I recently finished reading the Michaelis biography. Knowing about the
Schulz family's displeasure, I then went and read the comments by Monte
and others on cartoonbrew.com. Despite the many reviews of the book and
discussions on various blogs, I have a few thoughts that I haven't seen
anyone else express yet.
It is clear from what the Schulz family has said that the book contains
many minor factual errors, and that the psychological ****trait that
Michaelis paints is one-sided. What I found interesting, though, is that
I came away from the book with the impression that Sparky's children
really liked him and thought he was a great father. For example, two
things that stood out in my mind were the fact that his children chose to
stay with him after the divorce (even though Joyce was granted custody),
and the claim that Joyce was the one who had to do all the hard, emotional
work of disciplining the children. Also I recall that his children were
always free to come into his place of work. It seemed pretty clear to
me that he was on great terms with all his children (except possibly
Meredith; that relation****p seemed very complex and difficult).
So I was rather surprised to see that one of the major complaints by
Schulz's children was that Michaelis ****trayed him as a cold, distant
father. Yes, I do remember the anecdote about Amy not getting used to
hugging until she was an adult, but even before reading Amy's explanation
that Michaelis had distorted the story, I had automatically dismissed
it as another example of silly pop psychologizing.
In general, my feeling is that anybody with a well-developed B.S. detector
can quickly sense when Michaelis is stretching the truth to sup****t
his argument, or leaving out part of the story to suit his purposes.
For this reason, I'm a little disappointed that Monte chose not to
"polish a turd" (as he put it) by straightening out the minor factual
errors while leaving intact what he considered to be the larger errors.
The larger errors are more easily corrected by the reader; small factual
errors cannot. As matters stand now, one cannot cite the biography as
a source for any facts without some lingering doubt.
The controversy over the book aside, I found many interesting insights
into the strip itself. I'm not speaking so much of the parallels that
Michaelis draws between events in the strip and events in Sparky's
personal life. Instead I mean things like the caps that the kids
invariably wear at camp; Michaelis has a plausible conjecture that they
were inspired by caps from Schulz's army days. We also learn where the
name "Pinecrest Elementary School" comes from (this is where the kids
attend school, according to the 8 January 1990 strip). I also did not
know about the woman whose physical stature probably influenced the
physical characteristics of the kids in the strip. These details and
others help deepen one's appreciation for the strip itself. This alone
makes the book worth reading.
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great,
will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us
from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New
Sciences
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