Many years ago, a friend compared me to a character in the book. It marked the beginning of the end of the friendship. The character in question was selfish and uncaring, and the fact that the comparison was made in public and intended to denigrate was very hurtful, so much so that I can remember it vividly now, fifty years later. I still feel embarrassed that someone should choose to depict me in such an unpleasant way to close members of my family and friends. It’s made me think about how vivid literary characters can be and how good the authors must be who can create them.

One that sticks in the mind is Quilp the evil dwarf in the Old Curiosity Shop. Dickens describes him as: 

so low in stature as to be quite a dwarf, though his head and face were large enough for a giant. His black eyes were restless, sly and cunning, his mouth and chin, bristly with the stubble of a coarse hard beard; and his complexion was one of that kind which never looks clean or wholesome. But what added most to the grotesque expression of his face, was a ghastly smile, which appearing to be the mere result of habit and to have no connection with any mirthful or complacent feeling, constantly revealed the few discoloured fangs that were yet scattered in his mouth, and gave him the aspect of a panting dog… he ate hard eggs, shell and all, devoured gigantic prawns with the heads and tails on… drank boiling tea without winking, bit his fork and spoon till they bent again, and in short performed so many horrifying and uncommon acts that the women were nearly frightened out of their wits, and began to doubt if he were really a human creature.

The image of him dancing on the wharf and standing on his head and his sheer wicked joy has stayed with me for years.

Dickens was wonderful at creating these characters. Bleak House is full of them, the sad Lady Deadlock, the self-regarding, scheming John Jarndice and the hopelessness Miss Flight. Similarly in  Great Expectations we witness the eruption of Magwitch from the grave, and the sad deranged cruelty of Miss Havisham.

 In a similar way every time I read Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants I see the despair of the girl wanting to keep her baby, knowing that the relationship really is over and not knowing what to do. She’s stranded in the middle of a foreign country with a man she’s beginning to stop loving and he is so oblivious, so self absorbed that he doesn’t give any thought to how she might feel. 

“The beer’s nice and cool,” the man said.

“It’s lovely,” the girl said.

“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

“I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.”

The girl did not say anything.

“I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.”

“Then what will we do afterward?”

“We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.”

“What makes you think so?”

“That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.”

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads. “And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”

“I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have

done it.”

“So have I,” said the girl. “And afterward they were all so happy.”

He is so emotionally illiterate and although it’s set in Spain with hills in the background, it feels like a desert and for her it is.

There are lots of other characters who I would not want to be linked to. Steerforth comes to mind and his cynical betrayal of Emily Peggotty, the scheming Uriah Heep or the brutal Wackford Squeers. Dickens is full of characters like these.

Henry James’ villains are much more subtle, so polite, urbane and scheming. Gilbert Osmond and the unscrupulous Madame Merle take deliberate and wicked advantage of the innocent Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, as America does of Maggie’s Verver in The Golden Bowl.

But there are some characters I wouldn’t mind being compared to. Who could object to being compared to the steadfast Gabriel Oak in Far from the Madding Crowd or the immensely patient Joe Gargery.

I guess that sets up my next writing target. Develop one or two decent characters of my own, write them at length, rather than in a couple of lines. Paint them in oils, rather than a quick pencil sketch or cartoon. Set them in some challenging situations, and see where the story goes.