Hmm -- should have gotten there before A&L Daily, but...
Read Jonathan Franzen on Charles Schultz's Peanuts in last week's New Yorker. Mixing personal reflections on his troubled family c. 1970 with thoughtful appreciation of Schultz's literary and aesthetic achievement, I think Franzen gets what's special about Peanuts: it offered and continues to offer children (especially smart, sensitive children) a simultaneous escape from and recognition of their anxiety-filled lives.
Franzen's nonfiction continually wins me over. I should get on board and read his essays (and The Corrections) before the train leaves the station altogether.
Not only should you have beaten A&L Daily to it, but I should have beaten you! Damn my laziness and malaise! (That and the fact that the New Yorker takes down links to content, so that when I didn't do it when I first thought about it, it became impossible to do it until A&L put it up.)
ReplyDeleteHow many times have I suggested, nay, insisted that everyone pick up How To Be Alone? Mr. Franzen has yet to steer me wrong. (And he's right, those new Peanuts collections are fabulous indeed.)