According to a flood of recent stories about the upcoming Charles M. Schulz biography, the cartoonist was a depressed, insecure, narcissistic, emotionally volatile man who still felt like a worthless disappointment who harbored lifelong grudges against any slight, no matter how small, despite his fame and fortune (or is it fortune and fame?).
Like I tell my Orange County teammates, money does not buy you happiness.
I, of course, have identified with Charlie Brown over the years...mostly because I equated Lucy with Life, and that football that always gets whisked away at the last minute as any Reward I have been working towards. Well, in actuality, I think it may have been my USC classmate Jason Kachel who made the observation a few years ago, but I think was I seriously leaning towards making that connection on my own (of course, I'm not sure what it says about me when a teammate observed that I reminded him more of Eeyore than Charlie Brown).
I suppose it's de rigueur for artists to cast themselves as troubled, self-destructive geniuses. Still, it must be considered surprising that the creator of a mainstream comic strip as much part of the American mainstream as one's mother and pies made of apples would be such a darkly troubled soul. On the surface of it he seemed like the perfect embodiment of the American dream, and yet achieving that dream brought him no closer to the happiness that everyone has become programmed to expect. Now that really is a troubling thought right? Untold riches, worldwide acclaim, critical acceptance, unlimited merchandising opportunities, and yet...something was missing.
I guess it's not that surprising if you consider the first panel ever published by Schulz. He was trying to tell us something right from the very start.
Links:
New York Times Story
New York Times Book Review
New Yorker Personal History
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