This book meanders its way through Cleveland’s history and episodes from Pekar’s life with the rambling cadence of a stroll through an old neighborhood.

Even with so much of the focus on historical facts, Pekar finds plenty of moments to delight in the splendor of being alive.

He was a very sensitive person, which I think led the public who knew him from his Letterman appearances (if they knew him at all) to pin him as “just” a curmudgeon, but his heart and his work were as attuned to joy and beauty as they were to struggle and injustice, and he writes about each subject with the openness and vulnerability of a person who doesn’t know how to be any other way.

Reading Pekar always reminds me just how much purpose and possibility there is to be found in the life of a “regular guy” like me.