My buddy D.F. Rogers points out that the synopsis of David Michaelis’ biography of N.C. Wyeth isn’t all that distinctly different from that of his biography of C.M. Schulz.
For forty-three years, starting in 1902, N.C. Wyeth painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and murals, as well as illustrations for a long shelf of world literature. Yet despite worldwide acclaim, he judged himself a failure, believing that illustration was of no importance. David Michaelis tells the story of Wyeth’s family through four generations — a saga that begins and ends with tragedy — and brings to life the huge-spirited, deeply complicated man, and an America that was quickly vanishing.
After a lot of furious flipping through various portions of the Michaelis biography of Schulz, I am now slowly and deliberating reading it front-to-finish. Yes, Schulz was complicated, but in the book “complicated” does indeed seem to mean the same thing as “negative.” By definition, a single significant aspect of someone’s personality isn’t what makes them complicated.