Glynn Marshes writes:
How much of the difference between the two comes down to whether any of the characters is “likeable”?
(Struck me after an offline friend remarked that she disliked “The Great Gatsby” because she didn’t like any of the characters.)
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
A character can be likeable, but if he is, something awful happens to him. There aren’t many good outcomes in lit fict. The best a likeable character ends up with is maybe a chastened acceptance of whatever miserable thing the novel’s about, or a painful but promising new understanding of some depressing shit or another.
The first time I read Lucky Jim, I remember how much I liked Jim two-thirds of the way through, and what a shame it seemed that he was going to have to have his heart torn out and stomped on before it was all over … because it sure seemed like a good book, a literary book, and no victory is possible in literature, right? But Jim, God love him, turns the tables on lit fict – he gets the girl, secures his future and vanquishes all foes. And it’s funny. I think it may be my favorite novel.
I guess that raises the question of when lit fict became a thing. Maybe Lucky Jim, published in the mid-50s, is older than the genre. All those miserable characters at Welch’s arty weekend were busy inventing it, right under our noses.
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I love Lucky Jim!
To your point: my working theory, such as it is, is that if “lit fic” features a likeable character it crosses over into more of a mainstream form.
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Putting an emphasis on likability does seem to be a concern of popular fiction, doesn’t it? It’s as though someone (the author? the editor?) is worried the reader won’t be able to identify and/or relate to someone he/she doesn’t like. What a bunch of rubes we can be.
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A historical, sort-of-technical, publishing-world note: Current-day American “literary fiction” is its own weirdo, hyper-specialized thing. It’s writing that derives from the post WWII academic creative-writing-school establishment. Some of it can be good … but it is NOT writing that has its roots in Dickens, Tolstoy, Homer, Flaubert, Twain, and continues that tradition. It’s writing-school-type writing.
This is a category confusion that trips a lot of people up. They think that what’s marketed to them as “literary fiction” is the present-day equivalent of the Greats they read in college. It isn’t — it’s writing-school-derived writing. Some of it may eventually make it into some Canon or other … but then again some of what we currently call “popular fiction” is likely to be recognized one day as Great Literature too.
The “literary fiction” confusion has tripped the British up a lot less than it trips us up. Writing schools haven’t been as big a deal over there as here. And Brits have always been more likely than we have to mix up high and low — to recognize that P.G. Wodehouse was a great writer, for instance, or to enjoy and revere Kingsley Amis, who was as bright, as sophisticated, as accessible and as entertaining as can be. But we Americans tend to think of “great art” and “great literature” as something apart from popular entertainment. We hang up on (and get over-impressed by) the highbrow. Who knows why. Maybe we just don’t feel as entitled to enjoy writing and art as straightforwardly as some more traditional cultures do.
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I know a lot of people SAY they want “likable characters” and, probably, a lot of those people THINK they mean it, but I’m always a little skeptical. Scarlett O’Hara, for instance, a very mainstream, popular heroine, doesn’t strike ME as being very likable: compelling, interesting, worth-spending-hundreds-of-pages-with, sure – but likable, as in, nice and pleasant? Or someone who would make a good neighbor? Ehhh…
My suspicion is that it breaks down something like: (a) people who really do just want to read about nice and pleasant characters and (b) people who use the word “likable” when they really mean interesting, relatable, compelling, or charismatic. And if we move to movies & television charisma (not to mention sex appeal) seems to become a much bigger deal in sussing out what people might mean by “likable”. (All of this is on my mind in part because “Mad Men” starts up again tonight: a show that has managed to become quite poplar in no large part because it’s characters are sexy, charismatic, and compelling, without the writers & actors ever worrying about whether those characters are “likable”.)
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You’re absolutely right, SvS.
I couldn’t figure out how to shorthand that when I first posted, but now I’ve had an idea: how about I refine my thesis and amend “likeable” with “or excusable.”
Scarlett O’Hara’s a great example because you’re right, she’s an awful person.
But we excuse her faults for some reason . . . perhaps in part because she suffers for them . . . perhaps also because there’s enough of the compelling/interesting to offset her less savory traits.
(She’s also powerful, and in fact embodies spot on the powerful-but-gorgeous female bitch archetype–the woman we gals all want to be, but can’t, because we’re either not young/sexy/rich enough and/or we were raised to be Too Nice.)
@Paleo, per your first comment, I’ve become intrigued lately by the notion that fictional characters serve as avatars when we read. And maybe readers instinctively gravitate to avatars that “look good on them” — whereas being forced to identify with an inexcusable character might elicit an almost-visceral reaction, as if we ourselves have become something we hate.
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I like your idea of the protagonist as an avatar!
And then there’s the “character study” angle — reading a story about something/someone just because he/she is fascinating, or interesting, or revealing-of-something-or-other. It’s probably just a sign of how perverse I am, but I really adore (for instance) some of Ruth Rendell’s more “objective” (ie., icy, weird) crime procedurals, where she doesn’t bother making anyone in the book terribly likable, or even terribly easy to identify with. A lot of the time people just plain suck, and that can be reason enough to read about them.
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I think any technique that makes things more comfortable for the reader — likeable characters, engaging plot, and clean prose are the most prominent — pushes a work into mainstream territory. Aren’t genre conventions themselves one of those techniques? We pick up a mystery, or romance, or Western b/c we have a vague sense of what to expect, so the story is a little easier to follow or anticipate.
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