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My Life with Charlie Brown Kindle Edition

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 84 ratings

While best known as the creator of Peanuts, Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000) was also a thoughtful and precise prose writer who knew how to explain his craft in clear and engaging ways. My Life with Charlie Brown brings together his major prose writings, many published here for the first time.

Schulz's autobiographical articles, book introductions, magazine pieces, lectures, and commentary elucidate his life and his art, and clarify themes of modern life, philosophy, and religion that are interwoven into his beloved, groundbreaking comic strip. Edited and with an introduction by comics scholar M. Thomas Inge, this volume will serve as the touchstone for Schulz's thoughts and convictions and as a wide-ranging, unique autobiography in the absence of a traditional, extended memoir.

Inge and the Schulz estate have chosen a number of illustrations to include. With the approval and cooperation of the Schulz family, Inge draws on the cartoonist's entire archives, papers, and correspondence to allow Schulz full voice to speak his mind. The project includes his comics criticism, his introductions to Peanuts volumes, his essays about philanthropy, his commentary on Christianity, his newspaper articles about the creation of his characters, and more. My Life with Charlie Brown will reveal new dimensions of this legendary cartoonist.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Inge’s gathering of “Schulz’s major prose writings” attests the cartoonist’s consistency. He wrote without drawing as limpidly as he did with. His sentences are as chaste and precise in diction, as direct in address, and as lucid in meaning as the words he put in the Peanuts gang’s speech and thought balloons. His stylistic peers are Hemingway and the best of the lean, clean, mostly crime-fiction writers who followed Papa. But he’s never as passive as Papa, never as sentimental as those crime-fictionists. He sounds ingenuous and comradely, one person talking to another, engaged but uncontentious. He’s that way in the big pieces here, all excerpts from Peanuts Jubilee (1975), in which he’s spellbinding about his life, his creative process, and the themes of his great comic strip. He waxes most enthusiastic about religion when young (older, he is more diffident on that score), about golf when older, about hockey always. The previously unpublished fragments Inge includes sometimes approach prose poetry. All in all, verification that Schulz was an artist, indeed. --Ray Olson

From the Inside Flap

Autobiographical essays, introductions, articles, reviews, and lectures that tell the personal tale of the Peanuts creator and America's great comic strip

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003CV7SB8
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University Press of Mississippi; Illustrated edition (March 18, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 18, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1860 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 84 ratings

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Charles M. Schulz
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Charles M. Schulz was born November 25, 1922 in Minneapolis. His destiny was foreshadowed when an uncle gave him, at the age of two days, the nickname Sparky (after the racehorse Spark Plug in the newspaper strip Barney Google).

In his senior year in high school, his mother noticed an ad in a local newspaper for a correspondence school, Federal Schools (later called Art Instruction Schools). Schulz passed the talent test, completed the course and began trying, unsuccessfully, to sell gag cartoons to magazines. (His first published drawing was of his dog, Spike, and appeared in a 1937 Ripley's Believe It Or Not! installment.) Between 1948 and 1950, he succeeded in selling 17 cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post—as well as, to the local St. Paul Pioneer Press, a weekly comic feature called Li'l Folks. It was run in the women's section and paid $10 a week. After writing and drawing the feature for two years, Schulz asked for a better location in the paper or for daily exposure, as well as a raise. When he was turned down on all three counts, he quit.

He started submitting strips to the newspaper syndicates. In the spring of 1950, he received a letter from the United Feature Syndicate, announcing their interest in his submission, Li'l Folks. Schulz boarded a train in June for New York City; more interested in doing a strip than a panel, he also brought along the first installments of what would become Peanuts—and that was what sold. (The title, which Schulz loathed to his dying day, was imposed by the syndicate). The first Peanuts daily appeared October 2, 1950; the first Sunday, January 6, 1952.

