’t just selling dog food, they’re selling… Well, I’ll let you find out.

Look at My Dumb! Gee, You’re Thumb!

I love a good hoax or practical joke, but the gist of the Dry Erase Board Jenny hoax seems to be, “Ha ha! You thought she was real! But she wasn’t!” There’s no game here, other than, I suspect, an attempt to garner some hits with a hot piece of… Uh, a very pretty girl.

The moral, I suppose, is that you shouldn’t believe everything you see on the Internet. Hardly a new piece of advice, yes? At the end of the day, we come away from this hoax not chuckling, but with a feeling of disappointment that a young woman who’d been sexually harassed hadn’t wreaked revenge on her pig boss. Let me highlight that word: disappointment. I’ll come back to it later.

First, I’d like to address what I’ve just decided to call the “impractical joke.” I had a friend who pulled plenty of impractical jokes that left me more confused than amused or embarrassed. Once he left a note on my desk (I believe he had a female friend write it for him, to achieve a more girly look and feel) “from” another woman at work. The note stated that she knew I enjoyed Nintendo video games (which I did), and maybe we could hook up, play a few at her house, and brush up on our skills. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Something like that. Sexually speaking, I’d hit a dry spell, and I likely would have grabbed most any opening a woman offered me (snicker). However, something didn’t gibe.

A Nintendo date? What the hell is a Nintendo date? If it was sincere, why wouldn’t this woman simply approach me and ask me out? Is this a gag, and if so, what’s the punchline? And again: Nintendo? Maybe it sounds funny in this context. I think I’m making it sound funnier than it was. I was mostly perplexed. I was especially perplexed since I didn’t recognize the woman’s name, and there’s the rub.

I walked over to where my friend and a few other co-workers were standing and asked, “Anyone know what this is all about?” (Note: I’m a lousy subject for practical jokes. I already expect to be handed an exploding cigar or to sit on a whoopee cushion at any given moment).

“I don’t know, Dan. Did you talk to _____________? You should really follow that up!”

“No, because I have no idea who this woman is,” I replied.

“Well, maybe you should talk to her (giggle, titter). I bet you have a lot in common,” he answered.

“Um, I’d have to know who she is first.”

“You know…” and he gestured to another part of the office. “She’s in sales. Over there.”

“Huh?” I replied.

My lack of reaction showed that the jig was up, or that, at least, I wasn’t about to make an ass out of myself. Like I said, practical jokes are wasted on me.

“I wrote it,” said my alleged friend. “This is _________. You know, she has legs like stovepipes.”

I shrugged. I had no clue who he was talking about. Now it was just uncomfortable.

He walked me over to a place where we could see her sitting in her cubicle. She was middle-aged, frumpy, dumpy, and, God forgive me, ugly as sin.

Ah, there’s the gag. Ha. Ha.

Ha.

“You know, if you play a practical joke, it should make sense,” I told my friend. “It shouldn’t be mean, either.”

He shrugged. He probably still thinks he pulled a long con on the level of the Spanish Prisoner.

The Dry Erase Board Jenny gag wasn’t mean, but it wasn’t all that amusing either; more accurately, it was no longer amusing once it was revealed to be hooey. Also, as I said, there was no context; no chance for a sharp individual to know he or she was being gaffed. We assumed this young woman had quit her job, and despite the 20/20 hindsight of the “I knew it all the time” crowd, it wasn’t immediately obvious that we were being gulled. It’s as if I said to you, “I’m going to give you $20.” Then, when you put out your hand I’d laugh and say, “Ha ha! Dumbshit! You believed me!” Impractical. People thought they were reading an amusing story, but they weren’t. Ba-dump-bump. My goodness, it doesn’t even perform the primary practical joke function of pricking at anyone’s pride. I’d add that it mostly worked because of the site’s lack of high profile. The Chive is apparently known for practical jokes, so I guess that’s an argument for taking anything they say with some skepticism… but only if you’d heard of them. Which I hadn’t. I wonder how many others have?

