Mister Micawber's Song Lyrics

It's a game! First read Micawber's unique retelling, and then guess what the original song lyric is. Fun for the whole family!

Mister Micawber, for those not in the know, is a character from David Copperfield, by Dickens. He is poor, but always optimistic that something will turn up, and has a very unique speech pattern. In the movie he is portrayed by W.C. Fields, whose voice I envisioned delivering the lines below.

Mister Micawber’s Version



1. Ah the womanly woes! I sympathize, my lad. For I have, in my own time, been hounded by a multitude of predicaments, difficulties and troubles. Yet I have no advice to give: for throughout these tribulations never have I found myself on the wrong side of a woman.


2. So I sally forth! Do not fret, for though the road is to be full of trials, I will continue on. There is no alternative: this is the path I must take, the path I have been on all my days. For this, my boy, is the journey the wise call ‘eternity’ and the fools call ‘life’. Sad to say, I am but a fool.


3. Never to have one’s dreams fulfilled – the lot we most must face. Despite my best efforts contentment remains elusive.


4. Hold, and I will tell you. I knew that there was trouble afoot at an egregious hour, for my restlessness disturbed an otherwise uninterrupted and peaceful sleep with my wife. A knock on the door (two hours before the dawn!) silenced my attempts to sleep soundly and forced me to answer it’s calling, upon which I was presented with a most distressing emergency telegram.


5. It is most advisable in these situations not to panic, m’boy. I have it on good account that your mother and father are both in sound physical condition. It is only how they seem to us that is the issue. Their peculiarities are not so drastic, after such a nasty shock. You need to be strong for them. It is not fair for the young to need to do so on the behalf of the old, but I’ve never heard it said in even the most generous of pulpits that we should expect this world to be fair. You cannot lose sight of yourself during their ordeal.


6. Truly, something has turned up! Not only for the present, but as a trend of increasing good fortune. So you see, lad, truly life improves!





Answers


1. If you’ve got girl problems/ I feel bad for you, son/ I’ve got 99 problems/ but the bitch ain’t one. – Jay-Z, “99 Problems”


2. Here I go again on my own/ Going down the only road I’ve ever known. – Whitesnake, “Here I Go Again On My Own”


3. I can’t get no satisfaction/ ‘Cause I try... – The Rolling Stones, “Satisfaction”


4. Wait a minute/ Something’s going wrong/ Someone’s on the phone/ three o’clock in the morning (yeah)… – Al Green, “Love and Happiness”


5. Mommy’s alright, daddy’s alright/ They just seem a little weird/ Surrender, surrender/ just don’t give yourself away. – Cheap Trick, “Surrender”


6. I’ve got to admit it’s getting better/ It’s a little better all the time. – The Beatles, “Getting Better”

A Baker's Dozen People Who Should Have Gotten the Mark Twain Award

...Before Will Ferrell.

I don’t like Will Ferrell. Still I recognize his popularity. At 44, he'll be the second youngest recipient of the Mark Twain Award ever. This award is for the best comedians in the country, the Immortals. George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Carl Reiner, Bob Newhart.

Someday Ferrell should probably be inducted. But not now. Not while there are people who haven't been honored with stunning legacies. Like many awards, the Twain awards are time-sensitive: they are not posthumously awarded. Here, then, are thirteen people who should get the award sooner than Will Ferrell. With luck they'll be the next winners.

1. Sid Caesar, 88

Did you know Sid Caesar was still alive? The man who helped create improv and, you know, practically invented comedy television? Well he is and if I were him I’d want my dues by now. See: Your Show of Shows.

2. Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, 85 + 74

Really, they were part of the fantastic inner circle, and wandered show to show. Two of the best of the era. See: The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore Show.

3. Mort Sahl, 84

Can there be a more fitting winner from the Kennedy Center? Sahl was close to John, and wrote jokes for him, besides helping invent modern stand-up comedy. See: modern stand-up comedy.

4. Tom Lehrer, 83

Considering how many great comedians got their start on albums (Newhart, Foxx) perhaps the award could go to a guy who championed musical satire. Hear: Songs of Tom Lehrer, More of Tom Lehrer

5. Joan Rivers, 78

Rivers has always been more of a profile making appearances on Late Night (which could handle her material), but she got her start by being brassy at a time when that was just starting to be acceptable. See: Any late night appearances you can find.

6. Woody Allen, 75

Allen is indisputably a great comedian. As an author and director he helped invent the romantic comedy, as well as being a gifted actor. See: Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo.

7. The Smothers Brothers, 74 + 71

Tommy and Dicky were wonderfully sly subversives, as well as silly. Besides their Comedy Hour the never-quite folk singing duo recorded numerous classic records. See: Mom Always Liked You Best, My Old Man, I Talk to the Trees.

8. Garrison Keillor, 69

The mind behind the Prairie Home Companion and the folks of Lake Woebegone. So quintessentially American I'm stunned he's not yet been honored. See: The Prairie Home Companion.

9. Christopher Guest, 63

As an actor he has plenty of great roles, but he's also been the writing (and directing) force behind many classic comedies. His style and humor have helped defined three decades. See: This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, Best in Show.

10. Robin Williams, 60

Williams started as Mork from Ork, and played his manic lunacy into a very successful stand-up career, winning oodles of awards. "There's no one faster." See: Mrs. Doubtfire, Aladdin, Good Morning, Vietnam

11. Harvey Fierstein, 59

He wrote La Cage Aux Follies and got a Tony for it. He’s received other Tonys, including his comedic role in Hairspray which earned him a Drama Desk Award. See: La Cage Aux Follies.

