Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Snoopy took the most mocked opening in English and made it his signature, and then never got past it. The running gag is a hopeless novelist who ignores every edit, so Lucy's request for a 'once upon a time' becomes 'Once upon a time it was a dark and stormy night'. A century and a half on, Peanuts has done more to keep the sentence alive than Bulwer-Lytton's novel.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for PeanutsShow the scene
Snoopy first sits down at a typewriter on top of his doghouse in the Peanuts strip of 12 July 1965, and this is the opening line of the novel he is writing as the World Famous Author. He starts many later stories the same way, and Lucy and Linus read his drafts and offer suggestions he rarely follows. The line is not Schulz's invention: it opens Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford, and Schulz used it, he said, because it was an old cliche.
Sources (3)
- Wikiquote: PeanutsSnoopy sectionReference checked
- Peanuts Wiki: World Famous AuthorOpening paragraphsReference checked
- Wikipedia: It was a dark and stormy nightOrigin and Later usage sectionsReference checked
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