Book Review: Tu N'en Reviendras Pas Charlie Brown

Happy New Year, Gentle Readers! For those who've resolved to learn more French, here's a book to encourage you.

Title: Tu N'en Reviendras Pas Charlie Brown

Original English: You'll Flip Charlie Brown

Author: Charles M. Schulz

Translator: anonymous

Date: 1965-67 (English), 1972 (French)

Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston

ISBN: 0-03-086658-8

Length: pages not numbered

Illustrations: cartoons on every page

Quote: "Mon probleme est que je ne me...je ne me sens pas sur...Je ne suis pas capable de..."

In the early 1970s, the "Peanuts" comic strip was so popular, and reprints were selling so well in English, that vintage "Peanuts" cartoons were translated into French and Spanish--half a dozen paperback books in each language. All I need to say to U.S. baby-boomer readers about this book is that it exists. For those who don't already know the "Peanuts" cartoon, here are some extra words.

In this collection, Charlie Brown's perfectly normal insecurity and wishy-washiness begin with his approach to the Kite-Eating Tree (l'arbre mangeur de cerfs-volants) and bid for fashionable psychological reassurance from neighbor kid Lucy Van Pelt (Psychiatre 5 sous), who has a "psychiatric help" stand instead of a lemonade stand...

Lucy confused my generation, but then practicing psychiatrists and psychologists were a bit confused, themselves, about the difference between psychiatric and psychological help. Psychiatrists are doctors who are licensed to prescribe treatments. Psychologists are scientists who study the workings of the human mind. In practice competent psychiatrists, like Sigmund Freud, used to spend a lot of time listening to normal people's talk about their lives, dreams, feelings, decision-making processes or indecisive ditherings, etc., before considering any treatments--which was as it should be, and cardiologists, podiatrists, otolaryngologists, etc., should only take a lot of time to find out what's actually going on before they prescribe treatments too. However, when people like Charlie Brown--a very normal middle school boy with whom millions of people identified--benefit from help talking and thinking through things they don't feel sure about, most of us don't need to pay for a psychiatrist's time. Most of us, as Charlie Brown demonstrated to the world, could be paying a neighbor five cents for the same kind of insights we'd get from paying a psychiatrist hundreds of dollars. In the 1960s and 1970s psychiatrists were raking in money for telling people, "That's normal."

"But what should I do?"

"You'll have to make your own decision."

"Oh, doctor, I'm in such a bind, it's giving me headaches, I..."

"So take aspirin and make another appointment for next week. Oh, and if you need help over the weekend, call Dr. Smith...I'll be in Bermuda."

Those pre-HMO days were palmy days indeed for psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists...and any teenager who had successfully talked a half-dozen friends through "crises" could hope to cash in on a career in psychological counselling. (She says, not without a tinge of regret, having joined Psi Chi just as this stream of potential revenue was starting to dry up in a nationwide backlash Against Therapy.) Little Lucy, obviously having more trouble growing up than Charlie Brown but willing to rent out her attention, could reasonably look forward to a long lucrative career.

The rest of the children and animals Charlie Brown knew were as literate, as sensitive, and as confused by contemporary problems, as Charlie Brown was. Even his dog escaped into a fantasy of being a World War I flying ace (l'as de 14-18).

The concept of a demographic "generation gap," designed to explain why the huge "baby-boom generation" group supposedly had more conflict with our parents than previous generations had in their teens, reached the point of absurdity in families where one sibling was born between 1945 and 1965 and another was older or younger. Many people born during the actual baby-boom years had siblings who belonged to the "silent generation" demographic, and by 1967 little Sally Brown was only slightly ahead of a trend (if Sally was five or six years old in 1967 she was a late baby-boomer) when, dissatisfied with Charlie Brown's help, she wailed "I hate your generation" (Je hais ta generation!").

"Identity crises,"which some people always thought were better described as role confusion, was a fashionable topic. Part of the humor of "Peanuts" was that children and dogs weren't supposed to be as much troubled with "identity questions" as teenagers and young adults, and Schulz convinced us that children did suffer from role confusion--and who knew about dogs? Snoopy, the good-natured beagle who sometimes seemed like a Christ figure, not only had a fantasy past life as a military hero, but worried about the doggy behavior problems he didn't have: "Il y a long­temps que je n'ai pas mordu quelqu'un..." (It's a long time since I've bitten anybody) and, just after he'd shown a lack of interest in chasing rabbits, "Je suis heureux...Je ne comprends pas...Qu'est-ce que je fais de bien?" (I'm happy...I don't understand...What good am I doing?"

