8/3/2019 Biographies of Charles Schulz and Steve Martin

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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

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