This week we hit the funny pages and talk about the anthology The Peanuts Papers with editor Andrew Blauner, contributing artist Chris Ware and cartoonist Ivan Brunetti who honor the legacy of Charles Schultz and his iconic Peanuts comic strip. This conversation was recorded November 4, 2019 live at the American Writers Museum.
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EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
“Schultz provided an example of how to be a man who’s not a jerk. And how to be a good father and how to be a good person, and in a way that transcends irony and transcends criticism.”
“Tolstoy was probably the writer who most effectively encoded that into his writing. He captured that rhythm of life into his actual prose. And I think Schultz, as a cartoonist, captured that electricity of actual movement and human life better than any other cartoonist.”
“It’s a record of the way his hand moves. And the way his hand is connected to his mind and to his heart and to his eyes and how that hand and all of those things changed in 50 years.”
“When I read it, not only were the events real and honest, it felt like life…the characters especially, that’s the most important part. They feel more real, almost, than real people. Like, they existed for me, when I opened up those paperbacks and dove into them, those little drawings came alive to me in a way and they were my friends.”
“Really what Peanuts is is Charles Schultz battling with himself on the newspaper page every single day.”