100 Best Characters in Fiction?

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plsmith	posted on March 21, 2002 03:37:19 AM new 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900 From Book* magazine, March/April 2002* 1 - Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 2 - Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951 3 - Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955 4 - Leopold Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922 5 - Rabbit Angstrom, Rabbit, Run, John Updike, 1960 6 - Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902 7 - Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960 8 - Molly Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922 9 - Stephen Dedalus, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 1916 10 - Lily Bart, The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, 1905 11- Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote, 1958 12 - Gregor Samsa, The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 1915 13 - The Invisible Man, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952 14 - Lolita, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955 15 - Aureliano Buendia, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967 16 - Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, 1925 17 - Ignatius Reilly, A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980 18 - George Smiley, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John LeCarre, 1974 19 - Mrs. Ramsay, To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, 1927 20 - Bigger Thomas, Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940 21 - Nick Adams, In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway, 1925 22 - Yossarian, Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961 23 - Scarlett O'Hara, Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936 24 - Scout Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960 25 - Philip Marlowe, The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler, 1939 26 - Kurtz, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1902 27 - Stevens, The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989 28 - Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino, 1957 29 - Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, 1926 30 - Oskar Matzerath, The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass, 1959 31 - Hazel Motes, Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor, 1952 32 - Alex Portnoy, Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth, 1969 33 - Binx Bolling, The Moviegoer, Walker Percy, 1961 34 - Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945 35 - Jeeves, My Man Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse, 1919 36 - Eugene Henderson, Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow, 1959 37 - Marcel, Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust, 1913-1927 38 - Toad, The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame, 1908 39 - The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss, 1955 40 - Peter Pan, The Little White Bird, J.M. Barrie, 1902 41 - Augustus McCrae, Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry, 1985 42 - Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, 1930 43 - Judge Holden, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy, 1985 44 - Willie Stark, All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren, 1946 45 - Stephen Maturin, Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian, 1969 46 - The Little Prince, The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1943 47 - Santiago, The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway, 1952 48 - Jean Brodie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961 49 - The Whiskey Priest, The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene, 1940 50 - Neddy Merrill, The Swimmer, John Cheever, 1964 51 - Sula Peace, Sula, Toni Morrison, 1973 52 - Meursault, The Stranger, Albert Camus, 1942 53 - Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, 1926 54 - Phoebe Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951 55 - Janie Crawford, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937 56 - Antonia Shimerda, My Antonia, Willa Cather, 1918 57 - Grendel, Grendel, John Gardner, 1971 58 - Gulley Jimson, The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary, 1944 59 - Big Brother, 1984, George Orwell, 1949 60 - Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith, 1955 61 - Seymour Glass, Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger, 1953 62 - Dean Moriarty, On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957 63 - Charlotte, Charlotte's Web, E.B. White, 1952 64 - T.S. Garp, The World According to Garp, John Irving, 1978 65 - Nick and Nora Charles, The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett, 1934 66 - James Bond, Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 1953 67 - Mr. Bridge, Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, 1959 68 - Geoffrey Firmin, Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry, 1947 69 - Benjy, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1929 70 - Charles Kinbote, Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov, 1962 71 - Mary Katherine Blackwood, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson, 1962 72 - Charles Ryder, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945 73 - Claudine, Claudine at School, Colette, 1900 74 - Florentino Ariza, Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1985 75 - George Follansbee Babbitt, Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis, 1922 76 - Christopher Tietjens, Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford, 1924-28 77 - Frankie Addams, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers, 1946 78 - The Dog of Tears, Blindness, Jose Saramago, 1995 79 - Tarzan, Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1914 80 - Nathan Zuckerman, My Life As a Man, Philip Roth, 1979 81 - Arthur "Boo" Radley, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960 82 - Henry Chinaski, Post Office, Charles Bukowski, 1971 83 - Joseph K., The Trial, Franz Kafka, 1925 84 - Yuri Zhivago, Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, 1957 85 - Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling, 1998 86 - Hana, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje, 1992 87 - Margaret Schlegel, Howards End, E.M. Forster, 1910 88 - Jim Dixon, Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis, 1954 89 - Maurice Bendrix, The End of the Affair, Graham Greene, 1951 90 - Lennie Small, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck, 1937 91 - Mr. Biswas, A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul, 1961 92 - Alden Pyle, The Quiet American, Graham Greene, 1955 93 - Kimball "Kim" O'Hara, Kim, Rudyard Kipling, 1901 94 - Newland Archer, The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, 1920 95 - Clyde Griffiths, An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser, 1925 96 - Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, 1926 97 - Quentin Compson, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1929 98 - Charlie Marlow, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1902 99 - Celie, The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 1982 100 - Augie March, The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow 1953 Whom would you add or subtract? [ edited by plsmith on Mar 21, 2002 03:40 AM ]
snowyegret	posted on March 21, 2002 04:55:11 AM new Smerdyakov from the Brothers Karamazov and the Inquisitor. How could they not put in Smerdyakov? Frikking morons. Newton Archer a great character? Pshaw. Since I can't read since 1900, maybe they're not FMs. But the list is still skewed to American and English authors. You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison [ edited by snowyegret on Mar 21, 2002 05:02 AM ]
krs	posted on March 21, 2002 04:56:54 AM new *Buck; Call of the Wild* Jack London
tomwiii	posted on March 21, 2002 05:22:52 AM new One of the few scenes in a book that really made me teary was when Holden accidently broke the record he was bringing to Pheobe -- don't know why, but that scene really got me!
