The Complete Peanuts Family Album. Andrew Farago

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      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, СКАЧАТЬ