Charles Schulz Was a Very Sad Man

He was, it's true.

So, forty years later, I finally finished Schulz and Peanuts. First of all, depending on how you feel about biographies, this one is particularly good even if you don't take into account my love of the subject matter. David Michaelis writes biographies like he's writing fiction, so you're compelled into the story. Maybe just a touch too much historical contextualizing in the first 150 pages or so, but I'm sure the argument could be made that it's there because the importance of cartoons is so lessened in the year 2008 from Schulz era that it's important to make you understand that.

Anyway. Charles Schulz was a very sad man, which you already knew if you've ever read a Peanuts strip or two in your life. The truth is, I almost regret having read the biography because, well, it's much harder to like him now. And also in truth, I feel bad for not liking him because much of what makes him unlikable has to do with the fact that he was a little bit crazy. But mothers die, fathers have hang-ups, lovers reject you, wives are not perfect at all times, children need affection. These are facts of life, and his inability to deal with them and lack of work to make himself able to deal with them is not the picture of a loving man who dispensed philosophy across the board to an entire world. Sometimes, it might be better to not know that somebody has had an affair, or made their children feel alienated, or actually didn't give much of a crap about the magical home his wife created for him.

So many times during that book, I wanted to reach out and grab him and shake him and say "Get some medication!" or "Just deal with it!" I imagine, from what I read, that there were a lot of people who felt the same way over the course of his life.

There's an entire chapter dedicated to the making of "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown." It's actually an amazing chapter about the decision to use children's voices and the fight over Linus' speech from the gospel and how the network hated the special when they saw it. Even if you don't read the book, you may want to consider downloading the chapter on the Christmas special only.

You know that he died on the exact same day that his last strip ran, right? The universe is crazy. Crazy, I tell you. And also always right.