Charles M. Schulz: Conversations

Conversations with Artists

by M. Thomas Inge

A biography in interviews of one of America's best-loved comic strip masters

Through his comic strip Peanuts, Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000) has left his signatures on American culture -- Lucy's fake hold for the kickoff, Linus's security blanket, Charlie Brown's baseball team that never wins a game, and his everyman's cry of "Good Grief!"

When Schulz died February 13, 2000, the eve of publication for the last Sunday strip he would draw, the world mourned the passing of a gentle humorist and minimalist innovator, a comic strip artist who had become one of America's major pop philosophers, theologians, and psychologists in the last half of the twentieth century.

Charles M. Schulz: Conversations reveals that man, open and warm once a conversation began. During his career, his little kid characters and Snoopy and Woodstock appeared for 355 million readers in 2,600 papers in 75 countries, in 30 television specials and four feature films, and in an off-Broadway musical. Selected from over 300 interviews published between 1957 and the present, this collection serves as a celebration of the popular strip's 50th anniversary on October 2, 2000, and as a lasting tribute to the man friends called "Sparky."

Schulz talks at length about life, theology, sports, the art of the comic strip, and the human condition in general. He ruminates as well on the origins and the importance of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, and friends as icons of the American imagination. America's most universally admired and respected comic artist talks about how his own life and insecurities have inspired some of his finest moments in comic strip history.

Until Schulz's retirement, he never missed a deadline and was totally responsible for writing, drawing, and lettering the feature every day, a record matched by no other cartoonist in newspaper history.

Including dozens of classic Peanuts strips, this volume suggests that if we had only one artifact for deposit in a time capsule, something to tell future historians what life in the late twentieth century was all about, we could do no better than to enclose a complete run of Peanuts.

M. Thomas Inge, a friend of Schulz's for many years, is Robert Emory Blackwell Professor of Humanities at Randolph-Macon College. He has authored or edited over 40 volumes, including Conversations with William Faulkner (University Press of Mississippi, 1999).

Genres: Comics, Biography, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

Reviews

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was Charles Schulz complicated or not? And how do journalists interviewing him scratch enough away of his exterior to find that out? Everyone who loves Peanuts knows that the comic strips are deceptively simple; those four panels often contained complexity that was both deep and brilliant, particularly in the golden age of Peanuts (1960s/1970s). The words of Charles Schulz, at least those in this collection of interviews, aren't really very deep or brilliant. You want to be able to gather up his words, sort of like one of your favorite comic strips, and tack it on your wall; but at least to me, nothing really stuck out enough to do that. Possibly, probably, Charles Schulz saved up his brilliance and depth for the comics themselves, and rightly so. That's where he did his talking, and thinking, and philosophizing - not to journalists. That's not to say that these journalists from as disparate publications as The Saturday Evening Post to Penthouse (this is the part where emoji come in handy, as I need something visually to express my agaped agog-ness) didn't try to figure him out. I don't feel like they really did, although biographically speaking I learned a few things. The real question isn't "Is Charles Schulz Charlie Brown?" (asked several times in this book) but "Is Charles Schulz Peanuts?" I think the answer is yes.

[Norman Felchle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes me feel a little melancholy....
I’d been a fan of Schulz’s work since I was a little kid.
My father was from a similar part of the country...and the same church, so he always liked “Charlie Schulz” and Peanuts.
But...as many Peanuts strips as I’d read over the years, I never read any interviews with Schulz.
I did get to meet him once and got to spend an afternoon doing some Ruben Awards judging with him and some other NCS members.
At least I got to tell him how much his work meant to me...and we talked about some things...but if I’d known then what I know now, from reading these interviews....I’d have said so much more....and asked so much more...

[Kelly McCloskey-Romero · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was fun to delve into the life and voice of Charles M. Schulz. Each interview was a little different, and they span decades. They were a bit repetitive at places as the interviewers asked similar questions, but all in all it was an interesting way to digest someone’s biography, attitudes, and opinions. I am as find of Peanuts as ever and think it’s fair to say that Schulz was a genius. Reading these Interviews gave me some access to his brain. What a fun place to explore.

[Narariel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't finish this one. A collection of interviews, it has a fair bit of repetition, though as they are arranged chronologically, you can see some social evolution. The strips that are scattered throughout the interviews are fun though.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, to be the one who could spend a day chatting with Charles Schulz would've definitely been a dream come true!

