March 21, 2005

• 90% of them are from English works! What tosh. Faint nods to Tolstoy & the French. Pah.
• Who's William Brown? The blurb doesn't even say what book he's from.
• How about Mrs Danvers, that nasty ole closet case in Rebecca? Or Homer Simpson (d'oh! not that one) from The Day of the Locust? I'd also add Sam Spade, Owen Meany and Huck Finn as memorable non-villians.
• Not even one Brother Karamazov? And is there nothing from that Shakespeare guy? Chaucer? Dumas? Zola? Wharton? James? But picking Tintin shows impeccable taste. Picking God seems a giant copout. (As a favourite literary character, I mean -- no metaphysical slights intended.)
• I think of Dean Moriarty. Seriously. Dude!
• Oskar from the Tin Drum...
• Don Quixote...
• Captain Nemo... Allright, I'll stop now.
• Archy McNally? Jernau Gergeh? Jubal Harshaw? Charlie Mortdecai?
• The Quidnunc Kid should have been higher.
• Zulieka Dobson is my fav character and personal hero.
• Lyra Silvertongue is memorable?! Door from fucking Neverwhere was more memorable than Lyra Silvertongue! Am I the only one who finds Pullman's novels to be a waste of paper?
• Kidd - Dahlgren
• dh
• Lucifer in Paradise Lost. the late Lady of Shallot Sam Weller Mr Jorrocks Tristram Shandy's uncle Toby Judge Dee Kai Lung The (allegedly) Good Fairy in the Pooka's pocket The White Queen in Through the Looking Glass Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey Fotherington-Thomas, that insouciant girlie Basho's frog (him name probably not Hopkin) Coyote D'Artagnan Ach, far too many to list. And tomorrow it might be a different list, anyway.
• What's wrong with listing Hopkin? His is truly a tale that plumbs the depth of the human spirit, "full of sound and fury" and yet contains a gentle humor and hope for a better tomorrow.
• Apparently so, fuyu.
• Alex, Clockwork Orange Don Quixote Quequeg, Ishmail and Ahab, Moby Dick Sammy Glick, What Makes Sammy Run Willy Wonka, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory That's a couple off the top of my head.
• Rhett made the list but not Scarlett? Shame! She's my heroine for her survival instincts. Moll Flanders was another great choice. I read that when I was twelve just because my parents tried to hide it. Very educational back then.
• Oh good, plays count. Cyrano de Bergerac. Larger than life and thus a little hokey, probably, but it was the first thing I ever saw that said that being ridiculous didn't mean you were useless. That you can have faults - really, really big faults - and still get a lot out of life. (Okay, so all of this is from before the plot gets moving, and I'm rambling now.) I thought Door was kind of a cipher, but I'm not really the target audience; I'm never much for the Beautiful Mystery Girl Who Drives the Plot But Doesn't Get Too Many Lines Because She's Just Mysterious Like That. Did I Mention Mysterious. And Beautiful. Really. And She Likes the Hero. Liked the book just fine, though.
• Iago is a far more interesting character than Hamlet.
• I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Holden Caulfield.
• Didn't occur to me to mention Holden Caulfield. I was completely underwhelmed by Catcher, but probably from being overexposed to all the hype. By the time I finally got to it, it disappointed. Same as for The Godfather, actually. Go figure.
• Yossarian lives! But where is Dirk Gently?
• This is a pretty weak list. I submit (off the top of my head) better inclusions: Lou Ford, The Killer Inside Me Dean Moriarty, On The Road (the book's overrated; Moriarty is not). Pluto Hellbender Gerome, Pluto Animal Lover Kevin Shapiro, Young Adult Novel The Six-Fingered Man, In The Suicide Mountains Kilgore Trout, Every Vonnegut Book Ever
• Oh yeah, and Grendel from Grendel by John Gardner. And the main character in "End of the Road" by John Barth, though I forget his name...
• And Candide!
• Does the Bhagavad Gita count? How about Gilgamesh?
• I think that list is largely poo, but I do agree with the inclusion of Bigwig, who is also my fav rabbit in Watership Down. that said: Tyrone Slothrop Eustacia Vye Judge Fang
• the Grinch Jadis, the white witch of Naria
• narnia, preview preview preview...
• I dunno, the list had Vautrin, Julien Sorel, Mme Bovary, and Zeno, which is not too shabby. Maybe Frédéric Moreau (L'Education sentimentale), or Dudley Smith (LA Quartet). The Margeurite Duras character in La douleur is pretty odious.
• Marguerite
• I can't see including Philip Marlowe but not Sam Spade...there's THREE characters from "Catch 22" on the list.
• that said: Tyrone Slothrop Eustacia Vye Judge Fang Couldn't agree more (at least on the first). Also, yeah, Shakespeare? C'mon...
• I'll second bees on Kai Lung, must be one of the reasons I got interested in China. I really enjoyed Alfred Duggan's fictionalisation of Cerdic, the first King of Wessex, in 'The Conscience of the King' which I read in an old Faber edition last time I was home at my mum's.
• Pete Bondurant
• Lt. Gov. Danforth from The Crucible. King Mob from The Invisibles. Dr. Jeckle & Mr. Hyde from, well, you know. Jerry from A Zoo Story Godot from Waiting For Godot. Orestes from The Flies (Aristophenes) Zeus from The Flies (Sartre) Achilles from The Iliad Rodion Romanovitch Raskolniko from Crime and Punishment Ivan Ilyitch from The Death of Ivan Ilyitch
• Chance from Being There? (I'm still waiting for a sequel, Chance's Second Administration)
• Or Wooster and Jeeves... both of them.
• (And yes, I see that Wooster made the list, but that's like whiskey without the s., eggs with no b.)