M. Thomas Inge Transcript

December 15, 2007

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome to Sound Authors. I’ve been speaking to M. Thomas Inge. We’ve been talking about Charles Schultz. I’d like to divest from that for a second and chat about what you’re working on now. I’m sure it’s some interesting project.M. Thomas Inge: Well I’ve always combined my interest in popular culture with a so-called high brow series of culture so it’s a combination of those things. I recently published a biography of William Faulkner which was an illustrated biography which was a lot of fun because I got a chance to track down photographs and drawings and unusual book covers and things like that. That was published by the Overlook Press in New York.The one that’s about to come out is a volume in the new Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture came out over a decade ago. It was a big huge single volume reference work. Now it’s being revised in separate volumes and I edited the volume on literature so I got a chance to talk about the whole scope of southern literature from the beginning down to the present. Another project-that’s the University of North Carolina Press. There’s another project, a collection of humor from the old south through the University of Missouri Press.I’m also working on a book on Walt Disney. I’m particularly studying the process of adaptation in Disney’s films, the way he would take an original fairy tale story or novel and how he would change it in the process of animating it and what the meaning of those kinds of changes are.I continue to work on Faulkner relations between comic strips and American literature for another. I’m also doing a small book right at the moment on Poe in the comic books. He’s probably the most influential writer to be adapted to comic book stories. We’re going to have an exhibition at the Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia based on my work on Poe in the comic books.So as you can see it’s a wide variety of things.

Dr. Kent Gustavson: You stay busy.You know it keeps me off the street and out of trouble. [laughter] At my age I don’t get on the street too much. I’ve always been a kind of workaholic. I enjoy every minute of it. I love my teaching too. I think, the academic world is a fine place to be. I love working with all these young people and trying to teach them a few things while you learn a few things from them. So, yes, I do love it all.

Gustavson: Another question for you. I teach as well and I’m part of the X Generation but there’s a huge striation between - there are so many differing generations and the Internet separates us all. I don’t really understand the Y Generation and the thumbers(?), the brand new ones, but how is it teaching Peanuts across the generations, teaching comics? How does that differ from teaching literature?

Inge: Well since Peanuts was around for 50 years and it was experienced by several generations during that period of time, you get a broad spectrum of people who know the strip and even if they don’t know the strip they know the characters because they’re on lunch boxes and napkins and comic books and film, the television series with the Christmas one coming up every year. They’re probably among the most widely known characters in the world except for Mickey Mouse and Superman. They’re probably more widely known. Therefore everybody has had some experience, been touched in some small way by Peanuts. So, that sort of appeals to the generations.But, if I talk to my students about the humor in Mad magazine or National Lampoon you get a blank stare. They don’t know that material. Talk to them about The Onion and they might if they’re staying in touch with contemporary humor and satire.One of the odd sorts of things about teaching as long as I have - I’ve been teaching about 45 years now - is that you stay the same over those 45 years because the students stay the same. The people sitting in front of you are the same age year after year after year and you get some sense that you’re the same age you were when you started teaching which you’re not.So, you have to remind yourself that there are things you know by experience that they can’t possibly know and even if they did they’ve heard of them, they’re only a part of past history. So, we have to take time and explain things I think, parts of our history that we take for granted and they don’t. At the same time they know a heck of a lot more about computers and technology than I ever will.So, while there are things they don’t know, there are things they do so there’s kind of an even exchange going on. They’re learning from me and I’m learning from them.

Gustavson: I guess the question is - they’re exposed to so much stimulation all day long - flashing screens-and it’s getting more and more all the time. Do they have the patience for comic strips anymore?

Inge: Well I don’t that the comic strips are as popular as they once were because newspaper are disappearing. I mean we used to have two newspapers in every town. Now there’s one at best. So, this limits the number of comic strips that can be carried. I have a feeling that it’s the older groups that still go back to the comic strips every day. Because the other kids they do get their humor off of the computer screen or their iPods or wherever.But there’s a kind of a shift in sources of information. For my generation it’s always going to be print. With future generations it’s always going to be mainly visual with print coming along. I don’t know you know whether we’ve lost or gained anything by these changes. They’re a natural part of the scheme of things and for us older people it looks like well you know, they don’t know how to read anymore. But, sometimes buying all those books that Barnes and Noble and Borders are selling you know. And they’re doing big booming business in books so somebody must be reading books somewhere. So, there are people still holding on to the printed word. And of course you still have to read the instructions on the computer to set it up.So, there is a need for words, so I don’t know where they’re, I mean, when I grew up the best we could do was listening to the radio.Get the comic books and comic strips. We could have used a little more stimulation, to tell you the truth. Now maybe they’re getting too much, I’m not quite sure. But, I have a feeling it’s just the times are changing and maybe we’re not.

