From an essay, “Snoopy taught me how to be a writer,” by Ann Patchett; it was adapted by the Washington Post Outlook section from an essay that will appear in “The Peanut Papers,” to be published in October by the Library of America.
Having ventured fearlessly into the world, he [Snoopy] could come back to the roof of his doghouse and sit straight-backed in front of his typewriter, to tap out the words that began so many of his stories: “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Wait, am I seriously discussing Snoopy, a cartoon dog, as a writer?
Am I believing in him as he was drawn to believe in himself? Did I want to be a novelist because he was a novelist?
I am. I do. I did.
Snoopy worked hard up there on the roof of the doghouse. He saw his own flaws. He typed: “Those years in Paris were to be among the finest of her life. Looking back, she once remarked, ‘Those years in Paris were among the finest of my life.’ That was what she said when she looked back upon those years in Paris . . . where she spent some of the finest years of her life.” Which was followed by the thought bubble, “I think this is going to need a little editing . . .”
Snoopy didn’t just write novels, he sent them out. In those dark days before electronic submissions, he taught me what it would mean to stand in front of a mailbox, waiting to hear from an editor. Snoopy got far more rejection letters than he ever got acceptances, and the rejections ranged (as they will) from impersonal to flippant to cruel.
Later, I could see we’d been building up to this. It wasn’t as if he’d won all those tennis matches he played in. The Sopwith Camel was regularly riddled with bullet holes. But he kept on going. He was willing to lose, even in the stories he imagined for himself. He lost, and he continued to be cool, which is to say, he was still himself in the face of both failure and success.
The Washington Post loves Snoopy. On June 6 it featured him in a piece, “How Snoopy helped us remember D-Day.” The story’s opening:
“Snoopy, who first appeared in the “Peanuts” comic strip in 1950, has been everywhere at this point: summer camp, college, the desert to visit his hapless brother Spike. He has been to the airfields of World War I in his unceasing fight with the Red Baron, and even to the moon with the crew of Apollo 10.
“He also went to Normandy, France, in a national call for remembrance and unity. And there, he became part of D-Day’s pop-culture legacy, one that has shaped Americans’ understanding of the invasion, and indeed, World War II, for decades.”