Some might suggest this is yet another lesson that the Internet, if not life itself, must always be approached with a belief that everyone is trying to fuck you blue, and if you ever, EVER fall for a gag, hoax, or scam, you had it coming. I am a fairly skeptical person who isn’t prone to abusing his emotions, but I haven’t reached the point where I could live with such a clenched mind and pickled heart. I appreciate skepticism and pragmatism, but reflexive cynicism is the province of dull minds.

Coming back to the concept of disappointment… While I hate describing anything as a trend (that should be left to the Times, which sees trends everywhere the way paranoiacs see Men in Black 1), Dry Erase Board Jenny typifies a notion that keeps popping up in the media: you cannot fight back. Jenny was fake. A young woman tormented by a chauvinist boss zings him beautifully in public… But she didn’t. She didn’t exist. That ‘s a little sad. 2

Let’s review: We were gleeful when this charming young lady stuck it to The Manâ„¢, or rather the little The Manâ„¢ most of us face day in and day out. Then the rug was pulled out. The redemptive final board that said she knew things would turn out okay (which, largely, is how life works. That’s “okay,” not “perfect,” by the way) was invalidated. In the same day, we learned that after the flight attendant’s final speech and beer-swilling slide to freedom, he was not just fired but arrested. Arrested. Fictionally, more and more TV shows build up adversaries who know all, have infinitely deep pockets, and are untouchable—leading to the grim spectacle of watching Our Heroes in a continual cycle of futility. Nietszche explained that we enjoy watching tragedies because we thank the gods it’s not happening to us. Dry Erase Board Jenny goes a step further brings the tragedy home, saying, “Idiots. You didn’t really think there was hope, did you?”

I dislike the Dilbertian attitude of giggling through hell. “Ha ha! The people in charge are incompetent monsters! Ho ho! We’re doomed to repeat the same monotonous, soul-killing tasks again and again! Hee hee! Nothing can be done! Get back to your cube, swallow your daily shit-lump, and let your supervisor grab your crotch, or The Manâ„¢ will have you wearing a paper hat by day’s end! Hahahahahahahahahaha!”

What? Don’t you get it? 3

Notes:

1. When Megan Jasper of Sub Pop pranked the Times by creating a list of nonexistent grunge slang words the Old Grey Lady published without verification, THAT was funny as hell. Why? Because the Times could have solved it all with a few phone calls. Moreover, the terms were so insanely stupid (Big bag of bloatation? Swingin’ on the flippity-flop? Wack slacks?), it’s difficult to believe the article passed through the hands of the editorial profession’s supposed creme de la creme. Again, it’s all about context.

In the spirit of the grungespeak list, I’ll grant that the invention of the word “HPOA/HOPA” was ingenious. I do suspect the Chive folks ran over to urbandictionary.com and added it because people like me might seek verification. Ha ha! I thought that urbandictionary.com was a viable source! What a dope!

2. Arguably, another tip-off that this was a hoax was that Jenny was an aspiring broker, and as such, would have no conscience.

3. They were wise not to say that “Jenny” was groped, propositioned, or otherwise directly threatened. I’d like to know how many feminists, lawyers, and general activists were ready to rain holy hell on her former place of employment strictly on the basis of her being described as a “hot piece of ass.” I wonder how much the Chive people thought this through?

Sorry, Kane

I guess this qualifies as a bootleg toy. Alien-inspired Whac-a-Mole game in a pizza place (Giovanni’s) in International Falls, MN. Actually, this is awesome.

Added bonus: Bizarre art from a spider-stomping game. Same principle as Whac-a-Mole, kind of, except you use your feet.

I Collect Soda Pop Bottles

My latest acquisitions from a neat little antique store in International Falls, MN. If you weren’t aware that I collected bottles, my criteria are simple.

1. I prefer fired-on labels. But since most modern pops (I’m from the Midwest and Chicago, so I call it “pop”) have paper labels, I’m willing to give a local pop with a paper/printed label  a place in my collection if it’s (a) tasty and (b) particularly striking. Mostly, I like the fired-on labels. They just look better. Plastic bottles are anathema to me.

