Peanuts

It took me longer to read this book than I expected, and that is a problem. I devour books. When I like what I'm reading, I have a hard time stopping. Read The Great Gatsby in the span of an afternoon. And I started out on this book in the same fashion. I chewed through half of it in two sittings, alternating between the strips and the profiles and interviews at the back of the book (both very interesting and illuminating). I only ever stopped because I had to go to work or I was dead tired. I was loving it.

The illustrations were familiar yet different. You can tell that these came from Schultz's hand, but these were the very first, there are still years of tweaking and refinement to go. And I think I like this early stuff better. It's cuter. The lines seem a bit thicker. And Snoopy is just a puppy. A cute little puppy. With no thought balloons. Those come later on in this volume. And there are characters in this first volume who later disappear. A girl named Violet, a boy named Sherman. About the only character other than Snoopy who sticks around is Charlie Brown. There's no Linus, no Peppermint Patty, no Marcie. Schroeder and Lucy don't appear until about halfway through this volume. And about halfway through this volume is where my interest started to wane.

Not because of Lucy or Schroeder, but because the writing seemed to change and the art definitely did. The lines became thinner, and wow does that make a difference. For the worse. Coupled with the cuter, more obvious humour, it made finishing the book more of a slog than I thought it would be. The writing, right from the very first strip had an edge to it, there was sweetness, but it was tempered with meanness and loneliness. The characters talked about universal and existential truths. That seemed to go away.

I'll pick up the next volume, unless I'm out of the country, but if things don't improve that might be where my collecting stops. Too bad, man, I loves me my Peanuts. Or at least I did.