Francesco Matteuzzi
The authors had a brilliant and audacious idea: to tell the story of Charles M. Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts,” in comic-strip format. Schulz grew up in the Twin Cities, and was not exactly encouraged by his parents to become a cartoonist, but perhaps his destiny was determined by the lifelong nickname his uncle bestowed upon him as a child: “Sparky,” after a comic-strip figure called Spark Plug. After an unhappy stint in the army during World War II, Schulz taught art during the daytime and drew at night, and finally, when told he drew kids well, he sold his first cartoons, to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, thus launching his strip called “L’il Folks.” A drive to New York to drop off his work at United Feature Syndicate led to the offer of a contract, with a condition: the strip would be renamed “Peanuts,” as in the peanut gallery, slang for children’s seats in a theater. Schulz hated the name, but being paid for work he loved doing prevailed, and Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, Linus, and the gang went on to conquer the world. Luca Debus, the illustrator, and his co-writer, Francesco Matteuzzi, grew up in Italy and never met their idol, but both fell in love with his cartoons at an early age. Some of the dialogue is real, much is imagined, but what these two men have produced in this beautifully published volume is nothing less than magical.
The title refers to the year of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, which failed thanks to the endurance of Germany’s democracy but did signal the beginning of its erosion, fueling the eventual triumph of Nazism 10 years later. Mark William Jones is a superb storyteller, weaving geopolitical analysis with the daily tribulations of German citizens. 1923 serves as a sobering reminder of how even strong states can crumble to the forces of authoritarianism. If the putschists had been punished according to the laws of the nation in 1923, Hitler may have been stopped in his tracks. The difference between the complacency of German officials in 1923 and the prosecution of Donald Trump for his role in the January 2021 insurrection is laudable.
This is intellectual history of the highest order, an acrobatic feat that examines how the lives of Jorge Luis Borges, Werner Heisenberg, and Immanuel Kant all show the falsity of what we assume is fixed reality. What a poet, physicist, and philosopher can teach us about life and its uncertainties is told in exhilarating detail, and William Egginton makes his insights accessible even to readers who are none of the above. Love, quantum mechanics, and free will have never been dealt with so engagingly. Do not let that previous sentence scare you. The Rigor of Angels is immensely rewarding, even if it may cut into your time playing Wordle.
Funny Things, 1923, and The Rigor of Angels will be available at your local independent bookstore, on Bookshop, and on Amazon beginning August 29
