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A Final Take on the "Schulz Controversy?"
Jun. 11th, 2008 06:39 pmA little while ago, I bought an issue of The Comics Journal, something I don't usually do for all that I read its news weblog. What interested me about the issue was that Charles M. Schulz's son Monte Schulz was contributing an essay (excerpted here) as his definitive response to the controversy surrounding the recent biography of his father. Reading the essay, I had the strong sense that this was a demonstration of a son's love for his father, that Monte wasn't "too close to see the truth," and that Charles M. Schulz wasn't depressed all the time, wasn't distant towards his family, wasn't from a distant family, and for that matter wasn't obsessed with Citizen Kane because it was supposed to be a model for his own life... I suppose, though, that I do have occasional ambiguous feelings about "seeing the rebuttal before the initial argument." For that matter, I happened to notice a comment in Monte's essay that, when first corresponding with the biography's author David Michaelis, Monte was trying to say that the previous biography of Schulz, Rheta Grimsley Johnson's "Good Grief," overemphasised depression as a factor in Schulz's life... and I had found and bought a used copy of "Good Grief" not that long before, thinking that it amounted to its own "counterweight perspective."
Even before I'd read the issue, I'd seen a different weblog post pointing out another essay in the magazine's "roundtable" where someone more or less speculated about the "financial blow" of the controversy, which did bring back a few uneasy memories of other early suspicions about the family's objections... The post did have a link to an interesting take on the whole idea of "the most important thing about Peanuts, and its creator, is suffering." I did wonder a little about that essay's argument that people can always find perspectives that make them feel superior to other people who merely "like" works, though... I may well think "I take this different perspective to like instead of dislike something," but there still seems a trace of familiarity to it.
Even before I'd read the issue, I'd seen a different weblog post pointing out another essay in the magazine's "roundtable" where someone more or less speculated about the "financial blow" of the controversy, which did bring back a few uneasy memories of other early suspicions about the family's objections... The post did have a link to an interesting take on the whole idea of "the most important thing about Peanuts, and its creator, is suffering." I did wonder a little about that essay's argument that people can always find perspectives that make them feel superior to other people who merely "like" works, though... I may well think "I take this different perspective to like instead of dislike something," but there still seems a trace of familiarity to it.