Month: February 2016

They’re Famous in Their Fictional Worlds

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Every fictional character is famous in a way — after all, they’re in a book! But then there are fictional characters who, within the context of that book, are actually famous — as in being a celebrity, being at the top of an important profession, being a notorious criminal, etc.

So I’m not necessarily talking about characters who are famous to readers. For instance, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is one of the most iconic protagonists in literary history, but she’s only known to a fairly small number of people in her fictional world and is thus not famous for the purposes of this blog post’s theme.

It’s interesting to see how authors depict the fictionally famous and how they show the pros and cons of prominence. In their works, writers might answer questions like: Is the fame sudden or the product of a long period of hard work? How much luck was involved? Is the fame fleeting or enduring? Is the high-profile person enjoying the fame or is s/he “lonely at the top”? Does fame change the celebrity, in a good or bad way? For instance, is s/he feeling proud, satisfied, financially secure, etc.? Or does fame bring negative consequences such as egomania, neglect of family, the break-up of a marriage, etc.?

As usual, I think of blog ideas while reading a book. In this case it was Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals — a comic novel, with plenty of heart, set in a fantasy university area populated by wizards, dwarfs, goblins, and other creatures. The seemingly ditzy kitchen worker Juliet is unexpectedly chosen to model dwarf clothes (despite not being a dwarf) and handles her overnight fame and wealth with more common sense than expected. Her kitchen boss Glenda becomes well known not only for her cooking but for having a more impressive mind than the university leaders she feeds. And the genial, overachieving orc Mr. Nutt becomes prominent for his amazing intellect and physical strength.

In J.M.G. Le Clezio’s Desert, young Lalla leaves the arid wide-open spaces of Morocco for big-city France, where she becomes a prominent photography model without seeking that profession. She finds the shallow celebrity life not to her liking, and returns to Morocco within months.

Enough about models! The ambitious, hard-working Thea Kronberg becomes a big-time opera singer in Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark. But as is often the case with celebrities (particularly female ones), there is some sacrificing of personal and family life. Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto also features a mega-celebrity opera star (Roxanne Coss) who gets a lot closer to the general public than usual when she’s taken hostage along with her audience during a performance.

In Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen becomes well known in the dystopian country of Panem for her courage, archery skills, and more as an involuntary contestant in the trilogy’s brutal games.

A real sport — baseball — is featured in The Natural, whose protagonist Roy Hobbs becomes a major Major League star but has major difficulties before and after that happens. The movie version of Bernard Malamud’s book gives Roy a happier ending.

Speaking of films, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon stars movie producer Monroe Stahr, who was partly based on real-life Hollywood legend Irving Thalberg.

Another producer — a TV one — is Savannah Jackson in Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale. She has a very successful career but a messy personal life.

Henrietta Stackpole is a fairly famous journalist in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, and — unlike a lot of fictional celebrities — seems fairly happy with her career and life.

Another prominent journalist is Mikael Blomkvist in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels. He too seems pretty comfortable with himself, but has to endure some dangerous situations while conducting his impressive investigative reporting.

Then there are fictional characters famous within a relatively limited sphere, but famous nonetheless. One example is the beloved teacher Mr. Chipping in James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

Some villains who are “celebrities” in their fictional worlds? Sauron of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Lord Voldemort of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, Professor Moriarty of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, Count Fosco of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Iago of Shakespeare’s Othello, etc.!

Those evil fellows squared off against also-famous heroes and heroines: Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore, Sherlock, Walter Hartright, Marian Halcombe…

Who are your favorite characters well known in their fictional realms?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Obsession in Lit and From Many a Political Twit

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After right-wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died this month, Republicans proved once again that they’re obsessed with obstructing Barack Obama at every turn. Refusing to consider ANY Scalia replacement nominee from the Democratic, biracial president with almost a year left in the White House? How partisan — and, yes, racist — of the GOP. Sure, Obama’s pick would change the ideological bent of the Supreme Court, but them’s the breaks.

Since I’m a literature blogger, I also started thinking of obsessed fictional characters — both negative (like the Republicans in their vicious hatred of the more-centrist-than-liberal Obama) and positive. Whether the single-mindedness is political, romantic, or otherwise, it can be riveting in a protagonist.

For instance, there are the rulers obsessed with control of the populace in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the hyper-ambitious, Huey Long-like Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men.

