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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

20th Century's Best Characters

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15:39 / 21.03.02

Book Magazine's 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900

Am I the only one who thought Gatsby was shit? People have told me it gets better with age, maybe I should go back and read it again.

I'm curious who composed this list. Do you think there were publishers who advertised in Book that lobbied for this? Joyce has three characters in the top ten. There's no Rushdie or Pynchon. I didn't expect it, but I would put Hal from Infinite Jest in there. The turn of the century Holden Caulfield.

23:33 / 21.03.02

The only good thing about that list is that no mention of Ayn Rand's characters were mentioned.

If I ever see a list that has Howard Roark on it I will personally see that the creators of said list will have their eyes stabbed out with those plastic sporks from
Taco Bell.

I thought Gatsby was decent. It's not the greatest thing I've ever read, but neither is it the worst. It sits right in the middle.

Where's Superman? He belongs on there more than Harry Potter does. Fine, he's not in some "book" but dammit he's fictional.

Literary snobs.

00:15 / 22.03.02

How can you have a list like that and have no $#!^*! Vonnegut? Billy Pilgrim? Kilgore Trout?

And they have Harry Potter? But nothing from the Oz books?
Grr...

And one other thing. I like Sherlock Holmes as much as anyone, but he was created in the 19th century. Throw Professor Challenger on the list instead.

[ 22-03-2002: Message edited by: Ofermod ]

01:24 / 22.03.02

Uh, where's Dracula?

01:27 / 22.03.02

I couldn't have been happier that Toad was higher than the Cat in the Hat, but really I geekily thought Bilbo Baggins or maybe Gandalf would make it. But there's so much on that list I - however shamefully - haven't read.

02:03 / 22.03.02

I'd say the phrase "literary snobs" covers this list, with one proviso - observe how many books on the list came into prominence following a film adaptation....

Anyway, what constitutes "best"? Sampling the list, it seems that best conforms to a particular pattern of identity crisis meta-questioning within the composition...I mean, look at the angst and indecision pouring out ofthe top 20, and turning up in spurts through the rest of the list. In particular, almost all of the books on the list are texts questioning, mocking, or deflating the cultural and historical context in which they were composed. The idea of "best character" is intertwined with a pretty narrow classic-lit-theory of what constitutes a "good book."

Anyway, in my biased little world. they don't mention Bulgakov, so the whole thing is obviously invalidate.

It would also be a more interesting list if they had constrained it to one character per book, if not per author.

Holden fucking Caufield.

*yawn*

Matthew Fluxington

03:25 / 22.03.02

How did they weigh the rankings, and who was voting/selecting?

I'm just curious what makes Celie from The Color Purple better than Augie March, and so on...

The 20s and 50s really dominate that list.

07:05 / 22.03.02

They so do. Also, can someone tell me how 'Nick and Nora Charles' from The Thin Man can possibly count as one character?

I suspect the list was compiled by a bunch of people born in the 1940s - books from the time when they would have started reading, and books which might have been on their parents' shelves. I also guess they are American, and probably fit the picture of the middlebrow common reader. Am I not horrid. I doubt it's compiled by publishers, because those titles are all backlist ones anyway and would have a relatively steady sales profile as a result of being 'classics' and on syllabuses.

Ignatius Reilly should have won, though...

16:59 / 22.03.02

I basically just scanned the list to make sure Tarzan was there. Tarzan is without a doubt the best character of 20th century literature.

Give Gatsby a try, Casemaker. Admittedly I have a thing for the 1920s, but Gatsby is one of my favorites.

17:03 / 22.03.02

And why the fuck are there three characters from To Kill A Mockingbird on there? A fine book, sure, but really... do we really need seperate list entries for Atticus, Scout and Boo—who's really less a character than he is an absence, until he's used as a deus ex machina—I mean, fuck.

I blame it on these pernicious citywide book groups, myself.

17:14 / 22.03.02

damn, looks like I'm gonna be defender of the list, but I was looking for all three of those characters, Jack, and I was glad as hell they were all there.

I mean, if you're going to discount Boo, you going to have to bump off Kurtz too. He's almost as much of a device. Yet, they're both highly memorable as characters.

17:48 / 22.03.02

All right, I'm really thinking about this now. who else is missing?

Tyler Durton?

Tyrone Slothrop?

Sissy Hankshaw?

Valentine Michael Smith?

who else?

18:04 / 22.03.02

Uh, where's Dracula? – nightguard

Bram Stoker wrote Dracula around 1897.

And I'm gutted Clarissa Dalloway beat out Orlando.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

18:34 / 22.03.02

where the hell is Count Zero?
Harrison Bergeron????
Horselover Fat???
Bah, this be foolishness
Edited to say
Mr Kurtz???

[ 22-03-2002: Message edited by: Elijah Non Grata ]

22:50 / 22.03.02

duh! my bad. ty, Ierne.

23:04 / 22.03.02

Close but no capillary.

Wrecks City-Zen

21:38 / 03.04.02

Hagbard Celine?

