biographies of charles schulz and steve martin
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8/3/2019 Biographies of Charles Schulz and Steve Martin
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I
i n ot exactly ( than k God) th*
Gen-XJews thing that others have said it isjt's a
much warmer prose and steadier pace that Auslander
uses in his sprightly retellingof his ill-fitting youth
— from religiousrites of passage to yo uthful indis-
cretions like shoplifting trips to Caldor"s department
store and the guilt that followed. That w armth an d
depthgoes nicely with his bitchy jabbing.
Auslan der occasionally gets stuck within linguistic
stereotypes. Bu the's so irksomely funny (think Judd
Apatow's Superbad an d Knocked U p without the
anal/oral jokes) that anything stuck doesn't stay
stuck for long. Mazel tov.. Amorosi
ts-Born StandingUp:
A Comic's life
By S teve Mart in
( Scr i lmer , 224pp. , $2))
A n y b o d y u n d e r age 30 probably knows Steve
Martin only as that guy who appears in all those
mild family comedies with Eugene Levy. During
the 1970s, however, Martin was he hottest stand-
up comedian in the country w ith gold albums, a
Top 20 novelty single (1978's "King Tut") and a
series of classic SNL appearances. Only a comic
of Martin's '70s popularity cpuld turn "Exc&se
me ! * in to a polysyllabic national catchphrase,or an
arrow-through-the-head party hat into something
actually kinda cool.
As with most "overnight sensations," Martin's
career ha d been years in the making. Growing up
in Orange County, Martin got his showbiz start
selling guidebooks at the just-ope ned Disneyland:
"With its pale blue castle flying pennants embla-zoned with a made-up Disney family crest, its
precise gardens and horse-drawn carriages main-
tained to jewel-box perfectio n, Disneyland was
my Versailles," he writes.
This "new comedian* of the 1970s, by his own
admission, owed much to old showbiz — not
merely megas ars like Steve Allen and Jack Benny
but to small-time m asters like comic Wally Boag
an d magician Dave Steward. Ma rtin developed
th e itch to perform, but " there was a problem.
At ag e 18,1ha d absolutely no gifts. I could not
sing ordance, and the only acting I did was really
just shouting.Thankfully, perseverance is a great
substitute fo r talent."
Anybody who's don e comedy knows the near-
impossibility of making an audience of strangers
laugh. Bo m St anding Up is a generallysenous, occa-
sionally poignant mem oir at one wild an d crazy
guy's dedication at pulling off the impossible nigh t
after night.
—AndrewMilner
c • - , - Schulz a n d Peanuts:
A Biography
by D a v i d Michaelis
( HarperCol l ins , 688pp. , $34.9))
At the peak of his success, a friend asked Charles
Schulz what he would do if he wasn't draw ing hisphenomenally successful comic strip Peanu ts. "I
would be dead," he replied firmly. As it turned out,
Schulz died of colon cancer on Feb. 13,2000, hours
before readers read his 17,897th an d final Peanuts
strip as Schulz said goodbye ("Charlie Brown,
Snoopy,Linus, Lucy...ho w can I ever forget them
...*) in the Sunday newspapers.
Th e t i m i n g of his farewel l made it seem as if
Schulz had smartly resolved everything in his life,
but a haunting new biography by David Michaelis,
authorized by the Schulz estate, portrays the man
w ho coined th e phrases "Happiness is a warm
puppy" an d "security blanket* as possessing nei-
t h e r happiness nor securi ty. Schulz , Michael isestablishes through interviews with family an d
colleagues, was fiercely competitive and protec-
tive of his strip, ye t also a remote husband and
father who suffered from profound depression.
(The creator of Lucy's psychiatric stand, sig-
nificantly, never went to a psychiatr i sthimself.)
"Sparky* did find love in a brief 1970s extram arital
affair — he acknowledged the liaison in a series of
Peanuts stripswhere Snoopy fell in love with a girl
beagle—but the melancholy remained;cartoon-
SCHULZA * t T &
DAVID *MCHASUI&
ist Cathy Guisewite concluded the "m addening
thing"about Schulz was that "you never felt like
anything you said or did would ever make him
feel really loved."
Occasionally M ichaelis adds sociological pad-
ding to a long-eno ugh biography, but the finished
work is endlessly readable. After reading Schulz
and Peanuts, you'llnever look at good ol'Charlie
Brown inquite the same ol'way.
—Andrew Milner
ts-Van illa Bright like Eminem
By Miche l Faber
( Harcour t , 2 i 6 p p . , $23)
W ho would have guessed that the author of 2002's
800-plus-page monsterpiece Th e C r i m s o n Peta l
a nd th e Whi te could write short stories so devoted
to leavingstones unturned? Butindeed that's the
case; Michel Faber takes great pains delivering the
opening moves in the stories of Vani l la Br igh t Like
E mi n e m — artfully inser t ing very sympathet ic
people in to unexpected, som etimes unreal sce-
narios — an d then walks away from the chessboard.
In "The Eyes of the Soul," we meet single mum
Jeanet te on the day somebody shows up at her
door selling an HD TV-like device to replace the
bleak urban view out her front window withlive
images from m ore blissful corners of the world.
You're probably curious as to what impact such
a thing would have on the life of Jeanette and her
son. Sorry, the story e nds with the purchase. An d
that kind of let 's-beat-the-traffic s tu n t i ng hap-
pens to otherwise int r iguings i tuations — f r o m
the dying dictator whose life can only be saved
by a surgeon he once imprisoned to the guy who
comes out of a coma after five years fo r no reason
— it makes yo u wonder. W hy does Faber invent
-