Plastic: Making Peanuts In The Sixties

"Although Schulz had been a social victim as a child, he'd also had the
undivided attention of two loving parents. All his life, he was a prickly
Minnesotan mixture of disabling inhibition and rugged self-confidence.
In high school, after another student illustrated an essay with a watercolor
drawing, Schulz was surprised when a teacher asked him why he hadn't
done some illustrations himself. He didn't think it was fair to get academic
credit for a talent that most kids didn't have. He never thought it was fair
to draw caricatures. ('If somebody has a big nose,' he said, 'I'm sure that
hey regret the fact they have a big nose and who am I to point it out in
gross caricature?') In later decades, when he had enormous bargaining
power, he was reluctant to demand a larger or more flexible layout for
Peanuts,' because he didn't think it was fair to the papers that had been
his loyal customers. His resentment of the name 'Peanuts,' which his
editors had given the strip in 1950, was still fresh in the eighties, when he
was one of the ten highest-paid entertainers in America (behind Bill Cosby,
ahead of Michael Jackson). 'They didn't know when I walked in there that
here was a fanatic,' he told nemo. 'Here was a kid totally dedicated to
what he was going to do. And to label then something that was going to
be a life's work with a name like 'Peanuts' was really insulting.' To the
suggestion that thirty-seven years might have softened the insult,
Schulz said, 'No, no. I hold a grudge, boy.'"

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Man, I grew up not only on Peanuts, but on peanut butter and jelly and
peanut butter and syrup sandwiches. Mm!