Peanuts creator Schulz led secret life of misery

By Arthur Spiegelman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Good Grief, Charles Schulz. The creator of the beloved Peanuts comic strip was a shy, lonely man who used his child-like drawings to depict a life of deep melancholy, according to a controversial new biography.

The book is based on six years of research, unlimited access to family papers, more than 200 interviews and a close reading the 17,897 strips Schulz wrote and drew. It portrays Schulz as a man who felt unseen and unloved even if his readers numbered in the hundreds of millions.

Biographer David Michaelis, author of "Schulz and Peanuts," said the cartoonist was also a man who could neither forget nor forgive any slight or lonely moment.

Not for a minute did he believe that "Happiness was a warm puppy" -- and he may not have believed in happiness at all.

"He thought it was impossible to draw a happy comic strip and actually he was fond of saying that 'Happiness is a sad song,'" Michaelis said in a recent interview.

The cartoonist's family says it is very unhappy with the 655-page portrait of Schulz, who died in 2000 at the age of 77, and say they do not recognize the man on display.

His son Monte Schulz told Newsweek magazine: "Why would all of us (children) gather at his bedside for three months if we hadn't felt enormous affection for him?"

"Had we known this was the book David was going to write, we would not have talked to him."