Creativity not violence

I spent much of the weekend grieving about the Sandy Hook ES shootings. Then a skit on Saturday Night Live, an adult parody of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," pushed a little of my sadness into a meditation on why some angry and/or crazy males turn to guns, while others turn to art.

Biographies of Charles Schultz paint him as a man who "specialised in making art out of angst," who "grudgingly held on to every indignity and insult he ever received and used them later on to fuel his strip"—including experiences beyond his awkward childhood. This transformation of bitterness into the long-running "Peanuts" comic strip (and all related TV shows and licensed products) made Schultz a rich and famous man, exacting the best possible revenge on the childhood peers who ignored him.

Such angst has played out again and again in other lives and bedrooms. It has fueled heavy metal and moody goth songs, crude cartoons and abstract paintings. The lucky boys find guitars or paints or pens or cameras or street dancing. They may not be good enough to make a living at it, but it gives them an outlet, it lets them use their anger (and their vibrancy) for something that, if not beautiful or the highest art, at least causes no damage to anyone else.

What I see a lot of now, though, are groups of teenagers (or, worse, single teenagers) playing video games where they spend hours shooting aliens and "enemies." Hours and hours not out in the sunlight, not laughing or being goofy, not making something with their hands—with only a single purpose to garner as many "kills" as possible.

I am not calling for a ban on video games (what's the use of that?). But I would like to see some kind of cultural shift where young men are encouraged to be creative and expressive, especially in groups. Right now, teenage boys who are not gifted at sports have almost no other group activity they can engage in outside of school other than video games. Organizations like Guitars Not Guns aim to "encourage children and teens to use their creativity to foster personal development and to help divert them from self-destructive influences." But their intention is on at-risk youth, not alienated white suburban teenagers.

I propose this as something that can be discussed outside of the current debate about gun control. I am not sure any of this would have prevented the Sandy Hook shooter (I won't use his name) from doing what he did. How much more heroic and life-affirming had he instead just scrawled bad poetry in composition books or strummed amateurish rock songs. I wish somehow I could praise him, and others like him, for doing that instead. And, yes, I understand that he was mentally ill. But mental illness has not kept some artists from creating beautiful things. The autistic knitter created interesting and gorgeous yarn creations. Her handiwork is housed in a museum, not a morgue.

The lady in the bunny suit, a cream pie, Gary Larson and me

The day I met Gary Larson, I ended up wiping cream pie off his face.

Larson had come for a book-signing at the Bookseller in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where I worked as the assistant manager. It was 1984, when local, independent bookshops were still thriving and authors would visit even small towns if the bookstore was big enough. (The Bookseller went out of business years ago.)

Not long after Larson had been set up at a table piled with his books in the store's lower-level, a woman sauntered in dressed in a bunny costume and carrying a cream pie. I was at the cash register and laughed as she walked by, thinking she was here to make some kind of absurd offering to the visiting celebrity. But, without saying a word, she smushed the pie in Larson's face. "Hey, what are you doing?" he said (or something to that effect).

I grabbed paper towels and rushed down. The woman was standing there, looking perplexed and about to cry. It turns out she had called Larson's best friend, who was a reptile specialist at the Seattle Zoo and who occasionally appeared in his "Far Side" comics. "What can I do that would make Gary Larson feel welcome here?" she'd asked, and the friend had replied, as a joke, "If I were you, I'd dress up in a bunny costume and throw a pie in his face." I still can't believe she took the guy seriously.

I was reminded of this incident last week when I helped out at the PTSA used book sale. I miss that kind of tactile interaction with books. It was energizing to be surrounded by all those words, all those possibilities—I never feel that when I do a search and order on Amazon.com.

But what really brought it to mind again is that my son (I-guy) wrote Larson in early February, not expecting a reply because Larson has taken himself out of the public eye and offers no direct contact info on the Far Side web site. So, to get his attention, after the usual adoring fan paragraph, I-guy said, "More to the point of this letter, my mother swears she met you once in a very odd way." He went on to describe the incident just as I had described it to him, closing with: "Anyway, I guess I'm wondering if you remember this, or if my mother is full of it."

And he got back a reply! Not from Larson, but from one of his assistants. She said: "I checked with Mr. Larson and he confirmed that your mother remembers the episode quite accurately.... I'm happy to report that your mother did not in fact make it up!"

To offer further proof, she told him that the episode is mentioned in The Complete Far Side, Vol. 2 (p. 450). I have also since discovered that it is mentioned in the children's reference series, Something About the Author (v. 57, p. 124). In an interview in that volume, Larson says "celebrity has its price," and goes on to mention the woman who threw the cream pie: "I felt bad for her—the crowd was ugly about it." That moment and another, when he was led into a hive of too-eager fans, turned him off to public life, he says. "It used to be so simple," he laments, now "it's too showbiz."

Of course I wonder now if I had prevented the woman from throwing the banana cream pie in his face if Gary Larson would still be in the public eye—or, more importantly, if he would he still be publishing cartoons.