What do many novels — great or otherwise — have in common? Words, sentences, paragraphs, and…unconventional protagonists.

Sure, there are some novels starring conformist characters, such as businessman George Babbitt of Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt. But for that approach to truly work, the writing has to be outstanding — and perhaps satirical, too. Because conventional can obviously be boring, and offers a smaller canvas for the dramatic conflict most fiction needs.

Protagonists can of course be unconventional in all kinds of ways. There are the loners and/or the political rebels and/or the non-materialistic and/or the brilliant and/or the courageous and/or the jarringly evil and/or those ahead of their time and/or those possessing unusual skills and/or the people who avoid traditional gender roles and/or…etc.

There are so many unconventional characters in literature that I’ll mention/discuss only a couple dozen or so before asking for your examples.

I finished Steppenwolf last week, and its Harry Haller protagonist is definitely a misfit kind of guy. Divided personality (the human side and the supposed wolf side), very learned, keeps to himself (at least in the first part of the novel), despises conformity (yet craves a bit of it), looks down on popular culture, has pacifist views, etc. Indeed, Hermann Hesse’s gripping and at times hallucinatory novel is in part a meditation on whether a round peg like Harry can fit in the square hole of conventional life. Steppenwolf‘s Hermine character is also highly original: a lover of pleasure yet as despairing and as brainy as Harry. Indeed, the heavily symbolic book implies that Harry and Hermine are versions of each other.

One of the many reasons the Bronte sisters’ novels are so compelling is their unconventional protagonists. The title character of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is independent, self-reliant, highly principled, and has little interest in small talk, fine clothes, etc. Heathcliff and Catherine of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights are forces of nature who act much more tempestuously than the average person. Helen Huntington in Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall does something few women did in her time when she leaves an abusive marriage.

A fictional Anne, the admirable Anne Elliot of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, is about as level-headed and mature a person as one will meet in literature — and interesting to boot. She possesses even more depth than most of the other people in Austen’s memorable character gallery.

Jumping to later fiction of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, we have Hester Prynne, who maintains an almost unearthly dignity when unwed motherhood makes her a Puritan pariah in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850); the deeply unhappy, anti-establishment painter Claude Lantier in Emile Zola’s The Masterpiece (1886); and Lambert Strether, who allows himself to shed provincial Americanism when sent on a delicate mission to France in Henry James’ The Ambassadors (1903).

Also: Renee Nere, who insists on her own music hall career and questions the institution of marriage in Colette’s The Vagabond (1910); Ellen Olenska, who leads a somewhat bohemian life in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920); and Valancy Stirling, who thrillingly rebels against the narrow-minded expectations of her mother and extended family in L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle (1926).

Also: Joe Christmas, the wandering, mysterious, conflicted orphan in William Faulkner’s Light in August (1932); the unnamed, not-so-pious priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory (1940); Winston Smith, who tries to buck the totalitarian tide in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949); and the unnamed narrator who lives an amazing and harrowing life in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952).

Also: Scout Finch, the Alabama tomboy who reads avidly and disdains dresses in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960); Molly Bolt, the fun and defiant young woman dealing with her lesbian identity and homophobia in Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle (1973); the brainy, eccentric, obnoxious Ignatius J. Reilly in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces (1980); and the enamored, obsessed Florentino Ariza in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).

Also: Dr. Rowan Mayfair, the brilliant neurosurgeon with a troubled, supernatural family history in Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour (1990); Judy Carrier, the whip-smart, harried, insecure attorney in Lisa Scottoline’s The Vendetta Defense (2002); the gender-confused Cal/Calliope in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (2002); the super-intelligent, understandably bitter computer hacker Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2005) and its sequels; and the quirky, delightful secretary Violet Brown in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna (2009).

Then there’s Mark Watney, whose ingenuity and humor make that stranded astronaut such a distinctive character in Andy Weir’s The Martian (2011), which I just finished reading. (More on that book next week.)

Who are your favorite unconventional protagonists or unconventional secondary characters in literature? And, if you’d like, you could mention novels that are compelling even with protagonists of the conformist, unimaginative, docile variety!

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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.

Some deceased authors are more famous, as famous, or nearly as famous as they were when alive. Just a few among the many in this group would be Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf.

The reasons for their enduring popularity can include the quality of their work and/or having had outsized personalities and/or writing in a universal enough way that what they penned back then still strongly resonates today. (And, heck, it doesn’t hurt that Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four inspired the widely used term “Orwellian,” and that Woolf’s name became part of the title of a famous play.) Whatever the reasons, some long-dead authors are still remembered for a number of books apiece — and remain widely read.

But then there are deceased authors nowhere near as famous as they used to be. In many cases, they’re remembered chiefly for one or two novels while the rest of their canons have largely faded from public consciousness.

Why? Tastes changes, and not all writing ages well — some of it can eventually seem old-fashioned and too “of” a bygone era. Also, many past authors were “merely” great rather than GREAT great. But often there’s no easy explanation for why certain authors fall out of favor. Their writing may be wonderful and even timeless, yet they no longer get as much love as they deserve.

Sometimes, critics are at least partly to blame. For instance, the somewhat-faded luster of Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper might have something to do with them both being slammed to an unfair degree by the influential Mark Twain.

