A Library of America Special Publication
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 artistsOver the span of fifty years, Charles M. Schulz created a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culturehilarious, 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 Schulzs 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 admirersand 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 readers 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
About Artists & Writers:
Andrew Blauner, editor,is the founder of Blauner Books Literary Agency. His other anthologies are Coach, Brothers, Central Park, Our Boston, The Good Book, In Their Lives: Great Writers on Great Beatles Songs, and (as co-editor) For the Love of Baseball.