Word: quitters
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...Harvey Pekar's The Quitter and Shane White's North Country both tell powerful coming-of-age stories from completely different places and times. In spite of that, their similarities make for striking comparison reading. While either would make a fine addition to this growing sub-genre, to have both in one month feels almost gluttonous...
...peers, something he felt he never got from his parents. Other, ultimately self-defeating behaviors also manifest themselves. His drive to excel at everything eventually makes Pekar so deeply fearful of failure that he quits anything that challenges him: school sports, the navy and college. Among other things, The Quitter becomes a devastatingly sharp psychological portrait of how early adaptive childhood behaviors can eventually turn against...
...Pekar gets older in the book, The Quitter returns to one of the main themes of all Pekar's work: the redemptive power of art. During high school he discovers both a passion for jazz and a capacity for critical analysis. So, while toiling away at such unchallenging jobs as playground supervisor, beer inspector and file clerk, Pekar finds his self respect through writing about jazz for such publications as The Jazz Review and Downbeat. Later, of course, he also begins working in comix, a move he goes into briefly at the end. By the time it concludes, The Quitter...
Told from two generations later and a world apart, Shane White's North Country (NBM; 96 pages; $14) seems superficially completely different from The Quitter. Where Pekar explores the life of a Jewish immigrant's son in post-WWII urban America, White's experience is that of an nth-generation non-denominational Christian growing up as the child of Vietnam-era parents in the farmland of upstate New York. In spite of this, both books share themes of violence, the legacy of parental neglect, and the power of personal expression to move people beyond their crushing circumstances. For a first...
...Like The Quitter, North Country focuses on depicting the young author's various coping mechanisms, like playing dead under various pieces of furniture and out in the deep-piled snow, as well as the psychology behind them. Desperate for attention and approval, like Pekar, White both gets into fights and excels at school. Also like Pekar, at a crucial point a third person takes an interest in his special talents. For Pekar it was a New York jazz critic. For White, a woman at school encourages his talent at drawing, giving him a sense of purpose. Eventually, as Shane begins...