2. Beautiful/interesting/crazy art.

3. Optimistic names, or names that promise health, social status, and happiness.

Maybe I’ll start photographing my entire collection and run it here.

Fun fact: Most antique soda pop bottles are recovered from old privies.

He Holds Up a Mirror to Society, and It Is a Tacky Mirror

A.O. Scott demonstrates the tendency to try too hard to validate Todd Solondz’s plodding, soulless movie-making.

“He is unsparing in his attack on the complacencies of the suburban upper middle class, but to describe his attitude as cruel or contemptuous is to miss the compassion and the almost rabbinical ethical seriousness that drives his inquiries. And to take a movie like “Life During Wartime” as satire is to simplify its intentions and effects.”

Oh dear God. And here I was worrying there would never be another film attacking the complacencies of the suburban upper middle class. Just the other day I was telling my wife, “If ONLY there were some suburban upper middle class auteur who would take on their suburban upper middle class upbringing, so suburban upper middle class persons like myself could see how complex we are, and how our complacencies must be attacked.”

Solondz is neither cruel nor contemptuous, compassionate nor ethical. He’s witless, dull, and formulaic, staking out dark territory and wrapping it in that glacial, glassy-eyed Raymond Carver/John Updike style that charms the pseudo-intellectuals. The man takes the worst society has to offer and makes it, through some unknowable process, both creepy AND boring. I picture Solondz sitting down before each film, writing down nouns like “Rapist,” “Pederast,” and “Victim” and verbs like “Molest,” “Murder,” and “Rape” on slips of paper, throwing them in a hat, then picking them out at random to create characters and their motivations. Next he creates a timeline of disintegration, compounded by having not one but several characters’ lives slowly and painfully implode.

Solondz’s ability to get high-caliber actors such as Dylan Baker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and others to mouth his twaddle is inexplicable to me, since it’s only by the power of their acting chops that his films are remotely watchable. It’s like watching Andres Segovia carry a garage band. Dylan Baker performed the amazing act of making a child rapist likable, though at the end of the day you need to ask yourself why. Answer: Solondz, in his desire to attack those dang complacencies, just wanted to sucker-punch us. Baker’s life is finished. His relationship with his son is irrevocably damaged. His family is destroyed. The community is in witch hunt mode. Fuck you. The end. Epilogue: Why in God’s name did we need a likable child rapist in the cinematic pantheon?

I’m sure it’s proposed that any negative criticism of Solondz films is based in prejudice because his films are hard to watch. Solondz’s films are hard to watch, it is proposed (as I infer), because they reveal that which we would rather not face. This is compounded, or rather muddled, by Solondz’s addition of an insincere jigger of emotion. By God, his characters may be damaged and unappealing, but they’re still human, and thus they deserve our sympathy. Roger Ebert (a Solondz supporter), said, if I may crib from the Wikipedia entry for Happiness,

“…the depraved are only seeking what we all seek, but with a lack of ordinary moral vision…In a film that looks into the abyss of human despair, there is the horrifying suggestion that these characters may not be grotesque exceptions, but may in fact be part of the mainstream of humanity.”

Reall? Ebert is a national treasure, but every now and then even he slides into ponderous-sounding muck. It sounds good, but apply the above sentiment to, say, John Wayne Gacy, or maybe just a pedophile priest. Still think they’re part of humanity’s mainstream, rather than walking horrors? Does someone need a hug?

You know why I like the show Dexter? Because it knows it’s satire/black comedy and clearly displays itself as such. Solondz’s films are described as satire, but his supporters really don’t want them to be. Labeled as black comedy, they’d lack the ambiguity that engenders gravitas. They’d be shown up as the crutch-kicking melodramas they really are. Also, they’d have to be funny in some way.

Solondz is accused of hating his characters. I don’t think he hates them. You can’t hate them because they’re made of cardboard, floating along on the windy whims of his plots and damp with crocodile tears.

