Schulz and Peanuts (book review) (article) by David A. Schwinghammer on AuthorsDen

David Michaelis shows how Charles Schulz's personal life affected his cartoon strip. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of David Michaelis's SCHULZ AND PEANUTS is how well he uses Schulz's cartoons to show how his life influenced his art. No character illustrates this better than Lucy. She originated as a toddler based on his daughter Meredith who fell on her head trying to get out of her crib. Later she morphed into his first wife Joyce who was a handful to say the least. After his divorce, Lucy becomes much more docile and not as interesting. Schulz's time working at the art school also influenced the strip. There were three Charlie Browns but probably the most pertinent was Charles F. Brown who was also an instructor at the school. Brown was so sure he was the model for Charlie that he wrote a book about it, trying to show how he impacted the cartoon character. Schulz insisted that all the characters were based on his own life. The inspiration for Linus, name wise, was Linus Maurer, another art instructor and the last name for Linus and Lucy came from some Colorado friends of Schulz. Michaelis spends an inordinate amount of time trying to show what a lonely man Schulz was. This doesn't always hold up. For instance, when he entered the service during WWII he rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant, pretty good for a man who, according to his wife, didn't know how to turn a key. Michaelis also argues that Schulz may have been agoraphobic. He missed his father's funeral, and he didn't show up for the National Cartoonists Society Award dinner when he won the Reubon for the second time. Anybody who has written anything longer than a term paper can understand Schulz's reluctance to leave his studio. Writers and (cartoonists) establish a certain rhythm and any disruption can throw you into a funk it's hard to get out of. It's pretty evident nothing was more important to Schulz than the cartoon strip. It's also pretty evident Schulz developed a persona as a lonely, humble person that was important to the strip. He even has Linus say "I've decided to be a very rich and famous person who doesn't really care about money, and who is very humble but who still makes a lot of money and is very famous, but is very humble and rich and famous." The real Schulz could be very competitive. For instance when "Garfield" began to rival "Peanuts" as the most popular comic strip he had some unkind things to say about the tone of that strip. Some would say Michaelis's biography is a bit long, going on 600 pages. I've read one other biography about Schulz and I thought that one was too short, so I guess you just can't win.
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