Michaelis is at his best articulating the appeal of "Peanuts" through the decades. In the 1950s it struck a chord with people feeling guilty over their vague discontent amid historic postwar prosperity (Linus watching a leaf fall: "Nobody's happy where they are"). In the 1960s it expressed the struggle of young people reaching for inchoate freedoms and pondering the meaning of existence (Snoopy, wondering why he was put on Earth: "I haven't got the slightest idea"). More than anything, "Peanuts" upended the belief that childhood is a time of innocence and happiness, for a child's pain is more acute than an adult's. "Charlie Brown reminded people … of what it was to be vulnerable, to be small and alone in the universe, to be human," writes Michaelis, "—both little and big at the same time."
-- From Sharon Begley's review of David Michaelis' "Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography,"
5 comments:
i have always felt a very close bond with linus. and now, thanks to you, i can share that special feeling with snoopy.
so this is what you do at 3:48 am.
yeah, that's pretty much 3:48 am in a nutshell!
HD WQED is running a documentary on Charles Schultz that is pretty good -- it might be on on regular QED too, I'm not sure. Also there's an article about him in the next issued of the New Yorker that is already online. The crazy thing about Charles Schultz is that there isn't much to say about him -- he's a very boring guy. Best thing in the documentary was someone telling some story about him going to some public parade or something where there were going to be thousands of fans and him having a panic attack and having to leave.
I saw the Schultz documentary, that's what prompted the post. They showed the Linus strip i highlighted in my post and at that moment it just struck me as universal truth. And i wanted to put the strip up on here but that was all I could find.
Yeah, I really don't know what I think about Charles Schultz, he could almost be a creep but he wasn't?
You should delete that comment above, looks like spam.
About C. Shultz I think the thing with him is that he was all screwed up from not getting to marry who he was actually in love with because her parents wouldn't let her, and then he was so square and it was such a socially conservative time that he couldn't not get married to somebody so he married that lady who he had all the kids with but never loved her and she was a crazy gold-digging harpy. Anyway that was the vibe I got.
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