New Charles Schulz bio
by SouthernFriedInfidel | Published on October 16th, 2007, 1:51 pm | Arts
Interesting article on a new biography of Charles Schulz. I find it interesting that the family is upset over this book that sounds as if it is a pretty deep exploration of the man's life. It's as if they don't want people to think of Mr. Schulz as having any negative attributes, like he was some sort of god.Seems to me that if you try to do that to anyone, you are attempting to deprive them of their humanity. Perhaps it's a matter of fear -- maybe they're afraid that people won't care about the man if they find out that he had anxiety attacks. It's pretty strange.
This reminds me of the tour I took a while back, of Carl Sandburg's home. The tour guide told us that Mr. Sandburg had a lot of admirable qualities: hard-working, man-of-the-people sort of stuff -- the sort of thing one might expect when touring the home of a great historical figure. Then, he added some other things about him that were rather negative: domineering, unable to apologize when proven wrong, stick-in-the-mud sort of stuff.
But you know what? I thought afterwards that I was a lot closer to knowing the man, and I not only fund that he was still admirable, but I felt that I could have gotten to call him a friend if I'd had the opportunity. Perhaps this is the sort of thing that will happen with this Schulz biography. Perhaps the giant of the comic strip world will become a lovable, somewhat flawed and very human being to readers. It might make him less of a superman, but would that really be such a tragedy?
