He was a modest, Mid-western boy, the son of a barber, painfully shy, emotionally awkward, whose first inclination was to become a preacher until his passion for drawing took hold. Charles Schulz, whose life-long nickname was, ironically, “Sparky,” went on to become the creator of the most enduring comic strip of all time. Peanuts, featuring that round-faced, lovable loser Charlie Brown, was the most widely read cartoon in newspaper syndication, and spawned a cottage industry that covered everything from lunch boxes to toys to greeting cards to television specials.

David Michaelis, in his thorough and immensely enjoyable biography, Schulz and Peanuts, has sought to uncover the man behind the drawing board. Relying on in-depth interviews with Schulz’s family and friends, the author paints a vivid portrait of an artist who, by his own admission, lived an incredibly dull life.

But Schulz and Peanuts is far from dull. Michaelis offers us an even-handed account of a complex man whose only solace was creating his comic strip. The book incorporates several reproductions of that strip to chart the private workings of Charles Schulz. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy; these characters were either facets of their creator’s personality or stand-ins for people who influenced his life.

In many ways, Schulz never overcame his repressed childhood in Minnesota. An antisocial teetotaler, he was emotionally distant from the women in his life as well as his five children. He divorced his first wife, Joyce—who played a major role in his career—after 22 years. Though he had affairs, and married a second time, by all accounts he had trouble expressing physical affection. He had a “cold, untrusting side,” Michaelis writes.

But Schulz was also fiercely competitive and determined. This combination of factors, coupled with a minimalist pen-and-ink technique, gave his work a wry, subtle significance. Never a comic strip for easy jokes, Peanuts had a dreamy, contemplative quality that spoke to legions of Americans. Schulz’s work endures because it gives voice to the outcast in us all, and blurs the line between life and art.

By Robert Rossiello

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