Charles M. Schultz

This afternoon, I completed Good Grief:  The Story of Charles M. Schultz.  It was pretty good.  This book was an authorized biography of the man behind Charlie Brown (the name of a friend and colleague from his Art Instructor days), Snoopy and the gang.  It told some interesting stories.  He was apparently painfully private.  He had difficulty varying his routine and he was pretty particular about that routine.  He had a hand in everything Peanuts, well, except the name.  It was originally called Li'l Folks, but that was too close to another strip when he got syndicated and the brass at the syndicate arbitrarily chose Peanuts because kids were sometimes called Peanut.  By the 80s (when this book was written), he had complete final authorization on all licensed items.  In a telling passage, his daughter is quoted as saying that the strip is his life.  And the last passage tells about how the strip will die with Schultz...no one else would every draw Charlie Brown and Snoopy and the gang after Schultz retired.  Much of the book oddly foreshadowed Charles Schultz's retirement and death.  I thoroughly enjoyed the various tales of this peculiar, stodgy, self deprecating, and truly genius man.

Now, after that loving review, I must tell a funny story about what happened to me when I was reading this book.  Last night, around 10pm, I was reading a chapter on different licensing and ventures outside of the strip, and I came across the phrase "futuristic mall" in reference to the then-planned Mall of America.  That, coupled with a few other crazy phrases (did you know that RollerBlades are skates with all the wheels in a line?), made me laugh.  Laugh.  Hard.  For 15 minutes.  Fifteen.  Minutes.  I was crying and I couldn't breathe and overall just really tired.  But "futuristic mall" makes me chuckle now.  So this book will always hold that special memory for me!  


Also, this is the first biography of the "Read 10 biographies" on my 101 Things To Do list.