A twelve-year, twenty-five-volume project to reprint every Charlie Brown cartoon ever made? Good grief. Well, even if you’re sick to death of the civic-boosting Schulz statues dotting (or blighting) St. Paul, this first volume provides a good opportunity to reassess Sparky Schulz’s work without the commercializing excesses that have gotten in the way. Despite repeated quotation by scores of Lutheran pastors looking to funny up their Sunday sermons, Schulz didn’t pretend to pursue any great religious or political insights through Peanuts. (He hated that title, by the way—“It has no dignity. It’s not even a nice word,” he complained, but his newspaper syndicate insisted.) What he did offer was simple and homespun humor with an edge of bittersweet pathos; not exactly Camus, but a melancholy, contrapuntal rejoinder to the fifties’ bright and shiny surface. Oh, and it’s also where Snoop Dogg got his name, so that brings a whole new level of street cred.
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