Schulz and Peanuts

Since last year my birthday fell on a Tuesday, I decided to celebrate it on a Sunday. My father was in the hospital, so it was just me, my mother and boyfriend. One of the gifts I received was David Michaelis' biography of an American master, Schulz and Peanuts. It took one week for me to read the 500+ pages, a task that would have been completed even sooner if not for the death of my father one day before I turned thirty.

His passing became inextricably linked with the book in my mind. I have only in my entire life cried over the passing of two human beings: my father and Charles Schulz.

Great controversy followed Schulz and Peanuts, the children of Mr. Schulz bemoaning the inordinate amount of space Mr. Michaelis gives to the single known infidelity Schulz committed. Oldest son Monte has been the most vocal critic of the authors approach, accusing Michaelis of taking a single angle--the Artist as Bitter Prick--and running with any anecdote that bolsters this view while downplaying and ignoring those events in Schulz' life that indicated a more emotionally well-rounded individual.

Anyone who loves Peanuts should read the book. It provides numerous insights that illuminate several running gags: Schulz' divorce written in as Charlie Brown kicking Lucy off the baseball team; an illicit affair turned into Snoopy falling in love; and those are just the most salacious examples. Throughout, Michaelis wisely uses reprinted strips to buttress anecdotal text. There are also a wealth of photos which give face to many of the names in the Schulz universe, including the cousin who inspired the look and attitude of Peppermint Patty.

The book is depressing; I would have felt careworn at the end of it even had I not lost a parent. (The frequent quotes of Monte Schulz made it a more onerous task at times; "Monte" was my fathers nickname.) But the scope of it is nothing less than what a tremendous artist deserves. For fifty years, Charles Schulz maintained a world of children who were too wise to be just "cute". That was the genius of Peanuts. Anyone who would profess shock that Schulz was not exactly a child-loving, happy-go-lucky, eyes-wide-shut Christian didn't pay enough attention. Exactly how wholesome is a man who sets up his hero for failure after failure? Who revels in sending his creations head on into the oil slick of unrequited passions?

Michaelis' exploration of Schulz as despairing is done almost too well. That he felt he could not explore with equal zeal the happier moments in Schulz' life is a shame, for the reader and for Michaelis himself.

If there is one thing that gives the book value above all else it is that it deepens the strip. Peanuts is treated reverently, even if its creator is not; the comic strip is seen as a fictional masterwork, a half-century long discourse on the human condition that only a man of deep thoughts and feelings could construct. The gossip is ephemerally interesting; the art of the man lives and breathes so long as there is a world fit to contain it.