Writing Is Like Plumbing - An Interview With Stephan Pastis

Story by Jacob Fricke 

| Published Oct 26, 2010

Imagine trying to pitch this idea to anyone: The interactions of a mean, arrogant rat and a sweet, humble, stupid pig named Rat and Pig. They are joined by a Zebra who lives next door to a fraternity of crocodiles and are unsuccessfully trying to kill him.

This is how Stephan Pastis describes his creation and livelihood, the comic strip “Pearls Before Swine.” A lawyer-turned cartoonist, Pastis’ creation has been running since 2002 in newspapers and it is in almost 600 worldwide.

Pastis, however, doesn’t see himself as a cartoonist. Rather, he identifies himself as a writer.

“I think my drawing is okay, but I think if I have any skill in this business it’s the writing,” Pastis said. “If you can write a joke well enough, you can illustrate it with stick figures. So, I think comic strips come down to the writing. If you can draw, great. But if you can only have one skill, drawing or writing, most people would tell you the writing is more important.”

In addition to the main characters, Pastis often writes himself into the strip. This does not, however, mean that the Pastis in the strip is anything like the one in real life. “(My) character in the strip is sort of a sad sack, dumpy loser. I hope I’m not that way,” Pastis said.

He does, however, closely identify with one character. “I am Rat. That is my natural voice. If I can write nothing but one character all day, it would be Rat.”

Pastis is something of a rarity in the world of comic strips. Never a stranger to controversy, a 2007 strip was condemned by the Turkish embassy for allegedly mocking former president Mustafa Ataturk. In addition, newspapers routinely receive complaints for the depressing and oftentimes morose tone of the strips.

Pastis, however, says he simply writes what is in his mind. “Writing is like plumbing,” Pastis said. “Like a series of pipes. There might be good stuff in there, but for it to get out, what’s between it and the end of the pipe has to first come out. Sometimes it’s depressing, sometimes it’s not. I think if you’re honest, you don’t overdo the depressing stuff. When all is said and done, it makes for a fairly unpredictable strip.”

As any journalism student will tell you, newspapers are struggling. One of the overlooked casualties in this is comic strips. “It’s made it almost impossible for any strip, who came after me, I guess, to get a footing,” Pastis said. “The dynamic that works against comic strips now is that newspapers are having a hard time getting young readers. But older people are still reading them. Newspapers, in a desperate bid to retain who they have, do these things called comic poll. The only person that responds to a comic poll is an old person. A paper in Lawrence, Kansas, just did a comic poll. They said that the average age of respondents into the physical newspaper poll was 69 years old.”

He continues, “If your goal is to hang on to every last older reader, just turn the lights out when they die in 10 or 15 years. If your goal is to get younger readers, that’s just suicide... It’s not fair to set a strip that’s been running one year versus one that’s been there for sixty.”

Where does Pastis see himself after this cultural shift? Doing what he loves.

“My big worry is whether or not we’ll have an industry in five years. As long as there is, I plan to be in it,” Pastis said.

“I won’t quit on my own, they’ll have to quit me.”