Scott is still widely known for Ivanhoe and perhaps Rob Roy, but many of his other novels are barely remembered even though some (like Old Mortality and The Heart of Midlothian) are better than the two more famous ones I just mentioned. Cooper still gets present-day props for The Last of the Mohicans (the Daniel Day-Lewis movie adaptation helped 🙂 ), even as the other four of his “Leatherstocking Tales” and the rest of his plentiful canon have mostly faded to a Wikipedia list.

Colette is now mostly recalled for Gigi, but she wrote many better novels — including The Vagabond. When hearing Willa Cather’s name, you might think of My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop, but that accomplished author wrote a number of other great novels now undeservedly obscure. Mary Shelley remains justifiably famous for Frankenstein, but she wrote a half dozen more novels (including the amazing apocalyptic work The Last Man set in the year 2092) that most people would now be hard pressed to name.

Erich Maria Remarque also remains justifiably famous for All Quiet on the Western Front, but his other novels — some of them extraordinary, like Arch of Triumph and The Night in Lisbon — are not on the tip of most current readers’ tongues. Same for Aldous Huxley, with millions of people aware of Brave New World even as his excellent non-futuristic novels (such as Point Counter Point) are mostly forgotten.

I could go on and on. Other deceased authors who I think don’t get full kudos these days include Honore de Balzac, Anne Bronte, Erskine Caldwell, Theodore Dreiser, James Hilton, Sinclair Lewis, Bernard Malamud, W. Somerset Maugham, and Emile Zola, to name a few.

Of course, each author has her or his “story” explaining why they’re not better known. For instance, the very talented Anne Bronte was overshadowed by her even more talented sisters Charlotte and Emily.

Balzac and Zola remain literary stars in their home country of France and certain other places but are not as widely read in the U.S. Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Lost Horizon are still kind of famous (again, film versions helped) but few people could identify Hilton as the author of those two novels or name his other quality books (such as We Are Not Alone). The movie versions of Elmer Gantry and The Natural have helped Sinclair Lewis and Bernard Malamud remain somewhat known these days, plus the religious hypocrisy Lewis exposed in Elmer Gantry still strongly resonates in the 21st century.

Then there are authors who were famous for part of their lives before falling into obscurity that they were rescued from only years after they died. Herman Melville is one prime example, and another is Zora Neale Hurston — whose writing returned to the public eye with a big assist from Alice Walker.

Who are some deceased, once-famous authors you feel aren’t known as much as they should be these days? And, if you’d like, you could also mention great authors (past or present) who have NEVER gotten the recognition they deserve.

(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.

Have you ever read a novel in which the story is chugging along until the book takes a very unexpected turn?

That’s a good or bad thing, depending on the nature of the turn and how it’s handled. Surprises can be welcome and “un-boring,” but sometimes an author completely jumps the shark.

My latest encounter with a veer in the fiction sphere occurred while reading Three Junes last month. That Julia Glass novel starts off focusing on the Scottish dad Paul, a newspaperman who’s sort of interesting but not exactly Mr. Charisma. Then the second section of the book abruptly shifts to Paul’s oldest son Fenno, a gay man who left Scotland for a life in New York City. While he’s also not very dynamic, Fenno’s life and choices and interactions are more compelling to read about than Paul’s. Then, as we become used to Fenno being the protagonist, Three Junes puts the spotlight on Fern, an interesting artist type who we first met when Paul was traveling in Greece.

Going back many, many Junes — to the 19th century — we have Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit suddenly sending the English title character to America. Reportedly, Dickens did this at least partly because sales of the serialized novel’s initial installments were not going as well as those of his earlier books.

Lee Child is an Englishman who moved to America, and I experienced one of the biggest surprises of his Jack Reacher novels in Running Blind. Reacher is known as a drifter without a home or car who wanders around the U.S. after leaving the military, so it was no surprise that he happened to be in Manhattan when Running Blind began. But instead of checking in to yet another hotel, he shockingly drives to his own house in upstate New York. Turns out he inherited it from a man who was sort of a surrogate father — although Reacher does not stay domesticated for long.

Speaking of long, seeing the backstory of the Mayfair women unfold a number of chapters into Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour is not an initial surprise but then becomes one when that backstory goes on for several hundred pages. But the 300-year history is so fascinating and well told that it’s riveting to read.

Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy surprises early on when there’s virtually nothing about Rob Roy for many pages. Instead, the focus is on the character Frank Osbaldistone. In this case, my first seeing the Rob Roy movie — which put the spotlight on the title character from the start — contributed to the puzzlement.

A similar situation involved seeing the Field of Dreams film before reading the Shoeless Joe novel it was based on. I was going “what?” when J.D. Salinger showed up in the W.P. Kinsella book; he was eliminated from the movie under legal threat from the reclusive author.

Then there’s John Steinbeck’s novel-play hybrid Burning Bright, which first focuses on several circus characters. The second part disorients readers by featuring the very same characters as farmers before the third part raises our eyebrows again when the identical cast turns into a bunch of sailors.

Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin startles readers when it begins toggling between the novel itself and a fantastical/fascinating novel within the novel.

Last but not least, a number of John Irving’s novels grab your attention with odd plot twists.

What are some fictional works that take unexpected turns?

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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.