02:46 / 04.04.02

i'm surprised that toni morrison's sula peace made it but Beloved, from Beloved, didn't.
it only won the nobel prize, i guess, but ...

i was glad to see the first one who came to my mind--humbert humbert--so high on the list.

it's pretty anglophone-centric, and esp. US centric, I think. but that's no shock, I guess.

(no agatha christie characters?)

18:08 / 28.04.02

Where is "I"? "I" was the best character in most novels!

19:44 / 28.04.02

Not only do they forget Hagbard Celine but they forget Mark Renton. What is this world coming to?

Is Alice too early? And what about Tender Branson? Well they don't even have Tyler Durden but still. Ah, how about we do a best characters in the last 10 years list? The only classics I've read are those that are cult.

19:45 / 28.04.02

And On The Road is fiction? Riiiiight.

19:47 / 28.04.02

well each to their own but mr svejk ('the good soldier') should've been there for highlighting the buffoonery of war, and i didn't see a mention of winston smith (1984).

lionheart's right about the most prolific and versatile character being outrageously overlooked, though.

19:47 / 28.04.02

Ok, last reply. I just keep forgetting shit though.

How they hell could they forget about R.P. McMurphy? This is just wrong.

16:40 / 29.04.02

I'm sooooo with you on McMurphy, Rage....

16:44 / 29.04.02

Again, I say they are literary snobs.

Why don't we make our own list? Hell, we could even make it an article and send it into the webzine.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

17:09 / 29.04.02

I'm pleased that they had Phoebe Caulfield on the list. It needs more of Salinger's characters. I mean, My Brother Seymour and Zooey kicked ass. You can't tell me that those weren't some of the best character's in the century.

But then, Salinger is my literary hero. So I'm biased.

22:29 / 01.05.02

Not to mention forgetting The Big Nurse. They're obviously a large bunch of mother fuckers. They have Big Brother listed. This should tell us something.

10:28 / 02.05.02

I do wonder when I see this sort of thing, whether the participants actually try to separate 'best' and 'my favourite' in their heads before they respond... I've just been trying to do it myself, and it's really hard. I wonder whether people might think something along the lines of '... well, R. P. McMurphy is my favourite character... but Ken Kesey is a cult author, so he can't be the best... I'd better put down something more 'literary'... um, Big Brother. He'll do.'

On the other hand the presence of 'Nick and Nora Charles' (still bemused by this one) would argue agaisnt this.

The Return Of Rothkoid

11:12 / 02.05.02

Or it could just be deadline-inspired bumph. Sounds like the sort of thing that could be knocked together somewhat easily to fill space in the mag: that wouldn't surprise me, really. Being totally stereotypical, the choices sound like the choices of people who would work at a lit. rag, no?

13:11 / 02.05.02

Actually you are probably correct there. How depressing. I could so do better than that. They should give me a job.

Oh, and Rage - yes, Alice is much too early for a list of C20 characters.

Hydra vs Leviathan

12:30 / 01.09.06

i'm surprised that toni morrison's sula peace made it but Beloved, from Beloved, didn't.
it only won the nobel prize, i guess, but ...

Come to that, any of the characters from either Beloved or Song of Solomon would get in there over any other Morrison, IMO...

and hell yeah, no McMurphy? for that matter, no Chief Broom? "Big Brother" (not even really a character) gets in, but the Big Nurse doesn't (and nor for that matter does Winston Smith)?

I also thought someone from Tolkien would get in... if Potter did... say what you like about old JRR's writing style, one thing he definitely was good at was memorable characters...

of course, there's a fine line between "greatest characters" and "characters you most strongly identify/sympathise with", and i'm not sure whether i'd vote differently for the former as for the latter... to use Cuckoo's Nest as an example, since i'm re-reading it at the moment, McMurphy is probably the character i'd choose as "greatest character", but Chief Broom is the one i'd pick for "character i most identify with" (tho of course, that might say as much about narrator-character vs hero-character as character types as it does about my own personality/preference)...

Hydra vs Leviathan

12:49 / 01.09.06

Ah. This thread was from '02, and presumably deemed not worthy of reviving then. Let it sink now, if that's the case. What comes of Google searching, i guess...

All Acting Regiment

14:32 / 01.09.06

Well, we'd have more to go on if the list gave reasons why they chose those characters.

What is a character, anyway?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:08 / 01.09.06

Three words.

Jack. Fucking. Reacher.

Kiltartan Cross

15:09 / 01.09.06

What a rubbish list.

What is a character, anyway?

A distributed network of information, at heart. I suppose characters exist in their most complicated forms within the skulls of the creator and observers; the form held by the creator usually, although not always, being held as the "truest" form. The characters then exist in shorthand forms either as shapes of ink on a page, or a collection of electric charges, or grooves in a record or pressure waves in the air or whatever other storage medium they're in, and we observers each build ourselves our own complicated form of the character from the shorthand.

I'm not sure it can go any further without getting all metaphysical.

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