’Who is Harvey Pekar?’ asks comic-book icon Harvey Pekar in ’The Harvey Pekar Name Story,’ a 48-panel monologue devoted to the enduring mysteries of his unusual handle. Born in Cleveland in 1939, he is, or has been: a file clerk at the VA hospital there, a job he held for 37 years until retirement; a juvenile delinquent, college dropout, and failed army recruit; a jazz aficionado, critic, and record hustler; a Rust Belt anthropologist and antisocial shut-in; a ’driven, compulsive mad Jew’ (as friend and frequent collaborator R. Crumb calls him); an expansive talker, with a voice both sandpapered and musical; the son of immigrants from Bialystock; a cantankerous guest on Letterman; a book reviewer of zero pretense and maximum stamina who has braved seas of prose unleashed by the most daunting authors this side of Thomas Bernhard; a cancer survivor; a husband three times over; a guardian of a teenage girl; a loser; a mensch.

cantankerous (adj) 1: (British) stubbornly obstructive and unwilling to cooperate [syn: bloody-minded] 2: having a difficult and contrary disposition [syn: crotchety, ornery] – source: Losing His Voice