Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis
Bill Watterson’s review of David Michaelis’s biography of Charles “Sparky” Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, is a fair representation and, written as it is from the viewpoint of another brilliant comics artist, is probably the best introduction available. That review dates from before the controversy kicked up by Schulz’s family called Michaelis’s account into question, however, and therefore makes no mention of the alleged problems with the book. Shortly after publication the New York Times printed a brief article detailing the family’s main objections, and more remarkable still is this thread of comments on Cartoon Brew, in which four members of the family (Monte Schulz, Amy Schulz Johnson, Jill Schulz, and Jean Schulz) appear to lay into Michaelis for numerous errors and omissions, and for the overall tone of his portrayal of the artist. Michaelis indirectly addresses a few of these issues in one interview conducted before the Schulzes went on the warpath, but the NYT article presents his best response:
Mr. Michaelis said that he was surprised to hear how upset some members of the family were, but that “to their children fathers are always heroes, and very few families can see beyond that paterfamilias.” After interviewing hundreds of people, going through every one of the 17,897 comic strips Schulz drew and doing extensive research, Mr. Michaelis said, “this was the man I found.”
“Did I get the story right?” he asked. “Absolutely. No question.”
The fact that one of Schulz’s children, Amy, actually calls her father “Christ-like” in response to perceived slights in Michaelis’s book would seem to bear out the idea that her assessment, at least, may not be entirely accurate. The biographer naturally dwells on the interesting, but the interesting stuff in a life is precisely what people personally associated with that life will try to hide or revise after the fact, so we should expect a strong reaction to any account that isn’t entirely positive. Minor factual errors aside, the main complaints seem to be mostly unfounded.
Contrary to the family’s accusations, Michaelis’s account doesn’t make Sparky seem mean, it simply humanises him. In dealing with a figure as well-loved as the author of Peanuts the revelation of any flaw is likely to elicit a shocked response of denial from some, especially those personally connected to the subject. When we are told how the cartoonist embarked on his first affair, after twenty-odd years of marriage, he isn’t significantly diminished in the eyes of the reader, but appears rather as a confused man attempting to break free of a failing relationship. His first wife, Joyce, isn’t exactly demonised either, and she gets full credit for trying her best to make the marriage hold together. It is hard to spot the judgemental streak that the Schulz family see; it is likely, and understandable, that their reaction to any account whatsoever of this supremely difficult phase of their lives would be negative. No-one could come of out a divorce like the one described here unscathed or untainted, and Michaelis gives about as even-handed a rendering as could be reasonably expected.
The objection to Sparky being portrayed as unhappy is rather strange. The main premise of Michaelis’s book is that the artist was subject to a deep, consuming sadness, at least throughout the earlier decades of his life, and that this was the motive force behind his art. It is understandable that his family would be upset by the idea that Schulz was so profoundly melancholy, but the most compelling evidence for this was hidden in plain sight by Sparky himself: anyone who has paid attention to his strips from the 50s and 60s will be entirely aware that Charles Schulz personally knew all about unhappiness and loneliness.
This is not to say that Schulz was a depressive: the distinction between depression and “unhappiness” is explicitly noted by in the book. A classically depressive man could not have turned out five dailies and a Sunday strip of such high quality for year after year after year. Schulz drew on his inner melancholy to fuel the strip, and without it he would probably have run short of material very early on. Refuting his sadness is to refute the very thing that made Peanuts unique.
One place where the family’s objections are valid is in the paucity of information after 1975 or so. There appear to be vast omissions in the account of the last two decades of the cartoonist’s life. We hear nothing about the transition to “secular humanism”, for instance, in contrast to considerable information on his youthful evangelical phase, and considerable theological scholarship. Perhaps claiming Schulz for atheism or agnosticism was a step too far even for Michaelis.
As Watterson notes in his review, the absence of information about his last twenty-odd years leaves the book oddly truncated. As the family Schulz’s reaction is quite likely to prevent anyone conducting a similarly decent investigation of him in his later period for some time, this is a bit of a shame. An essential read for anyone who wants to find out more about the man behind Snoopy, Michaelis’s biography brings Sparky out from the panels of his creation, and explains where all those amazing early ideas came from, but if the creator of Charlie Brown discovered that there’s more to happiness than a warm puppy we don’t get many clues to the secret here.