Peanuts is, by any standards, a staggering feat of sustained creativity. A 50-year world-building project devoted to exploring the ways of humans via the medium of line drawings. And throughout, it was always the work of one man and one man alone. Every single panel in these 17,897 strips – every line, every squiggle, every thought bubble, every AAAUUUGGGHHH, every raindrop and snowflake, every pitcher’s mound, every toy piano (and every note it played), every wishy-washy word of it – was created by Charles M Schulz.
It’s so easy to take it for granted. Easy, too, to skim over the strips, taking in just the basic details, merely registering the payoff at the end – whether it’s a wry punchline, an exasperated expression, or just Charlie Brown lying on his back on the ground, football once again unkicked.
A series of square panels telling a short story in drawings. Sometimes there are words, sometimes not. They will take, at most, thirty seconds to read. Usually about ten. But sometimes it’s worth taking a little longer.
I’m rereading these strips this year, one year’s worth every week. And what I’m trying to do is to rediscover them as if reading them for the first time.
I’m finding it impossible.
Because when I see Snoopy walking like a normal dog, I find myself wondering when he’s going to start walking upright, when he’s going to start his long-running battle with the Red Baron, when he’ll start fantasising about being a world-famous writer – when, in short, he’ll become Snoopy.
And when Charlie Brown spends a whole week of strips standing underneath a tree which (although the words aren’t yet articulated) has eaten his kite, I think of all the battles to come.
With Linus, it’s a different kind of anticipation. Linus, this year, develops from the advanced baby of previous years. He develops his battle with Snoopy. He remains subservient to his older sister, but with increasing sarcasm. He becomes inseparable, once and for all, from his security blanket. And he is a vehicle for innocence, reacting with wonder to what we might regard as basic facts, reminding us how little of the world children know, how piecemeal their learning (“1819? Were there people then?”)
The Linus of the future will, in part, become a mouthpiece for Schulz’s Christian beliefs – well read, philosophical, quoting from scripture – and with it, I’m afraid, just a teensy bit… well… pompous.
But we love him still. And in a strip from August 1956 I remember exactly why.
This short story is beautifully told, in eight panels.
Linus is playing baseball, standing in the outfield. We know this because he is wearing a baseball glove. So far so good.
We don’t see the ball being hit – we just see him looking up, then running.
It’s a big hit. He has to run far. As far as a paddling pool, where Patty and Violet are playing. They watch, perplexed, as he takes off his shoes. Their perplexedness turns to bewilderment as he climbs into the pool with them, saying (and this is the beautiful bit) “I beg your pardon”.
They wait.
As the ball descends, Patty and Violet jerk away in alarm. But Linus catches it without fuss, climbs out of the pool, picks up his shoes and runs away. As he does so, he says “Thank you, girls”.
Of course he does.
The beauty of this perfect little short story isn’t just in Linus’s gentlemanly behaviour (although that is a huge part of its charm).
It’s not just in the little details – his tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrates to unlace his shoes, the drips of water splashing off his feet as he runs away, or the blank look exchanged by Patty and Violet in the final panel – although they are a nice reward for examining the strip for more than the customary five seconds.
It’s not just in the fine moment of dramatic tension in panel six – the first panel of the last line – as they wait for the ball to land.
All those things are excellent. But what makes it for me are the words. Seven of them.
“I beg your pardon” and “Thank you, girls”.
The strip would be fine without them – good, even. Many Peanuts strips succeed exactly because they play out in silence.
But to show Linus’s character – polite, considerate, thoughtful – Schulz needed words.
“I beg your pardon.” “Thank you, girls.”
And this is why we love Linus.