Or how about the fanatical police inspector Javert, who focuses to the nth degree on trying to capture Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables? And the escaped prisoner Edmond Dantes, who devotes his life to revenge against the men who framed him in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. And the guilt-ridden lovers Therese and Laurent, who are hyper-focused on the memory of the man they killed in Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin. Heck, those three examples are just from 19th-century French literature alone.

Also obsessed is the man (Nathanael) who becomes infatuated with a (robot?) woman in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 story “The Sandman,” the woman (Katerina) who stays intensely/criminally attached to the no-good Sergei in Nikolai Leskov’s “The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” and various Edgar Allan Poe protagonists — including the murderers in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” and the love-struck young man in the partly comedic “The Spectacles.”

Then there’s the title character in Toni Morrison’s Sula who’s obsessed with being independent, unconventional, and not bound by gender norms.

A torrid affair begets homicide in Therese Raquin, but romantic obsession has different results in other novels such as W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. In the first book, would-be doctor Philip Carey becomes totally fixated on a waitress (Mildred Rogers) who holds him in contempt until… In Garcia Marquez’s novel, Florentino Ariza carries a torch for Fermina Daza over many decades until…

Theo Decker carries something else — a painting — out of a museum after a terrorist attack in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, and remains obsessed for years with Carel Fabritius’ famous bird portrait — partly because of its association with Theo’s beloved mother, who died in the attack.

Another creature filling the mind of a protagonist is the huge marlin relentlessly reeled in by Santiago the fisherman as he tries to defy bad luck and aging in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and Sea.

Still another creature is the fixation of Captain Ahab, who, in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, angrily pursues the huge white whale that bit off part of his leg. (Some latte-drinking readers might also be obsessed with the novel’s Starbuck character and how his name was appropriated by a certain coffee chain. 🙂 )

Speaking of 20th-century/19th-century connections, Octavia Butler’s Kindred novel sends Dana Franklin back in time to America’s slave-holding South. As the black character navigates that horrid world, her obsession is making sure her ancestor is born so that she (Dana) can exist 150 years later.

Many Americans are also known for single-mindedly climbing the corporate or social ladder, and an example of someone who ascends the latter ladder is Undine Spragg of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country. It’s not a coincidence that her initials are U.S.

The title character’s initials in Martin Eden represent Jack London’s semi-autobiographical “me” — a self-educated, working-class protagonist hell-bent on becoming a successful writer.

Also obsessed with having a writing career is Jo March, the Little Women character partly based on the author herself — Louisa May Alcott.

Last but not least, we have Lord Voldemort’s obsession with killing Harry Potter. I’d compare the GOP’s many obstructionist politicians to Voldemort, but that would be an insult to J.K. Rowling’s gruesomely evil creation. 🙂

Who are your favorite fixated fictional fellows and women? (Also welcome are any thoughts on the late Harper Lee, who died Feb. 19 following decades of being obsessed with maintaining her privacy after the great To Kill a Mockingbird rocketed her to fame.)

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Long Island Books and Short Island Books

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There’s something about islands that make them an important part of some fiction.

They can be the settings for romance, vacation, adventure, murder, intrigue, etc. — and the often-isolated nature of islands adds drama to all kinds of story lines.

Given that today is Valentine’s Day, we’ll start with romance. In L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of the Island, Anne Shirley continues to deny her feelings for Gilbert Blythe until… I would add that much of Montgomery’s wonderful fiction is set on Canada’s Prince Edward Island, where her characters fall in love, experience heartache, and more.

Then there’s Bernard, the British protagonist in David Lodge’s Paradise News who travels to Hawaii for family reasons but finds unexpected romance there with an American woman named Yolande.

Things are a bit more complicated in M.L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans, in which the new marriage between Isabel and lighthouse keeper Tom Sherbourne changes radically after a baby washes up on shore. The very plot of the novel probably wouldn’t have worked without an island being that couple’s home.

Islands as the place for adventure? That’s the case with books such as Herman Melville’s Typee and Omoo, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island.

Speaking of mysterious, islands are also a classic setting for some mystery novels.

For instance, when I read P.D. James’ The Lighthouse last week, I noticed that having the murders committed on a sparsely populated island conveniently limited the number of suspects — all of whom lived within close proximity of the victims (the first of whom was a much-disliked novelist!).

Also, what might be Agatha Christie’s most famous mystery — And Then There Were None — takes place on an island where the guests get bumped off one by one. Hard to run for help when you can’t get away.

