Mannequin Monday – Here’s Joe Cool…

Here’s Joe Cool, appearing in the first Mannequin Monday blog post of the new year. This week, an insightful article from The Atlantic on Charles Schulz’s character Snoopy. Snoopy, “realizing that he’s tired and cold and lonely and that it’s suppertime.”

And, as always, a writing exercise of my own.

What I’m Reading This Week

A 2005 article in The Atlantic caught my eye this week: “The Exemplary Narcissism of Snoopy” by Sarah Boxer. Boxer began the article with a short history of the comic strip as it developed from its inception in 1950.

“Peanuts was deceptive,” Boxer wrote. “It looked like kid stuff, but it wasn’t. The strip’s cozy suburban conviviality, its warm fuzziness, actually conveyed some uncomfortable truths about the loneliness of social existence. The characters, though funny, could stir up shockingly heated arguments over how to survive and still be a decent human being in a bitter world. Who was better at it—Charlie Brown or Snoopy?”

Every character… had at least one key prop or attribute.

Boxer’s description of the workings of the comic strip offers solid advice for any story writer. She wrote: “Every character was a powerful personality with quirky attractions and profound faults, and every character, like some saint or hero, had at least one key prop or attribute. Charlie Brown had his tangled kite, Schroeder his toy piano, Linus his flannel blanket, Lucy her ‘Psychiatric Help’ booth, and Snoopy his doghouse.”

I see a connection between writing a comic strip and storytelling at large. Any fiction writer will struggle to create characters with distinct personality traits, quirks, foibles. Even a tic unique to them. I think, for example, of Hemingway’s Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea. The story is all about the fisherman’s quest for a large fish, but we readers revel in hearing him talk about American baseball teams.

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