Are his films challenging? Yes, in the way it’s hard to watch a kid with a runny nose licking away at his upper lip. But perhaps the booger-eater is a comment on society’s hypocrisy, and when we watch the vile little snot-gobbler, aren’t we just watching ourselves?

No, we’re not. And you’re trying too hard if you think we are in Todd Solondz’s movies.

Side note: I think Solondz first introduced Jane Adams in her perfect victim role. As Todd Field has proven, if you ever need a helpless, fragile as a glass unicorn whipping girl in your movie, hire Jane Adams. She always looks like she’s on the verge of hysterical tears, and won’t tell anyone what you did, no matter how many cigarettes you stubbed out on her.

How to Declare an Unsung Genius, No Matter How Rightfully Unsung He or She May Be

1. Find a period in history during which great strides were made in a particular artistic field and/or large groups of noteworthy individuals were lauded for their inarguable levels of talent.

2. Note appearances of peripheral attention-seeking figures (PASFs) in the noteworthy individuals’ lives. You may need to go all the way back to art school.

Look for these qualities:

a. Was the PASF known for outrageous behavior, usually to a distracting degree? (e.g., Nakedness in the classroom, nakedness in a public fountain (a classic), or nakedness in the shower, while others were trying to shower alone).

b. Did the PASF dress funny? Was it funnier than you’d expect for the time period? (e.g,, green hair during the Regency period, live animal hats in the Jazz Age, scrap metal undergarments at any given time)

c. Was the PASF stoned to the gills six days a week and unconscious the remaining day?

d. Were they sexually active to a degree that didn’t seem quite right? (e.g. voluminous anonymous group sex in public bathrooms with albino quadriplegic dwarves)

e. Was the PASF expelled from an educational institution because the instructors were close-minded simpletons who lacked vision by insisting the PASF turn in assignments?

f. Was the PASF frequently involved in criminal actions that seem amusingly quirky now, but which would piss off the reader if he or she were the PASF’s target today?

g. Did the PASF perform some stupid-ass action that done got their ass killed?

Having three or more of the above traits in their goodie bag is a good start for the PASF’s qualification as an unsung genius. Unsung geniuses don’t just live… they live, live, LIVE! (i.e., acted like selfish assheads.)

3. Going back to that golden epoch of artistry (e.g. the Renaissance, 1940s New York, any urban nightclub environment during the late 1970s), observe what took place about a year before anything interesting happened. Note the PASF’s behavior:

a. Did they appear onstage, play guitar badly, shout out a few lyrics, stumble around, vomit, and then pass out? Did the crowd, according to the two old-timers who swear they were there remember that the crowd howled for their blood, because their minds could not accept the violent and uncompromising truth they just saw, even though it took place at a church talent show? Congratulations, your PASF invented punk rock.

b. Was their creative output so minimal as to be nonexistent? Did their pamphlet, 7″, song fragment, or doodle inspire a larger work by a greater talent? Can you at least draw an imaginary line between it and, say, Ulysses or van Gogh’s Starry Night? Go ahead. Nobody’s looking.

c. Did they inspire more noteworthy artists through bizarre behavior, joyless fucking, extended crying jags, and destruction of the artists’ works, homes, and egos? Did this “inspiration” give way to productivity when they were finally driven off or died?

4. When presenting your theories, be sure to buy into your own bullshit, and forget that you’re engaging in revision for the sake of self-promotion. You really DO believe that this person was overlooked by all the major scholars of a field out of spite, obstinacy, or, I dunno, just to poke holes in their credibility and make their jobs harder. Goddamn it, it stands to reason.

