The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life: A Library of America Special Publication

A one-of-a-kind celebration of America’s greatest comic strip–and the life lessons it can teach us–from a stellar array of writers and artists

Over the span of fifty years, Charles M. Schulz created a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture—hilarious, poignant, inimitable. Some twenty years after the last strip appeared, the characters Schulz brought to life in Peanuts continue to resonate with millions of fans, their beguiling four-panel adventures and television escapades offering lessons about happiness, friendship, disappointment, childhood, and life itself. 

In The Peanuts Papers, thirty-three writers and artists reflect on the deeper truths of Schulz’s deceptively simple comic, its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture. These enchanting, affecting, and often quite personal essays show just how much Peanuts means to its many admirers—and the ways it invites us to ponder, in the words of Sarah Boxer, “how to survive and still be a decent human being” in an often bewildering world. Featuring essays, memoirs, poems, and two original comic strips, here is the ultimate reader’s companion for every Peanuts fan.

Featuring:

Jill Bialosky 
Lisa Birnbach 
Sarah Boxer
Jennifer Finney Boylan 
Ivan Brunetti 
Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell 
Rich Cohen 
Gerald Early 
Umberto Eco
Jonathan Franzen 
Ira Glass
Adam Gopnik 
David Hajdu 
Bruce Handy 
David Kamp 
Maxine Hong Kingston
Chuck Klosterman 
Peter D. Kramer 
Jonathan Lethem 
Rick Moody 
Ann Patchett 
Kevin Powell
Joe Queenan
Nicole Rudick 
George Saunders 
Elissa Schappell 
Seth 
Janice Shapiro 
Mona Simpson 
Leslie Stein 
Clifford Thompson 
David L. Ulin 
Chris Ware