The latest addition to the AAUGH.com Reference Library is The Graphic Art of Charles, the book for a 1985 exhibition at The Oakland Museum (which then traveled through nine other museums through 1988). Now, if that title sounds a little odd to you, well, it may be unique. Every other copy I’ve ever seen has the The Graphic Art of Charles Schulz on the cover, with the word “Schulz” in red… but my copy apparently missed the red printing press, with this and other red highlight items missing from the front and back cover.

The book is 128 pages, starting with a preface from the museum’s curator, then an introduction by Bill Mauldin, the great cartoonist who Snoopy visited on Memorial Day, a long article on Schulz’s art by one Joan Roebuck, one on Peanuts and American Culture by M. Thomas Inge (who in more recent years has compiled both the book Charles M. Schulz: Conversations – compiling various interviews with Schulz- and My Life with Charlie Brown – compiling the writings of Schulz), an article on Schulz’s humor on Elliot Oring, a translation of an article by semiotics professor and prize-winning novelist (The Name of the Rose, Focault’s Pendulum) Umberto Eco, and the one-paragraph article “Museums have always fascinated me” by Snoopy himself. There’s a chronology of Schulz and the strip, a list of items in the exhibit… and of course, a plenitude of pictures, all black-and-white.

I haven’t read through everything yet, but it seems like a good example of a museum exhiit book, giving reasonable amounts of the exhibit and extensive text, and affordable copies can be ordered through Amazon.

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