Jim, My inspiration was Book Magazine's listing of the top
100 Characters from 1900.
Here is what it says about their selection methods:
"The assignment seemed simple enough: rank the top one
hundred characters in literature since 1900. But what
appeared easy soon proved maddening, vexing, frustrating.
Experts were consulted; lists were drawn up; hundreds upon
hundreds of books were pored over. We scoured our
bookshelves, called up old teachers. Still the arguments
persisted. How could anyone say that Humbert Humbert was a
better character than Lolita, that Holly Golightly was more
compelling than Atticus Finch? Did James Joyce write better
characters than John Steinbeck? And who were these oddball
characters that people kept suggesting? Was Big Brother
really a character? A panel of experts was brought in to
settle it once and for all. Prizewinning authors, artists,
book experts of all shapes and sizes were given ballots and
asked to rank their favorite characters in order. The ballots
are in. The votes have been counted".
I'll try not to be too OT and just mention that their list
contains more than one character from Ulysses, Catcher in the
Rye, Winnie the Pooh, To Kill a Mockingbird and Lolita. I
haven't read all these, but I think it could be argued that
each book really has only one main character. If a character
who is not the principal character made the list, that
character deserves to be on it. There won't be very
many.
As we are a literary list I think the only characters that
first made their impact in a printed fictional source should
be considered even though they later influenced other printed
materials. Though it won't matter to us, I would not have
considered a character like Sherlock Holmes to be eligible
either because he first became popular before 1900.
One of their experts was Dennis Lehane. Our experts are the
members of Rara Avis. Mark
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