Michaelis referred to numerous interviews throughout Charles Schulz's life in which he talked about his own "melancholy" and anxieties. Michaelis said that he was surprised to hear how upset some members of the family were, but that "to their children fathers are always heroes, and very few families can see beyond that paterfamilias." After interviewing hundreds of people, going through every one of the 17,897 comic strips Schulz drew and doing extensive research, Michaelis said, "this was the man I found." "We were all really excited, thinking we were going to get to say things about our dad," she said, complaining that the children play a very small role in the book. "I think he wanted to write a book a certain way, and so he used our family." "The whole thing is completely wrong," she said from her home in Utah. His sister Amy Schulz Johnson felt the same. Monte Schulz ended up helping to persuade the rest of the Schulz clan to cooperate with Michaelis, granted full access to his father's papers and put aside his own novel writing to help him.īut Monte Schulz said that when he read Michaelis' manuscript in December, members of the family were shocked by the portrayal of a depressed, cold and bitter man who was constantly going after different women. Wyeth, and that Schulz's son Monte also liked the writer's work. It turned out that Schulz had read Michaelis' biography of N.C. Schulz seven years ago about writing a biography of Schulz, the creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip. And a full three months after the thread got started, no one's let up-not the book's defenders nor the Schulzes themselves.David Michaelis first contacted the family of Charles M. Even Lee Mendelson, who produced all the Peanuts TV specials, shows up in the thread to put in his two cents. Three of Schulz's five children-Monte, Amy Schulz Johnson, and Jill Schulz-weigh in with long, rambling, impassioned posts (written after midnight, says Amy of hers), as does Schulz's widow and second wife, Jean.
If you're a Schulz fan and you've read the Michaelis bio, the thread is an indispensible companion to the book itself. Now, over on the comix blog Cartoon Brew, the Schulz family members have taken their case further, using this thread to rebut Michaelis's portrayal and voice their own memories and defenses of the great cartoonist. The hurt was especially acute because the Schulz family had authorized the book, turning over its records to Michaelis and granting him long interviews.
The New York Times reported then that Schulz's family members, led by his elder son, Monte, strenuously objected to Michaelis's portrait in Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography of a distant, melancholic man virtually incapable of feeling happiness. Schulz, excerpted in the October issue of V.F., was kicking up a storm of controversy. A week before it was even published, David Michaelis's biography of Peanuts creator Charles M.
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