THE OFFICIAL PRICE GUIDE TO PEANUTS COLLECTIBLES <i> by Freddi Margolin & Andrea Podley : (Ballantine: $9.95, illustrated) </i>

During the last four decades, the runaway popularity of Charles Schulz’s comic strip has spawned a veritable flood of merchandise: The authors wax enthusiastic over products that range from an Avon shampoo mug featuring Lucy ($10-$12) to a solid-gold Cartier statuette of Snoopy ($5,000). But few of these dolls, music boxes, waste-paper baskets, etc. display any real craftsmanship or artistry. They’re mass-produced objects that often bear little resemblance to Schulz’s drawings. The current mania for accumulating odd bits of the recent past has expanded the meaning of “collectible” to include anything people are willing to have around the house in large quantities. That a 20-year-old bar of soap in the shape of a cartoon beagle can be presented as a connoisseur’s treasure reveals just how aesthetically bankrupt American culture has become.