FARK.com: (138173) The 100 best characters from fiction since 1900. Somehow none of L. Ron Hubbard's creations made the list.

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(NPR)		The 100 best characters from fiction since 1900. Somehow none of L. Ron Hubbard's creations made the list. (npr.org)		330
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10913 clicks; posted to Main » on 19 Mar 2002 at 7:56 PM | Favorite | share:

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Seiru		2002-03-19 08:51:54 PM

Atticus Finch rocks.

OBB		2002-03-19 08:52:02 PM

Slayn666: Couldn't agree more (re. your 8:45 post)
Rebrane: I'm not going to argue over the placement of many of the characters on this list, but ignoring characters which were particularly influential in their genre is a mistake. James Bond is on the list, and the Bond novels were glorified sex-romps with spy stuff thrown in. By that same logic, why not put a Tom Clancy character onto the list? I wouldn't list Clancy with Steinbeck or Hemingway, but you can't deny the inherent coolness of some of the characters.

Slayn666		2002-03-19 08:52:23 PM

Rebrane: Yeah but your arguement was that we shouldn't be comparing popular contemporary authors with the likes of Steinback and Faulkner, which I mostly agree with. It just goes in the face of that when they include freaking Harry Potter on the list.

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 08:53:15 PM

...and another that I think many can get behind:
Randall Patrick McMurphy!

bcp01scu05		2002-03-19 08:53:23 PM

On another random tangent similar to Rebrane's, there's a SF short story I read for a class last year that was one of the most screwed-up stories I have ever read, and is one of the main reasons I don't believe in time travel. I'm trying to find the name at the moment, anyone know, it's a time travel story dealing with a character called the Unmarried Mother being recruited for a time travel agency?

shlabotnik		2002-03-19 08:53:34 PM

#101 - Joe Shlabotnik, Peanuts by Chrles M. Schultz

glwtta		2002-03-19 08:53:56 PM

Is it just me, or is the list a little "English heavy"? The presense of Marquez, Proust, Kafka and a few others leads me to believe that it's not an English-only list, but then surely British and American writers didn't create 90% of the "best" (whatever they mean by that) characters? I don't think I saw even one name that wasn't Western.

just saying...

HappyDaddy		2002-03-19 08:54:07 PM

Even though I have grown to loathe John Irving, T.S. Garp was a great character.

bcp01scu05		2002-03-19 08:56:12 PM

Got it! "All You Zombies" by Robert Heinlein.

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 08:56:19 PM

High placement of Atticus Finch on the list proves NPR's liberal bias. I applaud them for that. That is what liberalism is truly about, not the strawman version that the conservative media have invented to hold up for ridicule.

MysticJackal		2002-03-19 08:57:24 PM

Charlie Brown gets no respect. :(

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 08:57:40 PM

No Camus?
My ROTP character would have been Swann.

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 08:58:21 PM

#52. My bad.

SLAYERSWINE		2002-03-19 08:58:52 PM

I picked up "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and couldn't put it down until I was done reading it.

bcp01scu05		2002-03-19 08:59:56 PM

Slayerswine: Speaking of FALILV (movie version), Terry Gilliam's a great visual director. "Brazil" is one of my favorite movies.

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:00:04 PM

No Herman Hesse?

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:01:13 PM

SlayerSwine, I was just going to suggest Laslo!

Capt Monterey Jack		2002-03-19 09:01:28 PM

ok fark phoebe caulfield and fark harry potter. hooray for two finch's, kill a mockingbird is one of a very few books that ages 7-70 will get something out of reading it

Scrotar		2002-03-19 09:01:30 PM

I wonder what brand of denture paste the people who made this list use.

glwtta		2002-03-19 09:02:41 PM

I'm trying to find the name at the moment

Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies", If the one you are thinking of has not only time travel, but sex changes and being your own parents.

First hit on Google for "unmarried mother time travel", just for the record, the second hit was some X-Files fan fiction (the boring kind that doesn't involve Scully being abducted by hot alien babes and probed in all sorts of other-worldly ways, or something...)

rebrane		2002-03-19 09:02:55 PM

DrCaligari: NPR didn't write the list.. Book Magazine did.

Cupajo		2002-03-19 09:03:06 PM

Boomslang,

Here
is what Amazon.com has to say. It doesn't give away too much. It's oneof those
hard-to-describe novels, but if you like wildly exaggerated, it will appeal
to you. Sadly, the guy who wrote it killed himself before the book was published
and, ultimately, won the Pulitzer. He wrote won other book, The
Neon Bible , at the age of sixteen, which was also very, very good (particulary
when you consider the age of the author). If I'm not mistaken, Neon Biblewas
made into a movie starring Gena Rowlands and Dennis Leary, but I've never seen
it. I highly recommend both books.

MetaPhyzix		2002-03-19 09:03:45 PM

*SMACK* to the guy who suggested Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. The list is from 1900 to present.

And to the rest of you, read something a little better. I thought Admiral Thrawn was biatchin' when I was in seventh grade, but I kept growing. C'mon, a few of the Zahn books were cool and all, but a guy who can calculate an army's next move based on the art of one representative of that people? It's unlikely and it's contrived. And all he did was cock his eyebrow, and Zahn's only adverb he ever used was "sardonically." It's only entertainment.
And that's how it goes for practically all sci-fi/fantasy. It's entertainment, and the writing isn't on par with the rest. I really liked Slaughterhouse Five, and I'm a big fan of Vonnegut, but I don't go around pretending Billy Pilgrim was a great character. He was pretty one-dimensional. What made the book great were the ideas in it and the unusual ways they were presented, not one more addition to Vonnegut's normally weak pallete of characters.

