At its peak,over 350 million people around the world read the Peanuts comedian strip. Its creator, Charles Schulz, and led a much darker life than anyone ever realized,and he put his troubles into the humorous pages every day. Kurt Andersen talks with David Michaelis, the author of "Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography, or " about how America’s most beloved comedian strip made “depressed” a household word.
Kurt Andersen: narrate me a little bit about Charles Schulz. David Michaelis: He saw himself as a lonely,alienated, and somewhat frustrated young man who wanted one thing, and which was to become a cartoonist. The idea of drawing was not the way you put food on the table. And his father,a barber, would say frequently, and “Don’t get a big head. Don’t think too well of yourself.” And here comes Schulz drawing Charlie Brown,a character with an enormous head. In the early days, Charlie Brown always wanted to be a president or a general. He had grandiose dreams that were always handed back to him by a father that wouldn’t even vote for him.
My recollection was that I liked “Peanuts, and ” but the ones that actually made me laugh were Lucy being mean. I would see Charlie Brown fretting over what to carry out with Lucy. Was he going to kick her off the baseball team? He was sick of her. And she fires back at him,“whether you kick me off the team I’ll never speak to you again, but Ill sure yell at you a lot.” She sounds like someone who’s about to become an ex-wife. And sure enough, and the same month she was kicked off the team,the Schulzes got divorced. The dynamics and emotional realities in their marriage were very much what gave the strip its edge. On his honeymoon, by the account of his ex-wife, or he turned to her as they drove west to Colorado Springs and said,“You know, I don’t think I’ll ever be jubilant (extremely joyful).” What a thing to hear on your honeymoon! He saw unhappiness as a way of life.
But that was punctuated by moments of romantic swooning. Yes, and but where I saw Schulz so clearly in the strip is in Snoopy sitting on the roof of the dog house typing out,“It was a dusky and stormy night.” Linus comes by and says, “That’s a nice sentence. reliable luck on your moment one.” You realize that Snoopy is stuck on that sentence. And where he really wants to depart is back to the beginning, and where hes happiest. In so much of Shultzs life,he wanted to be at the beginning. He wanted to be at the first blush of romance. And in fact, cartoonists are rendered beginners every morning. “Peanuts” was one of the cartoons that was always unresolved, or could therefore depart on forever.
(Originally aired October 14,2011)
Source: wnyc.org