A new book on Schulz and Peanuts has snuck out in an unusual means. Sparky’s Folks, Dan Shanahan’s reflections on Schulz, Peanuts, and the nature of humor in general, has been published by Czech publisher Togga… and yes, the book is in English.

This small, 115 page volume comes across as a response to the controversial Michaelis biography of Schulz. Shanahan (quite approproiately) criticizes Michaelis’s tendency to assume that moments of the strip are exact reflections of Schulz’s life. More importantly to this book, he criticizes what Michaelis read into Schulz’ relationship with his mother’s darkly colorful family. It’s not so much that Shanahan has a problem with presumptively reading into things, it’s just that he chooses to take a much sunnier view of their impact. (And to be fair, Shanahan knew Schulz, which Michaelis did not.) Not that Michaelis is Shanahan’s only target; he also keeps a few arrows in his quiver to aim at the belief that all humor derives from pain.

There are things that I like about this volume. It is very much a personal viewpoint, unabashedly so. That’s great. Peanuts is not some obscure work that needs one definitive analysis; it has been analyzed repeatedly by different hands, and what we need these days is many alternative views, rather than a single official view. And Shanahan’s views are certainly supportable, if not inarguable.

But even though the book is realtively short (these are 115 small pages), it feels too long in some ways, like it’s actually the introduction to some other book that got out of control and squeezed the rest of the book out. He comes across as an academic who is holding court in showy form, straying far from the central themes to go off on a favorite theory. He loves jumping on an analogy and riding it until it falls over and dies. Don’t mistake this for a biographical work; you need to have a liking for broadbased academic discussion to enjoy this. But it is what it is, and overall, it’s not a bad what it is.

(The book could have used another hearty proofreading pass. Various spelling and punctuation errors snuck through. The one which pushed my buttons is that the term “Li’l Folks” – the name of Schulz’s pre-Peanuts newspaper work and his choice for the name of the strip – appears repeatedly, but never with the apostrophe in the correct place.)

The book can be easily ordered through Amazon. The book ships from the publisher, but despite warnings that the shipping might take a month-and-a-half, my copy arrived 11 days later.

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