From E&P we learn that the Charles M. Schulz Museum requested the original Non Sequitur comics satirizing the recently released Schulz and Peanuts biography from Wiley Miller, which he happily donated. The strips ran from October 3 through November 3rd.
Regarding the dontation, Wiley said,
“The most important tool for a satirist is to have a sensitive b.s. detector, and mine wasn’t just sending up a red flag when I read the excerpts from the book, it was sending up flares and blowing whistles, mainly because I happened to know Charles Schulz.”
Way to go Wiley! I think you b.s. detector was working very well on that. Kind of like a Spidey sense I guess 😉
â??The most important tool for a satirist is to have a sensitive b.s. detector, and mine wasnâ??t just sending up a red flag when I read the excerpts from the book, it was sending up flares and blowing whistles, mainly because I happened to know Charles Schulz.â?
I’m not so sure not actually having read the book but only excerpts, one can come to an honest conclusion about the accuracy of any published work. Especially when you make the leap to publicly condemn it without thoroughly reading it. Isn’t this the kind of thing Miller usually rails against?
In terms of his talent, Schulz was truly remarkable. As a person, not so much, which is to say, he was like everyone else.
If Shultz was depicted as a JERK in the excerpts, that alone would cause most people who actually knew Shultz to avoid reading the book…
I’d give the Schulz bio mixed reviews. On the one hand, the way it links published Peanuts strips to events in Schulz’s life is ingenious. I don’t know if it’s 100% true that Peanuts was essentially the story of Schulz’s life, but man, it makes a good case for that.
On the other hand, there really isn’t that much dish there. Schulz was a pretty average person in his personal life, and that comes through. It doesn’t make for a very interesting bio. Also, bios really should start with the most important moment in the subject’s life, then work forward a bit, then go back. Starting out at birth and going in chronological order–which is pretty much what was done there–is duller than dirt.
I would have liked to have learned more about Schulz’s views of the craft and the business of cartooning, and read less about the fairly obvious fact that divorce is usually unpleasant.