2.8

I was reading the New York Times online the other day and came across an article (by Randy Kennedy) discussing a new biography on "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz. Apparently, the new book seeks to depict him as a tortured artist, exerting his misery, angst, and various demons through the medium of a couple pictures a day about kids with giant heads. Now, this brings to mind a few questions: Was Schulz really that miserable? Do artists need these sorts of feelings to truly excel? Why the hell was I reading the New York Times? Etcetera.

To answer, first I must tell of a problem I recently encountered. You see, as a renowned cynic and all around tortured artist, one has to fully play the part. I waswalking around campus, despair etched on my face, my posture indicating one beaten so thoroughly by life that I'm pretty sure I made Prozac's stock go up, basking in the unceasing bitterness I'd grown so accustomed to, just ready for some quality moping when all of sudden: tragedy. Or rather, lack thereof. Indeed, much to my paradoxical chagrin, I found myself feeling pretty good. Not happy, mind you, never that. But pretty decent all the same.

"So what?" you ask. So what? So what?! I have a column to write, and here I am feeling as if life, vast expanses of empirical evidence to the contrary, might actually be worthwhile after all. What can I do? How can I cope? Without my bitterness, I feel so... lost. In a good way. That is bad. Sort of.

Anyway. My proposed solution: Try to figure out how to make life suck again. So I Hence, reading the New York Times. And yeah, the Schulz article helped a bit. I mean, as Schulz himself summed up (according to the article), "All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away. Oh, and half the cast gets AIDS and Snoopy has to be euthanized when Charlie's parents go bankrupt after the local textile factory is outsourced." That's pretty dark. And made up (the last sentence, anyway; please, don't sue me! Although that would make me pretty miserable...). Anyway, point being, "Peanuts" is sad. But also comic. They don't call them "pretty morose strips," after all.

So I thought about it. Sure, it can help your art if you have something you need to get out or express. For some people, alcohol does the trick. Other people think you need a room of your own and 500 pounds a year (Virginia Woolf). I, personally, think you need the broken skull of a hobo prince and a hippopotamus bicuspid or two. In other words, lots of things help, but I wouldn't recommend them all. (I mean, really. 500 pounds a year? With that much flab, it's a wonder you could create anything other than waste and tabloid pictures. And I could have sworn the Brits used the metric system...).

In the end, though, as the Schulz article discusses, there is a tendency for us to have an ideal of "the tortured artist" as the most effective artist. And, as the word "ideal" denotes, the veracity of such a claim is, at the very least, disputable. But, if it comes down to it, if I have to choose between a miserable but artistically talented/prolific life resulting in an early suicide (or, worse, a perpetual decline into despairing disappointment and/or mediocrity) and a long, more or less happy life with no great novels, profound poetry, or cult following of the posthumously faithful, I'm going to be pretty tempted to opt for the latter. So, bitter misery, I bid thee fond farewell. That is, until next week (old habits die hard, amiright?).