I was a big fan of the Peanuts strip when I was growing up, the kind of kid that could quote the lines by heart. I've often wondered what my collection of paperback Peanuts books would've brought on eBay; probably not much, as they were pretty battered by the time I got rid of them.
So I was very excited to hear about a new, heavy-duty bio of creator Charles Schulz,
© United Media - Courtesy of Fantagraphics Books
Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography (HarperCollins) by David Michaelis. It was even more intriguing to read that Schulz's relatives were unhappy with much of the book's content-intriguing because Michaelis had the cooperation of the family.
The family takes exception to Michaelis' portrayal of Schulz as perennially depressed, overlooking his good side. "The whole thing is completely wrong," daughter Amy Schulz Johnson told the New York Times. Well... one-sided perhaps, but completely wrong? Michaelis doesn't have to argue very hard that depression was very much a part of Schulz's life, as he himself was quite frank about it in interviews; "I have this awful feeling of impending doom," he once told 60 Minutes. Michaelis also draws on Schulz's strips throughout the text, using them to illustrate points he's made, or to reveal how much of Schulz's life made it into his work (there was a real life "little red-haired" girl, for example).
I found it a fascinating read, though I would've preferred a more in-depth look at Schulz's later years (though that might well have added another 50-100 pages to a book that's already 566 pages). It also gives me a nice lead in to the latest Fantagraphics packaging of The Complete Peanuts, a multi-volume endeavor I wonder if I'll ever have room to store. I've started with the 1963 to 1966 box. They're beautifully assembled, and it was great fun to see the strips after not having read them for many years.
What people tend to not realize is that while the strips may have featured children, they were really for adults; these weren't the cute kiddies seen in, say, The Family Circus. Charlie Brown reels with self-loathing, making such comments as "Rats! Nobody is ever going to like me..." (today, of course, they'd put him on Prozac). Lucy revels in her state of perpetual crabbiness. Linus is perpetually neurotic about that security blanket of his (come to think of it, today they might well shove the whole Peanuts gang on Prozac). Schulz even sends himself up, having Linus hug Snoopy in one strip, then ask, "What's so happy about a warm puppy?" Highly recommended, though you may need a new bookcase to store the entire series. (Tip: Pick up copies at one of the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery's frequent sales. And depending on when this hits the streets, you might still be able to see the Unseen Peanuts show running through 12/31.)
Another of my obsessions is Stephen Sondheim's classic musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, based on the legend of a murderous barber and his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, who hid the evidence of Todd's crimes in her (wildly popular) meat pies. It's a difficult score to pull off; for my money, no one has yet improved on the original cast album from 1979 with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury in the lead roles.
So you might think I have something of a bias when I say I wasn't entirely won over by Tim Burton's new film. Okay, you're right! My main quibbles are that the show is a dark comedy, and Burton's played up the dark while pretty much forgetting about the comedy. Second, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter have the look, but not the voice, for their roles, especially when the songs call for robust emotion. It's still worth checking out, especially if you aren't familiar with stage show; it's condensed in the film, happily pairing down the love story subplot between two young'uns that produced the least uninteresting songs.
It also seems likely to spark a new run on Todd-related material. The first spin-off I got my hands on is a book of the same name, edited by Robert Mack (available from Oxford University Press). It contains the original Sweeney Todd story, "The String Of Pearls," serialized in British weekly The People's Periodical and Family Library in 1846-47, along with an essay and chronology detailing how the story progressed from the stage to the page to the silver screen. Interestingly, as Mack explains, it wasn't until the 1970s that Todd was given a "rationale" for his actions, thus making it all right to sympathize with him; he's not really a psycho, it turns out, he's just seeking vengeance. As Sondheim put it (though the song's cut in the film) "To seek revenge may lead to hell/But everyone does it and seldom as well/As Sweeney...." Our ancestors didn't need such coddling; they're more than willing to embrace this (sorry, can't resist) bloody good yarn.