Diagnosed with cancer, Schulz retired from Peanuts at the end of 1999. He died on February 13, 2000, the day before Valentine's Day—and the day before his last strip was published—having completed 17,897 daily and Sunday strips, each and every one fully written, drawn, and lettered entirely by his own hand—an unmatched achievement in comics.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
84 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book enjoyable and informative, providing insights into Charles Schulz's creative process and thoughts. They appreciate the well-written collection of his writings. Overall, readers describe it as a refreshing and worthwhile read.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

9 customers mention "Readability"9 positive0 negative

Customers find the book readable. They describe it as an enjoyable, fun read that is worth their time.

"...Schulz writings - some more interesting than others, but overall a fun read. Some history, some lessons and some philosophy...." Read more

"...enjoyed reading it. i love the peanuts and now i know more about the man behind the characters." Read more

"Such a refreshing, quick read. Charles Schulz's voice and vision is something we don't see often, any more...." Read more

"...It gets you reading it's a real page flipper" Read more

7 customers mention "Informational value"7 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's informational value. They find it enlightening, funny, and informative. The book provides interesting insights into the creative process and mind of Charles Schulz. Readers appreciate the history, lessons, and philosophy in the book.

"...Some history, some lessons and some philosophy. Insights into the mind behind the comic strip that amazes me in its ability to transcend time and..." Read more

"I have the paper copy of this, and I found it to offer interesting insights into Schulz's mind...." Read more

"...Let's you know where Schulz got his ideas. A very nice insight into his creative process. True genius." Read more

"It was very informational and funny. I had a history report on it last year I just now found it and decided to rate it...." Read more

3 customers mention "Writing quality"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing quality good. They say it's a good collection of Charles Schulz writings, some more interesting than others, but overall a fun and quick read in his voice.

"Very good collection of Charles Schulz writings - some more interesting than others, but overall a fun read...." Read more

"Well written and many angles of interest." Read more

"Such a refreshing, quick read. Charles Schulz's voice and vision is something we don't see often, any more...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2012
    Very good collection of Charles Schulz writings - some more interesting than others, but overall a fun read. Some history, some lessons and some philosophy. Insights into the mind behind the comic strip that amazes me in its ability to transcend time and cultural changes. You can pick up a collection Mr. Schulz created in the 50's and 60's and they still seem fresh.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2020
    i wish it would have been longer but it was exactly the book i wanted to read to know his life. enjoyed reading it. i love the peanuts and now i know more about the man behind the characters.
    4 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2013
    I have the paper copy of this, and I found it to offer interesting insights into Schulz's mind. I am particularly interested in how, for decades, he managed to create day after day. I'm convinced it was because he had an ensemble cast of interesting characters. Their setting offered him a chance to have them confront the big and small dramas of his day. So much of his work has aged well that it still rings decades later. But it's worth knowing that some biographers have debunked parts of his story. (The family takes issue with some of these accounts.) But I think it's important to read what Schulz has to say about himself and his characters, who seem to have a mind of their own.
    10 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2018
    A beautiful book that walks us through the profession of Charles Schultz as a cartoonist and the art and creation of the PEANUTS comic strip. It's a beautiful story of how the PEANUTS comic strip was born from Charles Schultz's imagination.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2017
    Very much the religious side of Schulz's life, particularly his Minnesota life. It doesn't really acknowledge Schulz's evolution over the course of his later life into a kind of agnostic humanism.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2020
    Well written and many angles of interest.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2019
    Great bio. Let's you know where Schulz got his ideas. A very nice insight into his creative process. True genius.
  • Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2013
    I thought it would have been more interesting. The info in this book could have been found in Wikipedia, actually I found more info there for my daughters book report
    2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Craig Johnson
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good Grief! This is a great read!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 8, 2021
    About halfway through and I'm loving this book. Sparky was more than just the creator of 'Peanut's - he was an original thinker; with an original vision. And that comes across in this book. I think someone in an earlier review shares my same feeling that his strips transcend time completely. They are as relevant now (if not more so) than they were when originally published. Charlie Brown's hang-ups and fears are just as evident in the children of today. And Snoopy...well, ALL dogs are Snoopy!
  • Robby
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great little book
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2022
    Fascinating read for any Schulz fan.

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