The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life

A one-of-a-kind celebration of America's greatest comic strip–and the life lessons it can teach us–from a stellar array of writers and artists

Over the span of fifty years, Charles M. Schulz created a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture—hilarious, poignant, inimitable. Some twenty years after the last strip appeared, the characters Schulz brought to life in Peanuts continue to resonate with millions of fans, their beguiling four-panel adventures and television escapades offering lessons about happiness, friendship, disappointment, childhood, and life itself.

In The Peanuts Papers, thirty-three writers and artists reflect on the deeper truths of Schulz’s deceptively simple comic, its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture. These enchanting, affecting, and often quite personal essays show just how much Peanuts means to its many admirers—and the ways it invites us to ponder, in the words of Sarah Boxer, “how to survive and still be a decent human being” in an often bewildering world. Featuring essays, memoirs, poems, and two original comic strips, here is the ultimate reader’s companion for every Peanuts fan.

Featuring:

Jill Bialosky
Lisa Birnbach
Sarah Boxer
Jennifer Finney Boylan
Ivan Brunetti
Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell
Rich Cohen
Gerald Early
Umberto Eco
Jonathan Franzen
Ira Glass
Adam Gopnik
David Hajdu
Bruce Handy
David Kamp
Maxine Hong Kingston
Chuck Klosterman
Peter D. Kramer
Jonathan Lethem
Rick Moody
Ann Patchett
Kevin Powell
Joe Queenan
Nicole Rudick
George Saunders
Elissa Schappell
Seth
Janice Shapiro
Mona Simpson
Leslie Stein
Clifford Thompson
David L. Ulin
Chris Ware