The Wall Street Journal corrals Bill Watterson to review the new Charles Schulz biography:

It’s a strange and interesting story, and Mr. Michaelis, the author of a 1998 biography of artist N.C. Wyeth, paces the narrative well, offering many insights and surprising events from Schulz’s life. Undoubtedly the most fascinating part of the book is the juxtaposition of biographical information and reproduced “Peanuts” strips. Here we see how literally Schulz sometimes depicted actual situations and events. The strips used as illustrations in “Schulz and Peanuts” are reproduced at eye-straining reduction and are often removed from the context of their stories, but they vividly demonstrate how Schulz used his cartoons to work through private concerns. We discover, for example, that in the recurring scenes of Lucy annoying Schroeder at the piano, the crabby and bossy Lucy stands in for Joyce, and the obsessive and talented Schroeder is a surrogate for Schulz.

Reading these strips in light of the information Mr. Michaelis unearths, I was struck less by the fact that Schulz drew on his troubled first marriage for material than by the sympathy that he shows for his tormentor and by his ability to poke fun at himself.