Schultze And Peanuts

Do you like the famous cartoon "Peanuts". Most people love it, a classic in newspaper cartoons. I think it may be my favorite cartoon strip. Even though the artist, Charles Schulz, died a few years ago, the cartoon strip has been recycled and still runs daily in most newspapers all across the United States. I think it is just as fresh and relevant as always, and given the fact that it ran as a daily strip for more than 30 years, few people can remember the specific cartoons that reappear cartoons, making them seem brand new.
The Schulz biographer of a new book that was released the other day, 'Schulz and Peanuts' David Michaelis says that in the melancholy of Charlie Brown, the exuberance of Snoopy, the intellectualism of Linus, the directness of Lucy and the bafflement of Peppermint Patty, we have basically the world in which we all live. Maybe that's why I like the strip, and why I will probably read this biography of Schulz, a person I have admired since childhood. The humor and insights of peanuts are a learning experience as well as a pleasure.. Schulz once characterized "Peanuts" as a study in disappointment. "All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away," he said. Isn't that so much like the small disappointments that we all have during the course of our lives?
But disappointment is not all of what 'Peanuts' is about. It's also about the fortitude, his endurance, his willingness to endure life's misfortunes without self-pity. That's why so many readers love and admire the silly characters in 'Peanuts'. 'Peanuts' also changed comic strips as we know them, exploring real feelings in depth, through humor, in a way few strips had even attempted before. Maybe 'Peanuts' was the first philosophical cartoon strip? Some cartoonists feel Schulz invented the modern comic strip when he created 'Peanuts'.. The biography says that Schulz's personality was established early on. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of a barber, and was a neat, reserved, anxious "good boy" as a child. He drew constantly -- his first success was a sketch of his dog that was reprinted in "Ripley's Believe It or Not" -- but remained lonely and standoffish through his adolescence, terrified of girls, his work dismissed by his high school yearbook in a long-remembered snub.
In other words, Schulz was as "real" and vulnerable as we the readers are. No wonder we like both Schulz and the characters of 'Peanuts'. Buttttttttttttt If you say you don't like 'peanuts', I can only add- Nuts to you!