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In most books that I have liked over the years there is usually a character in the story that I like. A truly evil antagonist may help the story but isn't always necessary. I read Norman Mailer's THE NAKED AND THE DEAD and loved it. Many years later I read his ANCIENT EVENINGS(?) and I hated it and every character in it. Since I only stayed with it for 100 pages or so maybe I missed something in the last part of the story.
Are there any books that you have read and ENJOYED that did not have any characters you liked? Do you think a likeable lead character is a must to enjoy a story?
No, I don't think a "likable" lead character is a necessity by any means. In fact, a leading character who is too good becomes noisome to me. I like my diamonds in various stages of roughness, I guess, and find those who are relentless bright and shining pearls puke-inducing.
Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley is basically a weak and unsavory person, who goes from bad to worse. Yet if he weren't that way, there would be no story. And it is a testamony to Patricia Highsmith's great skill that she makes you root for this creep, despite the fact that he is essentially despicable.
I read a Japanese novel a couple of years ago about four middle aged workers in a packed quick meal plant. One of them kills her husband in burst of anger, as I recall, and three others help her carve his corpse into disposable pieces and scatter them. All of them were highly flawed women, the murder apart, but at least one of them - the one with the most guts was admirable even as she became the force that held the murderers together, sometimes almost ruthlessly.
I read Like the Sun Rushing, a novel about a gay man growing up in the decades before and into the AIDS epidemic. This was a case where as a child he was likable and pitiable, but as the book progressed he became self-pitying until in the end the two strands of his personality are so woven together that they have become inseparable. And the fascination was to watch the interplay of his now habitual weakness and cynicism with his remaining instincts for compassion and good.
As I said then, "likeable" for me doesn't necessarily mean the protagonist has to be a stereotypical "hero" or "heroine". They can be seriously flawed but if they are an interesting character, I will still like them.
Amber St Clare from Forever Amber is an example of a flawed character who I DID like because she was also interesting.
Holden Caudlfield from Catcher in the Rye is an example of a flawed character I DIDN'T like because I just found him annoying and not interesting at all.
You are right PA2UK. I had even left a comment on the topic. I must have been having a "senior moment" when I started this new thread. That thread pretty well answered my question.
GL2
As I said then, "likeable" for me doesn't necessarily mean the protagonist has to be a stereotypical "hero" or "heroine". They can be seriously flawed but if they are an interesting character, I will still like them.
Amber St Clare from Forever Amber is an example of a flawed character who I DID like because she was also interesting.
Holden Caudlfield from Catcher in the Rye is an example of a flawed character I DIDN'T like because I just found him annoying and not interesting at all.
Had same reaction to these characters.
Could never grasp why Holden Caulfield became such a well-loved fictional character.
All the characters in Thomas Berger's "Neighbors" were pretty dreadful. Sometimes I keep reading a book in hopes that something redeeming will happen, but this one just kept getting worse and worse, and I took solace in the fact that they deserved the worst. Thank goodness, "The Out of Towners" with Lemmon/Dennis was not a book. That was blackboard-screeching, I wanted to strangle them.
The people in Andrew Dubus' "House of Sand and Fog" were hard to like, no matter how one sympathized with each one's predicament.
Of course, a good writer will be gifted at making the reader hate certain antagonists in the story, but I don't think that is what you're talking about. Or is it?
A character in her novel My Sister, My Love (2008) is guy named Bix Rampike who is the husband of the main character ... what an infuriating character he is! An "Alpha" male: handsome, sexy, charming, ambitious, a successful executive on the way up ... yet arrogant, selfish, patronizing, and totally contemptible as well.
The story is a fictionalized account of the Jon Benet Ramsey murder. Interesting!
I have a choice that's gonna be very unpopular with alot of you guys, since he's the protagonist in a wildly popular crime thriller series. And while "Hate" might be too strong of a word, I've always really disliked James Patterson's Alex Cross; the Washington D.C. detective from all those books with the nursery rhyme titles. From the first book I read--I think it mighta been "Kiss the Girls"-- I found Cross to be boorish and conceited and also racist. I remember one passage where he was talking aobut how he delighted in instilling fear in white guys when he's walking the streets at night in D.C because of his physical size and presence. Screw him. My favorite protagonist of modern crime novels, Dave Robicheaux, would kick his ebony ass in a heartbeat! LOL.
Having said that, I love Morgan Freeman, who played Cross in a couple movies. And those of you who did not read the books but instead only saw the movies won't know what I'm talking about here, since they really watered-down Cross' arrogance and hostility in the movies.
Last edited by DrummerBoy; 08-01-2011 at 10:06 PM..
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