Product Description

Charles Schulz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the most misunderstood figures in American culture. Now, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us the first full-length biography of Schulz: at once a creation story, a portrait of a hidden American genius, and a chronicle contrasting the private man with the central role he played in shaping the national imagination. The son of a barber, Schulz was born in Minnesota to modest, working class roots. In 1943, just three days after his mother′s tragic death from cancer, Schulz, a private in the army, shipped out for boot camp and the war in Europe. The sense of shock and separation never left him. And these early experiences would shape his entire life.

With Peanuts, Schulz embedded adult ideas in a world of small children to remind the reader that character flaws and childhood wounds are with us always. It was the central truth of his own life, that as the adults we′ve become and as the children we always will be, we can free ourselves, if only we can see the humour in the predicaments of funny-looking kids. Schulz′s Peanuts profoundly influenced the country in the second half of the 20th century. But the strip was anchored in the collective experience and hardships of Schulz′s generation-the generation that survived the Great Depression and liberated Europe and the Pacific and came home to build the post-war world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88207 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 672 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. For all the joy Charlie Brown and the gang gave readers over half a century, their creator, Charles Schulz, was a profoundly unhappy man. It's widely known that he hated the name Peanuts, which was foisted on the strip by his syndicate. But Michaelis (N.C. Wyeth: A Biography), given access to family, friends and personal papers, reveals the full extent of Schulz's depression, tracing its origins in his Minnesota childhood, with parents reluctant to encourage his artistic dreams and yearbook editors who scrapped his illustrations without explanation. Nearly 250 Peanuts strips are woven into the biography, demonstrating just how much of his life story Schulz poured into the cartoon. In one sequence, Snoopy's crush on a girl dog is revealed as a barely disguised retelling of the artist's extramarital affair. Michaelis is especially strong in recounting Schulz's artistic development, teasing out the influences on his unique characterization of children. And Michaelis makes plain the full impact of Peanuts' first decades and how much it puzzled and unnerved other cartoonists. This is a fascinating account of an artist who devoted his life to his work in the painful belief that it was all he had. 16 pages of b&w photos; 240 b&w comic strips throughout. (Oct. 16)
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From Booklist
No other cartoonist tapped the nation's psyche, or touched its heart, like Charles Schulz, who wrote and drew Peanuts for 50 years. While Schulz's gentle humor and endearing characters are what made Peanuts arguably the most beloved comic of all time, it's the strip's psychological insights and underlying melancholy that turned it into enduring art. As Michaelis reveals in this exhaustively researched biography, Schulz's shy, self-effacing exterior hid a complicated, troubled figure who was dogged by overwhelming feelings of inadequacy even as his work appeared in thousands of newspapers worldwide, spawned television and Broadway spin-offs, and generated over $1 billion annually. It's customary for creators to form art from adversity, but Michaelis shows how unhappy incidents from Schulz's childhood would resurface in his strips with a chilling specificity a half-century later; as he once explained, "You're drawing mainly memories." Belying his modest demeanor, Schulz remained creative and competitive until the very end: the final Peanuts episode appeared the day after his death in 2000 at age 77. Thanks to reprints in newspapers and reruns on TV, Peanuts remains as popular as ever; its many fans will be enthralled by the unexpected insight Michaelis provides into Schulz's singular accomplishment. Flagg, Gordon

Review
"Michaelis offers . . . all that's needed about a prodigy of American cultural history." (Kirkus Reviews )

"A fascinating account of an artist who devoted his life to his work." (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )

"An extraordinary achievement . . . that shrinks Schulz down to human size and enlarges our love of his work." (Time magazine )

"Michaelis takes us on a wondrous journey through the worlds of Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz." (Walter Isaacson )

"This fall's breakout biography." (GQ )

"After you read this book you will know the genius that went into every single line that Charles Schulz drew." (Chris Ware )

"An insightful rendering of the life of this American treasure." (Walter Cronkite )

Customer Reviews

Reflections of Charles M. (Sparky) Schulz Based on Peanuts Panels
Did you ever sit in one of those old-time barber shops (like the one Mr. Schulz's dad ran)? To make it easier for you to see how the hair cut was going, there were mirrors everywhere. If you looked to the left and the right, the mirrors would multiply the images so you would see hundreds of yourself.

I was reminded of that optical illusion while reading Schulz and Peanuts. When a person pens as many comic strips as Sparky Schulz did, it's inevitable that much of is in the strips will come from his life . . . and enter into his life. Author David Michaelis clearly reflected on that point and did his best to tie his book's reporting of the Schulz life to the Schulz strips. As a result, the book is literally brimming with strips and the text connects the strips back to the Schulz life or family. Seeing those strips and getting more insight into how the strips connected to the man and his family was certainly interesting. That's the strength of the book.

The weakness of the book is that this focus puts a great deal else about Mr. Schulz's life into a dark background from which little emerges. As a result, this is as flawed and incomplete a biography as you could have while having vast access to so many people and so much material.

I found the first half of the book to be much more interesting than the second half. In the book's beginning, you learn about how Mr. Schulz became a cartoonist, established Peanuts, and the inspiration behind many of the characters and situations. You also find a good description of Mr. Schulz's Christian faith. From there, the story bogs down into too much speculating about Mr. Schulz's psychology and his relationship with his first wife, Joyce. You'll also learn vastly more than you ever wanted to know about the commercial success of the Peanuts empire (after all, you probably lived through it) and various building projects by Mrs. Schulz.

Having seen this book, I think a better concept for Mr. Michaelis would have been to have written a history of the Peanuts strip and how Mr. Schulz developed the strip. The author's writing and analytical abilities didn't seem to be up to much more than that . . . while missing elements that would have been included if the scope had been narrower (such as a discussion of more of the characters and their origins).

If you don't want to get bogged down, feel free to stop reading at page 286. You'll probably like the book better if you do.