Gustavson: Absolutely. I also have a question for you. It seems you’ve taught in many foreign universities. What’s the difference between cultures in comics? I know there’s political satire, there’s every day comics. What have you seen in other countries?

Inge: Well, they don’t have as much freedom. They don’t have that bill of rights that guarantees us freedom of speech. You know, nor do many countries have that strong separation of church and state. In fact, we have both of those meaning we can make fun of any institution. Religious, political, educational, whatever. And that’s an important part of the democratic system here in this country.So when you teach humor in another context, you find that the whole sets of morals and the ways they can find things funny differs because in a totalitarian country, I’ve taught in the Soviet Union for example, humor of the party is discouraged. In fact, it could put you in prison for life. So, you had to be very careful in circles. But, I found that in the oral tradition, and that’s where a lot of the humor resides, there is always an oral tradition.In that oral tradition, there’s a great deal of more freedom and flexibility to do what you want. And so the humor is there, it’s just not seen in evident print. And the cultural reference points change. I was teaching my Soviet students in those days an exert from a Groucho Marx film A Night At The Opera, and Groucho and Chico are doing this comic routine about contracts that come with signing up an opera singer.And they get down to the last part of it and Chico says what’s that, and Groucho says, oh that’s the sanity clause. And Chico says that you can’t fool me, there ain’t no sanity clause. Well, my students had never heard of santa clause so the humor went over their heads, so I had to explain the joke. Also, at the time I was teaching, we had a lot of Polish jokes circulating, and the Russians said why are you making fun of the Poles? They’re great, educated, talented people.And I said you’re right. But, then I found that they had something called Armenian radio jokes, and these were jokes at Armenians apparently told over the radio that made them look stupid. So, I said well wait a minute, you have your Armenian radio jokes. And they said yeah, but the Armenian’s are really stupid.[laughs]

Inge: So the reference toward change, but they is still some humor there. And I think, those Russian students were among the best I ever had, in fact.

Gustavson: Well, that’s something to think about. In Charles Schulz’ comics he rarely, over fifty years, he didn’t write strips that people wouldn’t like for some reason. There were no groups of people that disliked Peanuts.

Inge: Well, how can you?[laughs]

Inge: It’s like, as I said Peanuts is so underwhelming in a sense. Poor Charlie Brown, you can’t help but feel sorry for him. And he never got into political, though he did get into religious themes sometimes. But, it’d be by way of a Bible verse that would show up in the strip or something like that. And he did go through a period himself when he was affiliated with the Church of God, which is kind of the independent evangelical group.But he came away from that later on, and towards the end of his life he called himself a secular humanist. And I think, basing the strip is more oriented that way anyway. That is, it gets into the problems of mankind without necessarily providing the kind of solutions that religion tends to offer. And politics he stayed away from because he was not a political person.In fact, I’m not quite sure that he belonged to any political party ever.

Gustavson: So what can we learn. What kind of conclusions can we draw from Peanuts? What can we use to live our lives?

Inge: Well, we learn in the first place that we’re not alone in the universe. And no matter how deep or troubling our problems are, we’re not by ourselves. And Charlie Brown, in other words, is there too at least. And we can identify with him, even though he has a bunch of friends around him giving him a hard time, he also knows when push comes to shove they’ll be there to help him too.I mean, some of our strongest critics are among our best friends, very often. So, it teaches us that, you know, we’re not in our problems, and also it teaches us that no matter how difficult these problems become, if we can maintain a balance in a sense of humor and not take ourselves too seriously, then there’s still a possibility of life in the tunnel of kicking that football.Of getting up that next day and accomplishing the thing we set out to do, so it’s that kind of positive affirmative message, I think, that comes out of what is basically a comic strip for despair and failure. That message that comes from the strip is one we take to heart and one we need. I mean, the whole twentieth century is a pretty insecure century with the cold war and then the other wars we got into after World War II and are still in today.These are scary times, and in a sense some days I feel we’re almost back to the nineteen fifties in the cold war feeling of our country because we’re so concerned about possible terrorists and things people are going to do to us. So, you know any kind of entertainment that speaks to those fears and makes us feel better about ourselves, that’s something worth keeping around.

Gustavson: So, we’re all hoping that the red-haired girl will sometime fall in love with us. And thank you so much for chatting with us today, M. Thomas. In his book published several years ago is Charles M. Schulz Conversations, he’s got a William Faulkner biography and many other publications. Thank you so much for being on the show.