Anyone who's lived with a dog or cat has probably noticed that our pets like us to smell like them, at least strongly enough for other dogs and cats to know at a sniff whom we belong to. If your pet is allowed in the bathroom, whether or not it's been trained to take its own little bath in its own little basin, you hardly have a chance to dry off before the animal wants to rub its fur against you. Schulz drew it as a joke, but it's probably true that Snoopy feels insulted by the idea that the children wash their hands after touching the dog. "Touched the dog?!" Snoopy chases Sally through the house. "I'm covered in fleas! Yellow fever! I've got leprosy! I'm covered in germs! I'm poison, I'm death! Beware! I'm sick! I'm contaaagious!" When someone comes to rescue Sally from the back of a chair, Snoopy slinks away thinking, "Touched the dog! Good grief!" I've never doubted, from observing their behavior, that all Listening Pets and some ordinary animals feel that way, which is why I've tried to be more specific in explaining to animals, petting them as I shut them out of the kitchen, "I do love your pretty fur...but I don't want fur in my food." Fur on clothing is a lost cause. Deep down, your dog or cat knows that trying to get out of the house without traces of its scent on your clothes is a way of denying your relationship with it. 

Then there's Lucy, for whom women's liberation has nothing to do with paying her own future bills. Her agenda for little Schroeder, practicing on his toy piano, includes "un wagon, une voiture de ville et une de sport..Notre maison coutera $100,000...J'aurai besoin de six manteaux de fourrure, des robes du soir et des tenues pour le ski, beaucoup de bijoux, les parfums rares et une centaine de paires de chaussures. Il nous faudra une piscine olympique, chauffee, des chevaux, un court de tennis, un immense jardin...Au travail, mon gars!" (We'll need a station wagon, a town car, and a sports car...Our house will cost $100,000...I'll need six fur coats, evening gowns, ski outfits, lots of jewelry, rare perfumes and a hundred pairs of shoes. We'll need an Olympic-sized swimming pool, heated, and horses, a tennis court, an immense garden...Get to work, boy!) No wonder Schroeder, age eight or ten or thereabouts, thinks he doesn't want to marry Lucy at all. When she tells him the celebration of Beethoven's birthday involves kissing a friend on the nose, it's almost enough to change his musical loyalty..."provoquer une ruee vers Brahms!"

Lucy's little brother Linus was originally two or three years old when Sally was born, although in the 1970s they'd become primary school classmates. Linus is, however, bright for his age. One strip reprinted in this book shows him pondering which book to read as he eats a bowl of cereal, with choices including Moby Dick, Bleak House, Joseph Andrews, and The Interpreter's Bible (in twelve volumes), at such length that his cereal gets soggy. For Christmas he gets "une nouvelle bicyclette, un tournedisque, un train electrique, de l'argent, des mitaines, un canife, une veste de ski, un jeu "mystere", des jeux de patience, des chemises de sport et un auto de course...Et tu sais ce que j'ai d'autre? Je me sens affreusement COUPABLE!!"  (A new bicycle, a record player, an electric train, money, mittens, a knife, a ski vest, games, shirts, and a (model) racing car...And you know what else? GUILT!")

The Little Red-Haired Girl, to whom Charlie Brown didn't dare to speak because he had such a crush on her, was talked about not drawn in the cartoons. "Elle est jolie et les jolies filles me rendent toujours tres nerveux" (She's pretty, and pretty girls always make me nervous), he confides to Lucy. Lucy shouts, "Je suis jolie! Pourquoi peux-tu me parler?" (I'm pretty! Why can you talk to me?) Charlie Brown is not able to explain, "Because you're more familiar than my own sister"; he just stumbles away feeling mortified.

Schulz published at least one "Peanuts" cartoon paperback each year for several years. All sold well, and several were translated into languages other than English. Some titles are rarer than others. Current price ranges vary widely. At the time of writing I can offer this one for our usual minimum price of $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment; you could fit six of the thin, but bigger than pocket-sized, French translations into one package and have room for three or four of the pocket-sized English paperbacks.