(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

I recently received a hundred-dollar gift certificate to Borders from my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas; but that ironically created a problem for me, in that I've thoroughly trained myself over the last three years to think of books only in terms of library rentals, making it difficult to picture what kinds of books I might want to actually own permanently. So I bought a hundred bucks in comics! J-sus Chr-st, I suck! And one of these purchases was a volume in Fantagraphics' new hardcover reissuing of all 18,000 Peanuts strips that Charles Schulz ever wrote, each massive over-designed tome covering two years in the strip's history; the one I picked up covers the 730 strips published in 1965 and '66, a seminal time for Peanuts that cemented the strip's lasting popularity for good. See, it seems anymore that less and less people understand this, but it was during the '60s that Schulz first started infusing his deceptively simple strip with all kinds of heady Modernist references to theology, philosophy, the "New Math" and more, turning it from the simple children's diversion it used to be into a suddenly hip Silver Age cultural touchstone; and this of course was before the '70s, when Schulz first started running out of ideas, deciding to devote the strip more and more to being the unchanging daily core of a TV-friendly merchandising empire.

So on the one hand, the book is a real treat, a reminder of the exquisite minimalist humor that Schulz was so perfect at when he was at his creative height, during the exact period of work I myself was raised on (mostly through an endless series of cheap tattered paperbacks bought for a dime at garage sales) that so heavily influenced my own sense of humor; but on the other hand, I'm also kind of disgusted at myself for buying a $40 over-designed hardback doorstop full of freaking comic strips, and acknowledge that that now officially makes me one of those academically trained stuffy white males who are as we speak sucking away what little fun still remains in the world of comics, just like stuffy academic white males ruined jazz, and ruined baseball, and ruined the blues. (In fact, if you want a good look at all the formerly fun things that stuffy academic white males have ruined over the years, simply make a list of all the documentaries Ken Burns has ever made.) As nice as it's been to sit and re-read all these classic strips from the series' height, it's hard to look at all those artsy detail blowups and that dark-on-dark design scheme and not think, "You know, I've now officially become one of those creative-class douchebags who everyone complains about, and there's a part of me who hates myself for it." Good grief.

Out of 10: 9.0...no, wait, I mean 6.2...no, wait, I don't know what I mean ( )

This volume of Peanuts reprints contains lots of baseball gags, lots of Snoopy as the World War I flying ace strips, the account of Charlie Brown's time at summer camp, Sally's treatment for "lazy eye" (and attendant eye-patch jokes) and the first appearance of Peppermint Patty. It's amusing stuff--nothing spectacular, but worth checking out if you need a chuckle.
--J. ( )

Snoopy falls in love with a beautiful girl beagle, and has his heart broken. Linus' blanket develops a mutual hatred of Lucy. Sally develops amblyopia and has to wear an eye-patch. Charlie Brown enters the spelling bee, and blows it in grand fashion. Linus and Lucy and their family move away - temporarily, it turns out. And one of the more interesting characters, Peppermint Patty, is introducedon pg. 258. Snoopy's doghouse catches fire and burns to the ground. He later rebuilds, and replaces his Van Gogh with an Andrew Wyeth. Charlie Brown gets made a member of the safety patrol. There are a few filler cartoons here, but Schulz is truly impressive with how his characters by this time have captured the hearts of American readers. A groundbreaking strip that was nearing its creative peak by this time. ( )