Читать книгу The Complete Peanuts Family Album - Andrew Farago - Страница 9

13INTRODUCTION

opposite: TIME® magazine cover, April 9, 1965 – CMSM

W

ho’s your favorite Peanuts character?

Or, to put it another way, what’s wrong with you?

Maybe you have autophobia, the fear of loneliness. In

that case, you probably relate to Charlie Brown and his

endless list of anxieties, his wishy-washy nature, and his

complete inability to fly a kite. (Science has not yet named

the fear of Kite-Eating Trees, sadly.)

Do you have sedatephobia, the fear of silence? You’d

probably get along well with Lucy, Miss Fussbudget of

the Year since 1952, who has literally cursed the darkness

rather than light a single candle.

It’s possible you’ve got ailurophasia, the fear of cats,

in which case you’d get along just fine with Snoopy and

Woodstock—just don’t tell Frieda.

And if you suffer from arithmophobia, the fear of

numbers, you’d best avoid 555 95472 and his sisters, 3 and

4, altogether.

Whatever your affliction, rest assured that there’s at least

one Peanuts character who can sympathize with you over

jelly-bread sandwiches and a frosty mug of root beer.

But what about problems more complex than the fear

of cats, numbers, or numbers of cats? If that’s the case,

you may identify with some of these Peanuts characters

that have never actually appeared in the strip (although

none of them seem to actually have scopophobia, the fear

of being seen).

Do you have a fear of sports? Perhaps you and Charlie

Brown’s unfortunate baseball idol Joe Shlabotnik suffer

from athlimataphobia.

What about the fear of eggs? We’ll never know why

Linus was supposed to bring discarded eggshells to Miss

Othmar’s classroom, but that sounds like a classic case of

ovaphobia, doesn’t it?

And what if the Little Red-Haired Girl wasn’t

avoiding Charlie Brown at all, but was simply frozen by

chorophobia, the fear of dancing? Or even more tragic,

philophobia, the fear of love itself? A single therapy session

at Lucy’s psychiatric booth could have completely changed

her perspective on life.

There are a number of memorable unseen locales in

Peanuts, too, including the interior of Snoopy’s doghouse.

A combination of the fear of houses, domatophobia, and

the fear of dogs, cynophobia, may keep you from learning

just how Snoopy has managed to fit a recreation room, a

den, a cedar closet, a guest room, a whirlpool bath, and an

Andrew Wyeth painting inside a standard-issue doghouse.

When Peanuts debuted in seven newspapers on

October 2, 1950, its world was a little simpler. Charles

Schulz’s initial cast of characters consisted of Charlie

Brown, his dog, Snoopy, and his friends Patty and Shermy.

Their personalities weren’t clearly defined in the strip’s

early days, but as new characters like Violet, Schroeder,

Lucy, Linus, Pig-Pen, and Sally were introduced, everyone’s

role came into focus. By the end of the strip’s first decade,

Peanuts truly came into its own as the home of some of

the most beloved characters in comic strip history.

The additions of Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and

Franklin in the second half of the 1960s expanded the

Peanuts universe across town to the neighboring school

district. The extended cast provided Charles Schulz

with even greater storytelling possibilities, and more

opportunities for self-expression, as he noted in a 1984

interview. “I think anybody who is writing finds he puts

a little bit of himself in all of the characters, at least in

this kind of a strip. It’s the only way that you can survive

when you have to do something every day. You have to put

yourself, all of your thoughts, all of your observations and

everything you know into the strip.”

While Peanuts seemingly introduced one iconic

character after another, dozens of kids appeared for little

more than a walk-on role in the strip. José Peterson,

Thibault, and Cormac all came and went with only a

INTRODUCTION