Waiting for Charlie Brown

Here in the AAUGH.com Reference Library, we have a section for “Not That Charlie Brown”, which has a couple of biographies of people named Charlie Brown in it. (We do keep the biography of Charlie Brown, Schulz’s co-worker for whom he named the character, separate.)

Now I find that released-but-temporarily-unavailable is the book Waiting for Charlie Brown, and while I cannot get a copy (that’s what “temporarily unavailable” means!), I’m wondering whether it should go in that section as well. It’s described as a “rough Southern poem novel”, and the closest I can find to an explanation to the title is in the video here, where one of the authors says that “Charlie Brown is a metaphor for death”. At least, I think that’s what he says. Oh, I suppose the fact that they’re calling their reading tour the “Charlie Brown Field Goal Kickin Poetry Tour” is suggestive that yes, they mean to be invoking the little boy with the zig-zag shirt in their title… but I still don’t know if the Peanuts crew is invoked anywhere but in the title, much less how well they serve the work creatively. But suddenly I do want to see a drawing of the grim reaper wearing a yellow robe with a black zig-zag on it…

Upcoming releases
A book I’d not expected to resurface

Back in 2011, Schulz’s granddaughter Dena Hodges issued the first two chapters of  a memoir called In the Shadow of the Family Dog. As I noted in my review at the time, the chapter and the description of the project made it clear that the focus was her relationship with …

Upcoming releases
A box of squares

This May, Fantagraphics is collecting the various small square Peanuts books they’ve published into a new box set, Peanuts All Year Round Mini Collection. This includes: A Valentine for Charlie Brown — Valentine’s Day and romance strips Batter-Up Charlie Brown! — baseball strips Waiting for the Great Pumpkin — Halloween …

Upcoming releases
Game Day returns

Back in 2020, Fantagraphics dropped Game Day, a boxed set of sports-themes Peanuts strip reprint paperbackss, as a Costco exclusive. Next June it’s coming back, this time in hardcover and available through the usual sources. Designed as a Father’s Day gift, it should be good for anyone who likes Peanuts …