Vile experiments are conducted in the title locale of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau. Also negative is how the innocent Edmond Dantes is jailed for years in the Chateau d’If rocky island prison until he ingeniously finds a way to swim to safety and then plots his epic revenge against the men who framed him in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo.

Dumas’ earlier Georges novel was set on Isle de France (now the island nation of Mauritius). Besides being exciting, the book is also known for being the only work by the part-African-descended author to focus on race and racism.

The setting of Aldous Huxley’s Island is remote and self-contained enough to allow for an experiment in forming a utopian society that’s quite the contrast with the dystopian world of Huxley’s more famous Brave New World.

And we can’t forget novels in which the protagonists are stuck on an uninhabited island — with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe perhaps the most famous example. Oh, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, in which a stranded bunch of boys behave very badly.

What are you favorite novels and stories set partly or completely on an island? Heck, you can also discuss islands on the screen — in the Cast Away movie, the Gilligan’s Island sitcom, the Enemy at the Door miniseries, etc.!

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

A Nod to Literature That’s Odd

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Some novels are just weird. Or absurd, surreal, and a few other adjectives. You may love or hate such books, and they may be great or not great, but they’re just…weird. And thus memorable.

I thought about that when recently reading Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. Nope, not a law-enforcement version of The Third Man, but a darkly humorous tale of a guy who meets a bunch of bicycle-obsessed cops in a disorienting netherworld. So unusual a novel that it wasn’t published until after the death of Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien’s real name) — nearly three decades after he wrote the book.

Is The Third Policeman‘s protagonist actually dead for most of the novel? Hmm. That’s certainly the case in Robertson Davies’ Murther and Walking Spirits, whose murdered lead character quickly becomes a ghost and then attends a film festival where he watches “movies” of his ancestors — “movies” no other festival attendee can see.

Better known examples of odd fare include Lewis Carroll’s unnerving/delightful Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (part poem, part text, wholly nuts protagonist?), and several novels by Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving. The latter’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, for instance, features a VERY quirky title character and the death-by-baseball of Owen’s best friend’s mother. To misquote a famous song, it’s sad to be taken out at the ballgame.

Another wacky work — Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair — references a famous novel as literary detective Thursday Next enters the pages of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre via a “Prose Portal” to interact with Jane and Rochester. The height (albeit not wuthering) of peculiar-ness.

Also peculiar is Herman Melville’s Pierre, which was lambasted by critics in 1852 for being another “p” word: perverse. The novel depicts an incestuous (or near-incestuous) relationship and also devotes many pages to Pierre ultra-obsessively writing a book that ends up being loathed — reflecting Melville’s bitterness at the harsh response to his 1851 masterpiece Moby-Dick. “I would prefer not to” be magnanimous about critics’ stupidity, a Bartleby-channeling Melville might have said.

Another 19th-century novel with plenty of eccentricity is Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, in which the Karamazov dad is one crazy dude and the book’s devil scene is a wonderfully outlandish standout in literary history. Heck, that wily devil could have won the GOP caucuses in Iowa — or did he?

Additional 1800s books with strange content include Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (in which Catherine Morland is goofily obsessed with Gothic fiction), Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (about a way-out voyage way out to sea), Alexandre Dumas’ The Black Tulip (we’re talking a tulip contest smackdown here), and Wilkie Collins’ Armadale (which includes four…count ’em…four characters named Allan Armadale).

Going back to the 1700s, we have Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels — which, when you think about its big people and small people, is rather kooky amid its more sober content.

Yes, offbeat novels can also be deadly serious or satirically serious for many of their pages. A number of the books mentioned in this post fit that description — as do some of the post-1900 works I’m about to name.

Erich Maria Remarque’s The Black Obelisk, for instance, is partly a devastating look at Nazism’s early days but also gets quite zany at times with things like a recurring urination motif. Jack London’s Before Adam takes a fascinating look at early human evolution, but some of the passages — whether intentionally or not — are kind of madcap. John Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown features a dead dad as a tree — ’nuff said. Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers is intense horror/sci-fi, but also daffy at the same time. Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman is…oh, heck, you know that novel screams “outre” from the title alone.

What are your favorite novels with some or many weird moments?

(And, yes, some of Dr. Seuss’ great writing and drawing is bonkers. Hat-wearing cat? Eleven-fingered creature? The consumption of green eggs? Sheesh…)

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.