Harvey Pekar Made Me the Man I Am Today (Sort of)

Harvey Pekar died yesterday. If the name doesn’t ring a bell you probably weren’t a comic collector in the 80s and 90s, or you missed the film version of Pekar’s comic American Splendor where Pekar was played by Paul Giamatti (accompanied by James “Doc Venture” Urbaniak and Judah “30 Rock” Friedlander as Pekar friends R. Crumb and Toby). Pekar was an irascible writer and jazz critic who fell into comic-making. It helped that he was friends with R. Crumb, who illustrated several seminal American Splendor stories and covers in the early issues. Starting in 1976, Pekar—a file clerk at a veterans hospital for much of his life—wrote stories about his daily toils that other cartoonists illustrated. Once a year, American Splendor came out, bearing stories about Pekar’s record-collecting, job travails, home life, and general philosophizing (a friend referred to him as a “blue-collar philosopher,” which suited him well).

The critics and mass media took notice of Pekar in the mid-80s after Doubleday released a trade paperback anthology of his work. Comics were coming into their own then. Frank Miller created the Dark Knight (which is why people think of Christian Bale before they remember Adam West when they hear “Batman” now). Alan Moore was re-imagining comics with Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and Miracleman. Art Spiegelman was midway through Maus. Neil Gaiman shimmered into existence with the Sandman, and Dan Clowes, Seth, and Chris Ware were warming up in the minor leagues.

Harvey, however, had been going at it for awhile, and on his own dime. He published every issue himself, paying the artists for their work, and distributing the comic strictly by mail and word of mouth. This was during an age when comics were still the exclusive province of dorks, and it was unthinkable for normal folks to consider curling up with a comic, whatever the subject. The man thanklessly toiled in comics Siberia for many years, only emerging once in a while to appear on The Late Show with David Letterman.

(This story led to me reading New Grub Street, which remains one of my favorite and most influential books.)

I heard about Harvey and American Splendor through a friend of a friend. He had a copy of the trade paperback, which I borrowed and devoured. I was, as you can imagine, different from most kids my age. Yes, I did the superhero thing through most of grade school and high school, but I needed something smarter. Then my friend (and his friend) introduced me to what we called, without irony, “alternative comics.” Alternative to what, you ask? DC and Marvel, and the adolescent male fascination with god-like men and women in spandex. Much of our taste was informed by the Comics Journal and Gary Groth’s take no prisoners criticism (which, when I read it now, reads more like a desperate, fretful, flailing attempt to be taken seriously), but while my friends took the hard-nosed “This Is Good/That Is Bad” approach, I just went with my gut. To this day I still don’t see what was so fantastic about Love and Rockets, though older me can appreciate the series’ lovely art. Comparatively, I saw something in the initial googiebation style of Dan Clowes’ Lloyd Llewellyn that bespoke greatness. Much of my taste and personal philosophy developed during this period, and American Splendor contributed to it in no small way.

Most reviewers, positive and negative, harped on Pekar’s everyday approach to storytelling. His life wasn’t adventurous; hell, most of the time it wasn’t even interesting in and of itself. Stories revolved around collecting jazz records, grocery shopping, finding a girlfriend, arguing at work, and so on. This was before a slew of GenEx cartoonists took Harvey’s idea and began churning out tales of their hand-to-mouth existences, toy collections, shitty dietary habits, and masturbation sessions. The difference was that Pekar was an introspective American polymath with a hardscrabble background. His type of personality and viewpoint, informed by the Beats, Yiddish culture, and old school lefties, isn’t so common anymore.

Pekar could be a major pain in the ass in his stories. Back when I was writing for a comic zine I was both in awe of his work and vexed by his selfishness. His worst comics usually dealt with his cheapness. One demonstrated how he kept crossing a street in New York to get free candy bars from street hawkers, filling an entire shopping bag. Intended to be humorous, I’m sure, it only seemed self-serving (though I did pick up the phrase “I gotta make hay while the sun shines.” from the comic’s final panel). Likewise the strips where he bitched about being ill-treated and unappreciated by editors, or, more memorably, on the Letterman show seemed like unreasoning self-immolation to my young, unpublished self. Re-watching that clip and rereading those old stories, however, after about 20 years of being a published writer, I found myself sympathizing with Pekar. The interviews aren’t Letterman’s finer moments, and while Pekar comes off like a grouchy nut, they reveal what a shallow fratrat Letterman could be back before the heart attack, baby, and blackmail attempt. Dave wanted Harvey to be a performing monkey—some crazy crank pulled off the street and bull-baited into crazed rants about not getting free donuts or what-have-you. Harvey wouldn’t have it, choosing instead to call out NBC’s parent company, GE on their evil ways. By not playing the game, Pekar was one of the few folks to strike Letterman dumb, and while I’ll always love Dave’s comedy, he needed to be taken down a peg or two back then. Banning Pekar for several years did not impress me, nor the nasty remark about Pekar’s “little Mickey Mouse weekly reader.” As it turned out, Pekar sold no more copies of American Splendor after appearing on the Late Show than he usually did. So much for the brass ring everyone kills themselves to reach.

