Unlikable Characters

Roxane Gay, my most recent writer crush, has a very thought-provoking article in Buzzfeed about unlikable characters, specifically unlikable women characters. That link is here, but this is the most awesome defense of characters we love to hate by Claire Messud, from the Gay essay:

In a Publisher’s Weekly interview with Claire Messud about her recent novel The Woman Upstairs, which features a rather “unlikable” protagonist named Nora who is bitter, bereft, and downright angry about what her life has become, the interviewer said, “I wouldn't want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.” And there we have it. A reader was here to make friends with the characters in a book and she didn't like what she found.

Messud, for her part, had a sharp response for her interviewer. “For heaven's sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you're reading to find friends, you're in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn't ‘Is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘Is this character alive?’”

Wow! Just wow! Isn't that the truth? What would Charlotte's Web be without Templeton? Boring, that's what! 

I often say that I have to love the characters to love a book. Like Messud's hapless interviewer, it's often because I want them to be good people. On my first reading of Emma, for example, I was horrified. Reading about Jane Austen's privileged young woman meddling in her neighbors' lives was terribly uncomfortable for me. I was embarrassed for her. As I have grown as a reader though, I have to come to realize that having to love a book's character/s is not so much about goodness, as it is about recognizing these people, and more importantly, recognizing myself in them. 

My favorite books have characters that I believe in, that I can trust to behave authentically, whether or not I want to share a pie with them. Furthermore, my favorite characters have something to show me about myself. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes it's really unpleasant, but in the end I am always glad I made their acquaintance.

The value of ambiguity

Twenty years ago, Lois Lowry wrote a little dystopian fable called The Giver. It's a pretty disturbing book about a people who decide to rid their world of all the things that cause problems -- envy, sadness, worry, hurt. In their zeal, even things like color, harsh weather, and love are erased. Once each citizen reaches puberty, he or she takes a pill every morning for the rest of their lives that stops them from the emotional changes of puberty. Such is Lowry's skill that she doesn't have to explain the mechanics for the reader to accept the reality.

Most people in this world are quite content; it's all designed that way. But there is one person -- most of them don't even know about this -- who holds all the memories of how their world used to be. What snow feels like, and the smell of your newborn's head. . . and pain, suffering, despair. Being reminded of these memories helps the world's leaders make good decisions.

There was a particularly interesting twist to this story. Stop now if you haven't read it. This post will still be here tomorrow or next week. The book is really short and found in nearly any bookstore. It won the Newbery Award for exceptional writing for children, ensuring that it will stay in print and be given (or assigned) to 9 year olds in perpetuity. It won't take long for you to read it.

Okay, I am now assuming you have read the book. What do you think happened at the end? Did Jonas make it out with the baby to another community; i.e. did they survive? Or was his fevered dream of hands reaching out to him, taking the baby, helping him up, simply that -- a fevered dream before death?

Since writing The Giver, Lowry has written many other terrific books, including three others about communities that share its landscape: Gathering Blue, Messenger, and most recently Son. They are also brilliant commentaries on societies and how/why they work or don't. But here's what I don't like about them. They answer The Giver's last, potent question for the reader. Lowry's a terrific writer. This series is . . . I'll say it again . . . brilliant. But

(I'll bet you could hear that coming.)

But, The Giver was perfect. It was a great novel with either ending, which had more to do with what the reader brought to the book than with the author, which is something that all too often gets lost when we think about reading. Good books provide one side of a conversation, a thousand conversations, a million conversations, each one between the author and each reader. I'm not sorry I read Gathering Blue, Messenger or Son, but I am sorry that reading them shut down my conversation with The Giver.