I've never been a big reader of peanuts, but I read enough to get the major themes. I liked it, but when a peanuts book was sitting right next to Calvin and Hobbes... there was no competition for me. But to the point, I was having a conversation and St. Paul Minnesota came up. "You know who's from St. Paul, right?"she said.
"Prince." I said.
"Charles Shulz!" She retorted. And then we went off on Peanuts for a while, and it got me to thinking. No one has ever tried to copy Shulz's success. You'd think peanuts rip offs would be a dime a dozen, but 50 years later, nobodies even taken a swing.
"You know why that is, right?" I said, smugly steering the conversation into waters it didn't need to go into. "Because the strip's all about Shulz's depression, and only someone as talented as him can make a sad and lonely child funny."
She disagreed. She just didn't see it, and I spent a solid 10 minutes trying to explain it to her. Lucy as the therapist, Lucy and the football, pig pen and dysentery. But I couldn't get through. I guess some people see what they want to see. The fact I needed to make her childhood memory of her favorite comic strip sadder says enough about my issues.
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| Author: Charles Schulz. |
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