Fictional Biography
Duke's early life is murky. His mother is mentioned very few times in the strip; a flashback has her noting at Duke's college graduation that "one of three men I used to know would be very proud of you." He recalls having been born wearing Ray Bans, and is almost never seen without sunglasses in the strip.
Despite Zonker calling him "Uncle Duke", Duke appears to be his surname; the back matter for the Doonesbury collection "Death of a Party Animal" refers to him as "Raoul Duke," a throwback to the character's origins. Conversely, in one exposé of his past he is revealed to have no last name.
Read more about this topic: Uncle Duke
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“One of the proud joys of the man of lettersif that man of letters is an artistis to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the worlds memory.”
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