Existentialism has been accused of being defeatist and depressing (and Sartre didn’t help his cause with terms like ‘abandonment’, ‘despair’, and ‘nausea’). But Peanuts also demonstrates the optimism of the philosophy. Why does Charlie Brown continue to go out to the pitcher’s mound, despite his 50 year losing streak? Why try to kick the football, when Lucy has always pulled it away at the last second? Because there is an infinite gap between the past and the present. Regardless of what has come before, there is always the possibility of change. Monstrous freedom is a double edged sword. We exist, and are responsible. This is both liberating and terrifying.
From “Sartre & Peanuts” by Nathan Radke.
I call this my literary archive, there are ten drawers, and each of them contains all of the material that went into the making of one or other of my books. But at the back you will find untidy hand written pages, at the front you will find a file copy of the finished book and even all the reviews and comments. … This is part of what I call my chronological archive, um, we just have happened to have opened one of nineteen drawers that we could have opened. And then, I have been a great writer of letters to people, and people write letters to me. In there must be… I couldn’t count them; there must be many thousands of letters in those cabinets. The equivalent for me of emails is the little box of envelopes up there.
Biblioklept 