Above all, I liked Pekar’s pragmatism. When he presented a thought on morality or manners, it was a rough-hewn jewel. The below panels still come back and speak to me after 25 years.

(Yes, John. I remember that Mike M. picked some of these panels too.)

I saw Harvey exactly twice, I think. But I might be splitting the same encounter into two separate ones. The superhero-loving fans at the 1986 Comicon didn’t know what to make of Pekar. As I recall, the fanboys swarmed Howard Chaykin, Steve Rude, and George Perez’s tables, but Pekar and his wife entertained a small group of four folks, three of whom were me and my friends. Pekar’s wife, Joyce, as I recall, was ranting about the appearance of the cover of American Splendor #4 on the back of a Dr. Demento LP (“That’s like fucking with MICKEY MOUSE!” she shrieked), and they chatted a little bit about sending the good doctor a cease and desist letter. Later on, when the “crowd” thinned out, and the somewhat scary Joyce had left, I walked over to Pekar’s table and asked him to sign my trade PB of American Splendor. “Sure,” he said, signing it with a simple, “To Dan, Harvey Pekar.” “I love your work, ” I opined with startling originality. “Well, thanks, man!” Pekar rasped. Then I told him what my favorite stories were: “How I Quit Collecting Jazz Records and Published a Comic Book with the Money I Saved” and a few others. I mentioned loving Crumb’s work, though I’d only just started collecting reprints of his underground comics  (again, this was pre-Internet, when complete compilations of most comic artists’ work weren’t readily available). “Yeah, Crumb is one of America’s finest cartoonists,” said Harvey, and he went on to describe his friend in large, historical terms. We chatted some more, and then I asked him if I could take a picture or two with my dopey little Instamatic for the comics-based amateur press alliance I wrote for back then. “Sure, sure,” said Pekar. Before taking this one he asked if he should be doing something. “Whatever you like,” I said. So he started stacking American Splendors. “All right! Harvey Pekar action shots!” I said, which made him chuckle.

Then I took this shot, which pretty much says it all about Mr. Harvey Pekar.

It kills me that, in these pictures, he’s only about four years older than I am right now.

A week after the con, I sent Pekar a fan letter, money and an order for a few more American Splendors, accompanied by the photos. He wrote back something like, “Dan, Thank you for the photos, which were good ones. Please pick an issue of AS of your choice.” Naturally, I was flabbergasted. For my poor 18-year-old self, this was incredible largesse… and from a TV celebrity no less! There’s that “elementary sense of social responsibility,” or as I wrote back, “Quid pro quo LIVES!”

R.I.P., Harvey. I haven’t followed American Splendor for quite some time, but I have to say that I’ll miss the man. He made comics a lot more interesting.

“And as He Folded the Paper, He Would Caress and Palpitate It to Orgasm…”

Eyugggh. I don’t know what’s worse: Zell’s blinkered, cost-cutting measures (right though he is about the inevitability of electronic papers, he’s only doing this because he can shave off a few more dollars and tie in with the iPad rather than imagining the democratic and artistic possibilities of all-electronic dissemination) or the inevitable batch of paper fetishist op-ed columns that will emerge as a result. If I read one more orgiastic memory of a grandfather carefully folding his newspaper as he reads it over coffee one Sunday morning, I’m going to hurl.