27 MAY 2013 (Mon.) @ ~ 08:45 EST
To Whom it May Concern: I very much enjoyed reading Gahan Wilson's memoirs of an only-child-hood, "Nuts". (I used to own this book, gave it to someone who needed cheering up, and now, thankfully, have it again.) It is clearly written as a reaction to Charles Shultz's comic strip "Peanuts", which, though in my childhood I thought very entertaining, I now consider to be trite, overly-repetitive, and unrealistic (and would have, IMHO, continued to remain so even had Shultz lived and continued drawing). I sympathize *and* empathize with the unnamed "Kid", who is constantly puzzled by adults' seemingly-illogical demands. The obvious parallel between the cap on the acorn in the frontispiece and The Kid's pancake cap emphasizes the old adage "Big oaks from little acorns grow". My favorite episodes are: (1) the confusion in the classroom when The Kid returns to school after a prolonged illness; (2) the increasingly seeming-oddness of the surrounding environment when The Kid is momentarily lost when returning home; and (3) the haircut (particularly amusing in *this* episode is the highly-opinionated barber's [or is that a redundancy?] disjointed and rambling conversation, which the reader has to piece together from fragments). Adults, in their entirety, are seldom seen (only large hands and feet); the exception is in the episodes of the illness and death of a favorite uncle (probably a lifetime smoker?), wherein The Kid sees his uncle in the hospital and then in his coffin in the funeral home. A highly-recommended and thoroughly enjoyable book!
To Whom it May Concern: I very much enjoyed reading Gahan Wilson's memoirs of an only-child-hood, "Nuts". (I used to own this book, gave it to someone who needed cheering up, and now, thankfully, have it again.) It is clearly written as a reaction to Charles Shultz's comic strip "Peanuts", which, though in my childhood I thought very entertaining, I now consider to be trite, overly-repetitive, and unrealistic (and would have, IMHO, continued to remain so even had Shultz lived and continued drawing). I sympathize *and* empathize with the unnamed "Kid", who is constantly puzzled by adults' seemingly-illogical demands. The obvious parallel between the cap on the acorn in the frontispiece and The Kid's pancake cap emphasizes the old adage "Big oaks from little acorns grow". My favorite episodes are: (1) the confusion in the classroom when The Kid returns to school after a prolonged illness; (2) the increasingly seeming-oddness of the surrounding environment when The Kid is momentarily lost when returning home; and (3) the haircut (particularly amusing in *this* episode is the highly-opinionated barber's [or is that a redundancy?] disjointed and rambling conversation, which the reader has to piece together from fragments). Adults, in their entirety, are seldom seen (only large hands and feet); the exception is in the episodes of the illness and death of a favorite uncle (probably a lifetime smoker?), wherein The Kid sees his uncle in the hospital and then in his coffin in the funeral home. A highly-recommended and thoroughly enjoyable book!