I dare you to come up with any sci-fi/fantasy character more brilliantly done than Holden Caulfield. (yeah, so it's flamebait... oh well.)

rebrane		2002-03-19 09:03:52 PM

Caligari: Also, I thought that Chief Bromden was more interesting. But it seems I have a weakness for narrators :)

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:03:54 PM

No Thurber, either. Kind of a surprise, really. What about Walter Mitty?

rebrane		2002-03-19 09:04:59 PM

Slayn666: I think they put Harry Potter in there thinking it would deflect criticism. Apparently not on Fark :)

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:06:27 PM

Rebrane Ooops. So I see. But NPR did choose to post the list.

thpook		2002-03-19 09:06:33 PM

Harry White from The Demon, by Hubert Selby Jr.

Any character from any book by Hubert Selby Jr.

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:07:36 PM

Ahem.

Harry Potter was placed on the list to attract attention to the publication.

No further discussion is necessary. ;-)

londawg		2002-03-19 09:07:40 PM

BRS89: Right on!

And, along the same lines, what about Shute? C'mon, the guy carried that log up the stadium steps, and what did he get for it? nothing.

Oh well, as usual, wrestlers get no respect.

patrickje		2002-03-19 09:08:18 PM

Where the heck is Brother Francis of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz?????

glwtta		2002-03-19 09:08:43 PM

Rebrane - how can Harry Potter deflect criticism? It's a veritable criticizm magnet (and justly too)

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:09:42 PM

I can't believe none of Bob Woodward's characters made the list!

*ducks*

EssenDoubleOP		2002-03-19 09:11:27 PM

Winnie the Pooh! Whoo-hoo!

That's weird, no LotR characters, yet that queer-ass Harry Pottre makes the list.

glwtta		2002-03-19 09:11:56 PM

Books Magazine? Isn't that kind of like "Fine Art" the comic strip, or "Theater" the sitcom, or "Real Life" the 'web community'?

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:12:04 PM

I can't believe Rocky isn't on there!

Shiromori		2002-03-19 09:12:26 PM

Irascible
You are awesome for suggesting Mike Smith...
Okay, I probably shouldn't do this, but I want to submit a character from one of my stories.
Tialla Daeron
*holds out his hand to do the Jedi mind trick*
You don't need to know who she is, but she still kicks ass.

rebrane		2002-03-19 09:12:28 PM

Glwtta: You crazy? They're the most popular books written in the last decade.. except on Fark.

OBB		2002-03-19 09:12:35 PM

I only suggested Thrawn because I misread the title and thought it said Science Fiction characters.

Virion		2002-03-19 09:13:16 PM

Really late off but, Rebrane, Piers wrote a load of Fantasy Fiction too, not just scifi. Not a bad writer, not on my top list though. Oh yeah, "Andy Ricter show" wasn't bad, bit off topic here, I enjoyed the old man demeaning him, classic part with the sabatage bit.

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:15:07 PM

I can't remember the name, but didn't R. Emmett Tyrrell contrive a sinister, conniving elected official in one of his over-the-top tomes?

MooKow		2002-03-19 09:16:13 PM

Edit... Find(on this page)... Ford...
No dice?
Edit... Find(on this page)... Zaphod...
Whaaaa?
Edit... Find(on this page)... Marvin...
Ok, this list is CRAP

Boomslang		2002-03-19 09:16:53 PM

Ok, thanks MetaPhyzix and Cupajo, I think I will check it out.

Also, I will look into A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius as I am reading the free sample at Amazon now.

Thanks everyone.

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:17:30 PM

Rebrane, I'm pretty sure Glwtta was just getting a kick out of the juxtaposition of the words in the name of the publication. That is pretty funny, don't you think?

BobNever		2002-03-19 09:17:55 PM

I've read a good portion of these books.

Their eyes were watching god sucked. I have a feeling that lack of politics wasn't the only thing that kicked Zora Neal Hurston out of the harlem renaissance. Maybe it was the fact that she wrote an entire book in inconsistent dialect. The characters are black, poor, and from the south in a certain era. I'm sure everyone knows how they talk by now.

Humbert Humbert is a really funny name, and the movie with Dominique Swain is super hot, so I'll let that one slide.

THE GREAT GATSBY? Screw that crap. These NPR people have no idea what they're talking about. There's a REASON Andy Kauffman read from that book to bore people.

There's a whole lotta good books they didn't mention, and a whole lot of crummy psuedointellectual ones that follow the character of NPR folk. I am glad they mentioned Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, though. I'm in the middle of reading it and it's really poignant.

In the words of the utterly terrible Scary Movie 2 "I found so much use for these books! Free rollin' papers!"

rebrane		2002-03-19 09:18:11 PM

DrCaligari: I was referring to his 9:08PM comment.

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:19:25 PM

Rebrane Ahhhhhhh.

DoctorCaligari		2002-03-19 09:22:53 PM

Bob(TheKnob)Always: "...NPR folk." (chortle) Tell us, next, about the "NOW Gang" and the "tea and croissant crowd". (snicker)

BloodyL		2002-03-19 09:24:16 PM

Yossarian! All right!

I'm doing my term paper on A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene. His "whiskey priest" from a different book is 49th.

Big Brother rules (#59)!

Nice to see that Bond, James Bond, made the list.

Greene also had 89 and 92. I think I shall print out the list for my English teacher.

BloodyL		2002-03-19 09:25:22 PM

I don't know what is up with Opera, but I didn't realize that the list was actually in a list format until I opened the page with MIE. Is HTML really that browser-specific?

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