Garry Trudeau on Sparky and Snoopy
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Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau has an opinion piece in today’s issue of Rolling Stone (non-paywall version) on his relationship with Charles Schulz and more so on why Snoopy is an enduring and endearing comic character.
It was this haiku-perfect character humor that dazzled Schulz’s peers. In Snoopy, he had created an American archetype – the persistent dreamer for whom nothing seems out of reach, even when it usually is. In the process, Snoopy took on far more agency than your typical, needy dog, becoming much more like, well, a cat. Aloof, autonomous, ever disdainful of an owner he called “that round-headed kid,” Snoopy would typically preannounce the arrival of a new persona – “Here’s the world-famous …” – and then let his imagination take over, come what may. He represented, for me anyway, perfect freedom, and in my early work, I borrowed this device of self-narration. My characters often declared who they thought they were, no matter how at variance it was with whom they revealed themselves to be. The laughs lay in the contradictions.
Worth a full read.
Feature image: © Rolling Stone
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