[Nathan Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found out about this book after diving gleefully into Vol. 1 of The Complete Peanuts and finding myself fascinated by the lengthy interview in the back conducted by Gary Groth from the Comics Journal. That talk was from 1987. Ten years later, Groth conducted an even more extensive interview and it is the centerpiece of this outstanding book which I think I will end up purchasing (it was an inter-library loan). One of the many reasons CMS is my hero is the way he personally populated his strip -- to discover his feelings at a particular time, one just needed to read "Peanuts" -- and the way he became a superstar without ever once admitting that what he did was "art." Schulz as craftsman is riveting -- as social commentator he was revolutionary because of the way he presented points of view in his characters. There was one controversial strip about abortion and another about school prayer which revealed nothing about the creator's views, they just dared to ask difficult questions. CMS chose not to make his views on abortion public, but he was adamantly against school prayer, making the ambivalence of the strip that much more poignant. Though there are nuggets of such revelation scattered throughout the book, with one insightful interview from Leonard Maltin, it is Groth who gets the best results, combining an incisive, unsentimental style with subtle idolatry. He asks about the licensing issue, the man's peers, politics, religion, and goes deeply into what drove Schulz to give so much. Full of wonderful tidbits, quotes, anecdotes and observations, this was an excellent read and I have to confess that I still miss this man's presence so very much and, like Chip Kidd said in his own excellent book, I can't leave it alone -- I have to dig deeper.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved the Schulz biography by David Michaelis that came out a few years ago, but while that book paints Schulz as a gloomy agoraphobe who lived a lonely, sheltered life, this one shows other sides of his personality: his humor, his worldliness (he went to Paris and Italy, had breakfast with Fellini, etc), and his all around good perspective on life and cartooning.

Here are some choice quotes from the pages I dog-eared:

"It’s hard to convince people when you’re just staring out of the window that you're doing your hardest work of the day."

"I think cartooning has a certain quality and a certain charm unlike any other medium, whether it’s somebody drawing for over 2,000 newspapers or if it’s somebody drawing a little cartoon on the outside of an envelope in a letter to a friend."

"Beethoven can tell you about loneliness, and so can Hank Williams.”

"I don’t think God wants to be worshipped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another, and I think all other forms of worship become a substitute for the love that we should show one another."

"I would be doing this even if I had to do something else to make a living. I just enjoy drawing funny pictures."

"Cartooning is solving little problems while you’re drawing – each panel becomes like a painting, you’re trying to break up the area into pleasing shapes."

"I can almost guarantee it, if I attend a symphony concert, and see a violinist perform as a soloist in a concerto. Or if I merely watch a great conductor, my mind will begin to churn up all sorts of ideas, that will have no relationship to watching a violinist or conductor. There will be an inspiration there."

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains eighteen of the 300 interviews that Schulz gave over the course of his 50-year career, beginning with a 1956 piece from The Saturday Evening Post and ending with two 1999 reflections by Garry Trudeau and Bill Watterson, which appeared in the Washington Post and Los Angeles times in the week after Schulz announced his retirement. With the exception of the two latter pieces, almost all of the interviews cover the same ground. Probably owing to his own shyness, it appears that Schulz decided early on how much of his life he would share in interviews -- and it wasn't much -- thus there's a lot of repetition in the stories he's willing to tell. The unintentional consequence is that the overall portrait is a little unflattering; he comes across as somewhat boring and seemingly unable to get over childhood slights. For example, in many of the interviews he mentions that an early disappointment was when the drawings he did for his high school yearbook were rejected; although he most likely got over it in short order, reading about it over and over again makes it appear as if he's got a death grip on that particular grudge. The book is worth looking at for the Trudeau and Watterson pieces and the 100-page 1997 interview by Gary Groth, but the book as a whole is not that interesting.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome to the max. According to the intro, the interviews with Schulz that were included in this text were selected from over 300 that were reviewed by the editor. With so many to choose from, it would have been interesting to know what criteria were used to justify inclusion, but there are certainly some good ones in here. If nothing else, the reprint of the 100-page 1997 interview from Comics Journal No. 200 makes this book worth a trip to your local library.

One of my favorite quotes from the book: "I don't think God wants to be worshiped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another, and I think all other forms of worship become a substitute for the love that we should show one another."

And what the hell, while I'm up on my soapbox here, let me just take a moment to call out Mr. Ron Paul for being the only congressperson who voted against awarding Schulz the Congressional Medal of Freedom. What a blockhead.

[Michael Hawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conversations is a collection of interviews with Schulz through the years. In this way it works as a better biography than most actual biographies. The drawback is a lot of basic info is repeated virtually every time. Place of birth, how he got nicknamed "Sparky" etc. Over and over. While that may grate on some nerves, it is hardly noticeable as the selections presented here are from a varied group of authors that ask and detail Schulz in many different lights. Sparky was a warm and open human being and his answers and introspection shine through. Readers will discover insight from faith and religion to art to golf and beyond. He truly was a well rounded individual. Many many quotes to write down from this one.

[John Porcellino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, career-spanning collection of articles and interviews, highlights being a weird interview with Mary Harrington Hall for Psychology Today, "Charlie Blue" by Sharon Waxman, and the lengthy, famous Gary Groth interview from The Comics Journal. Whether you're a cartoonist or just a human being, the man is an inspiration, and his words provide a guide towards a truly profound way of living life. Of course I don't agree with everything he says, but he says it all with such an understated, down-to-earth sincerity (there's that word!) that you can't help but feel improved upon just listening to the man talk.

[Dwayne Coleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent source for learning about the origins or Peanuts and about Schulz's creative process.