Borillar	posted on March 21, 2002 07:19:33 AM new I can tell that whomever came up with that list didn't read most of those books!
alwaysbroke	posted on March 21, 2002 07:23:53 AM new Dirk Pitt, series of adventure books by Clive Cussler.
KatyD	posted on March 21, 2002 08:07:31 AM new What? Amelia Bedelia isn't on that list? It was rigged. KatyD
alwaysbroke	posted on March 21, 2002 08:44:30 AM new Amelia Bedelia doesn't hold a candle to Harold and His Purple Crayon! LOL
saabsister	posted on March 21, 2002 09:24:33 AM new What! No John Barth characters? How about Ebenezer Cooke or Henry Burlingame from "The Sot-Weed Factor" or Jacob Horner from "The End of the Road"?
arttsupplies	posted on March 21, 2002 09:29:25 AM new 82 - Henry Chinaski, Post Office, Charles Bukowski, 1971 "Dont call me Chinanski! My name is Arturo Bandini!" CB Arturo Bandini, Ask the Dust, John Fante Of Course... Albion Moonlight, The Journal of Albion Moonlight, Kenneth Patchen
plsmith	posted on March 21, 2002 06:46:05 PM new I would've added Mame Dennis, Auntie Mame, Patrick Dennis, 1950-something Rotated in Ruby Turpin, Revelation, and rotated out Hazel Motes. I'd've supplanted Harry Potter with Miss Marple. I could easily have done with one less Hemingway character to make room for one Daphne Du Maurier creation. I'd've swapped Mary Katherine Blackwood for Eleanor Lance, The Haunting of Hill House. Missed a mention of Michael Valentine Smith, Stranger In A Strange Land and Montague, Fahrenheit 451 And the Bumpuses certainly belonged in there somewhere! [ edited by plsmith on Mar 21, 2002 06:46 PM ]
auroranorth	posted on March 21, 2002 10:49:16 PM new always broke wins the prize Dirk pitt by Clive Cussler reigns supreme. with an honorable mention to Jack london for Buc, White fang and That dammed spot. That dammed spot is one of the harder ones to find about a super dog that terrorizes Jack's fictional self.
auroranorth	posted on March 23, 2002 07:26:08 PM new and I forgot Ripley from Alien, god what a babe!
Borillar	posted on March 24, 2002 09:36:05 PM new YARG! NOT!!
gravid	posted on March 24, 2002 11:21:54 PM new Dirk Pitt is two dimensional. All testesterone and self importance. Meet him and you know my idiot brother in law. Not something to celebrate. Lazerus Long and Family by Heinlein
ashlandtrader	posted on March 25, 2002 05:58:25 PM new My brain is frozen or something tonight but there is a woman writer who died recently. She wrote many short stories including one called My life in the post office (or something like that.) Can anyone help me remember who wrote this? TIA. I know when I hear her name I will be smacking the side of my head! :0) EUDORA WELTLY-- Smack! It finally dawned on me! There is also one that Alice Walker wrote that was a short story (very short) about a dead baby (awful subject matter, buut it was a powerful story). I wish I could find it-- I've looked and looked. If anyone knows the name of it I would be really grateful! Tillie Olson, I stand here ironing also comes to mind. [ edited by ashlandtrader on Mar 25, 2002 06:00 PM ] [ edited by ashlandtrader on Mar 25, 2002 06:28 PM ]
plsmith	posted on March 25, 2002 06:44:29 PM new Darn it, Ashlandtrader, ya beat me to it! Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty. Alice Walker has (to my admittedly incomplete knowledge) published two volumes of short stories: In Love and Trouble (1973) You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981) You might find a story title of hers that jogs your memory by doing a book search at eBay. The best booksellers there always list every short story to be found in any anthology they're selling. I hesitate to mention her story, "The Abortion", as it's only seemingly* aligned with your stated recollection.*
ashlandtrader	posted on March 26, 2002 07:29:13 AM new Thanks Plsmith! I am going to write those down and check my library. I seem to remember reading the story in one of those "Best fiction" compiliation books, but it was many years ago and my memory is shot (as I have proved over and over again around here, hah!). I will find it again. I'll leave my Alice Walker sig line on-- from one of my favorite books of all time... :0) "I think it pi**** off god if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." Alice Walker

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