Monday, November 26, 2007

I Wish He Were Here to Celebrate

Charles Schulz is one of my favorite writers. I regard the first fifteen or so years of "Peanuts" as works of genius.

The Writer's Almanac from American Public Media: "It's the birthday of cartoonist Charles Schulz, (books by this author) born in St. Paul (1922), who created 'Peanuts' and Charlie Brown, who never gets to kick the football, always gets his kite stuck in the tree, and never wins the love of The Little Red-Haired Girl. Schulz loved comics from an early age. His father bought six different newspapers every weekend and they would sit and read all the comics together. Schultz started drawing his own cartoons, but he got a C-plus in a correspondence art course, and his sketches were rejected by the staff of his high school yearbook. He couldn't sell any cartoons to the major magazines, and he was turned down as an animator for Disney because he had no experience. And then, he got drafted to fight in World War II when his mother was dying of cervical cancer. One of the last things she said to him was that if the family ever bought another dog, they should name it Snoopy."

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