Them Hipsters...

...them bullfight-watching, pernod-drinking, expat hipsters.

Think about it. They're writers. They care so much about irony. Brett was androgynous before it was cool. Jake and the rest of his com(ex)patriates are hipsters. Except for Cohn. He's the opposite of a hipster. He's chivalrous and romantic after it was cool.

Actually, the main point of this post is not that the characters in The Sun Also Rises are hipsters. It's about likability. A week or so ago I read a column in the New York Times Book Review (available online here) about whether characters in a novel have to be likable in order to keep readers interested. This got me thinking about the characters in the novels we read in class and the characters I write in my own fiction.

Begin rant.

My standards for "likability" revolve more on understanding how a character thinks than whether or not they are a nice person. I don't mind characters who are selfish, violent, or crude if I think they aren't deranged. I liked reading about Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart even if he beats his wife, cuts people's heads off, and kills his adoptive son, because I could see how much his thought process was motivated by a paranoia towards "weakness". Victor Frankenstein might ignore the possible consequences of his work and cause the death of a sizable number of his friends and family, but it's because he feels the only point of his life is to make some scientific breakthrough (and later on, to exact revenge). I like characters who are rationally irrational.

I tend to like to read about the characters I write... otherwise I wouldn't write about them. I've created my fair share of understandable jerks. Murderous paranoid philosopher? That was fun to write. Guy who makes a living off of misleading people (and isn't a politician)? I churned out 50,000 words with him as the protagonist. One of my favorite characters in a long-running, constantly changing project I intend to finish eventually (oh, sometime in the next twenty years...) is a military commander so disillusioned with the world that he equates diplomacy with murder. I don't have to agree with his might-makes-right views to enjoy writing about him and respect/pity him for the way he sees the world.

When characters continually act irrationally irrational, though, I start to lose interest in their problems. I start wondering why they don't change their behavior. They get whiny. This was my issue with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, a book I will refrain from criticizing any further because that would take up several paragraphs of ranting. Let's just say that Sherman Alexie is grouped with Nathaniel Hawthorne and, to an extent, Virginia Woolf in the category of authors whose shorter works I enjoy and longer works I do not.

Protagonists seem irrationally irrational when their motivations are things I just don't consider serious enough. If the character is actually deluded, in the case of Okonkwo and Frankenstein, something minor like masculinity or scientific glory can work as a motivating force. If the character is presented as a semi-reasonable person, though, weak motivation makes them seem shallow.

So what's a weak motivation? Love.

Characters motivated primarily by romantic or sexual impulses typically seem shallow to me. Never Let Me Go was a major letdown because it ignored the topic of cloning ethics and went after human relationships instead. Katniss was getting a bit whiny by the time Mockingjay rolled around... yeah, whatever with the whole revolution thing and ending widespread government oppression, just get me my boyfriend alive and non-brainwashed. For those of you about to jump on me for dissing The Hunger Games, I will say that Suzanne Collins managed to pull the end of the series together in a way that was satisfyingly dark to keep me interested.

On a similar note, I think it is possible for an author to pull off an enjoyable book without having any particularly deep or "likeable" characters. I think Jurassic Park is a good example. If the plot itself is engaging enough, the author can be a bit more lax with developing your interest in the characters.
(I'll have to write a post sometime about exactly why I like Jurassic Park so much...)

The problem with The Sun Also Rises, then, is that I don't like most of the characters and I'm not terribly engaged by the plot. Mike is an annoying drunkard. Cohn acts like a middleschooler. Brett messes with other people's lives and then complains about how hard it is on her. Jake just sits there and occasionally tries to get reacquainted with the woman who already turned him down. Pedro Romero is okay, but he's minor enough that my appreciation of him being not a jerk is less powerful than my hope that he gets gored in the bull-fighting ring so that something exciting can happen with the plot. Bill Gorton provides comic relief, but like the rest of them he leads a pointless life and somehow buys copious amounts of alcohol despite being bankrupt.

What makes these characters tick? Why do they lead this ridiculous lifestyle? Are they really so disillusioned after World War I that they can't do something useful with their lives? Cohn, Brett, and Jake fall into the unfortunate category of motivated by love. Pedro would be more interesting if he was some sort of vehement bullfighting purist (wait... that's Montoya... hey, a character I like!). He's also motivate by love, to an extent. Love of bullfighting, love of Brett. Mike is motivated by drinking. Bill is motivated by... irony?

What annoys me most is that the characters don't show any signs of changing the way they live. Okay, Jake, so your life is a mixture of great (bullfights, and Brett) and sucky (that injury, and Brett). Seems like the root of your problems is Brett and her corresponding drama. It's been established that you can't be with Brett. So... can't you flee? Leave Brett far behind? Go do something more exciting than cruising the bars in Paris or watching a dude with a cape kill domesticated animals? Join a monastery or something. Cohn left. He finally realized the solution to the unsolvable problem was to get away from the problem. That made me respect Cohn to an extent, but he still acted immature before that. Brett could leave, too. Avoid Jake and Pedro and Cohn and possibly Mike. But no, they just keep on drinking and going to cafes (and drinking) and staying in hotels (and drinking) and going to festivals (and drinking) and getting into arguments and fights (caused in part by drinking).

Yes, Jake has his sympathetic moments. But the combination of pointless lifestyle and hopeless behavior prevent me from feeling like his story matters to me.

End rant.