12. Jon Stewart, 48

If you are going to award someone in their forties, why not Stewart? The Daily Show is probably going to have a longer legacy than Thirty Rock anyway. See: The Daily Show, Colbert and Carrell's careers.

13. Chris Rock, 46

Heck, even if you’re going to give it to an SNL star from the 90s – I’d still nominate Rock over Ferrell. He’s had a great television and stand-up career, often ranked as one of the best out there, and he's still more likely to kick the bucket before Ferrell. See: Bring the Pain, Never Scared

Note: I took Mel Brooks and Carol Burnett off the list since they’ve both at least received Kennedy Center Honors, which is sort of more prestigious anyway. (Didn’t stop Steve Martin or others from getting both, though.)

50 Characters Who've Stuck With Me: Part Five

10. Moore – Ozymandias/The Comedian, Watchmen

“I did it thirty-five minutes ago.”

Ozymandias and the Comedian are a joint entry for the reason that they both see the world the same way. Their actions, or interpretations, of how to deal with the world is what separates them, and their encounter is no coincidence. The Comedian remains troubled by his morals whereas Ozymandias tries to solve them.

9. Dostoevsky – Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment

“When he was in the street he cried out, "Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly.... No, it's nonsense, it's rubbish!" he added resolutely. "And how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!—and for a whole month I've been...." But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation.”

Raskolnikov is the classic brooding troubled mind. An early existentialist whose freedom is too much to bear he is keenly aware of his choices and actions. Plagued by his mind and deeds (yet more sane than Poe's narrator of the Tell Tale Heart) he eventually comes to term with his freedom.

8. Lagerkvist – Barabbas, Barabbas

“Then the man had been led out to be crucified - and he himself had been unshackled and told he was free. It was none of his doing. It was their business. They were quite at liberty to choose whomever they liked, and it just turned out that way. They had both been sentenced to death, but one of them was to be released. He was amazed himself at their choice.”

Few English-speaking readers may be familiar with the Nobel Prize-winning Lagerkvist, but this portrayal is a cornerstone for his accolades. Barabbas has to grapple with his unique position for the rest of his life, and goes about doing so while seeing the emerging Christian sect develop and react to him (especially when he meets one of the disciples). His is a singular portrait that we can still identify with.

7. Huxley – John, Brave New World

“"Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't there something in that?" he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. "Quite apart from God–though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?"

"There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time."”

John, the Savage, leaves the Native reservation he knew and enters the anesthetized modern dystopia of 632 A.F. (after Ford). Alone, he rebels as best he can, for the sake of humanity. There may be no better portrayal of lone resistance to an unfeeling state than John's attempts to bring feeling to civilization.

6. Austen – Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pride and Prejudice

“"Come, Darcy," said he, "I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance."

"I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with."”

Darcy is hard, maybe impossible, to live up to, many guys would contend. But, really, they forget that it was his faults, his pride predominately, which are examined for the first half of the book. What makes him stick is that he can be full of contradictions and still do the right thing – and that's not such a hard template to live up to.

5. Tolstoy – Ivan Ilyich, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

“The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilyich made efforts to force himself to think that he was better. And he could do this so long as nothing agitated him. But as soon as he had any unpleasantness with his wife, any lack of success in his official work, or held bad cards at bridge, he was at once acutely sensible of his disease.”

Ilyich is (surprise!) another existential character, only his dilemma is one we all face: dying and death. While it begins as chastisement for a life poorly spent, the drawn-out process of Ilyich's demise resonates. Tolstoy's characters sometimes are a little two-dimensional (The Cossacks, many in War and Peace, and his short stories). But between moralizing in Family Happiness and musing in “Master and Man” he got it right.

4. Salinger – Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye

“When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice - twice - we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it.”

Note – “characters who stick”. Caulfield, love or hate him, is a character who has been crafted so well that he sticks with everyone who encounters him. He's an awful pain, in my opinion, but when I'm old and gray Caulfield's self-absorbed adolescent words and actions will remain with me. And that's what's being counted.

3. Twain – Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.”

It would be easy to suggest, from this list, that I prefer a certain type of character: the person who must confront themselves in order to make an important choice. I would argue that most all great literature deals with this theme, whether it is deciding who to marry, how to kill, whether to be lawful, and so forth. In this sense, Huck's dilemma, that of his escape with the slave Jim, will probably no longer be encountered – it is not, perhaps, as practical a guide as some other entries. But Huck's process in his decision is one of the best crafted, and identifiable.

2. Joyce – Stephen Daedalus, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“He turned the handle and opened the door and fumbled for the handle of the green baize door inside. He found it and pushed it open and went in.

He saw the rector sitting at a desk writing. There was a skull on the desk and a strange solemn smell in the room like the old leather of chairs.

His heart was beating fast on account of the solemn place he was in and the silence of the room: and he looked at the skull and at the rector's kind-looking face.

—Well, my little man, said the rector, what is it?

Stephen swallowed down the thing in his throat and said:

—I broke my glasses, sir.”

Joyce’s young Daedalus experienced childhood as I felt it. The confusion, the fear, the wonder and nervous shy quality – even in his circumstantial details, from the blonde hair to the all boy’s school to the boarding school – I felt instant kinship. I would try and deal with the subject objectively, but Daedalus just got to me. The only other author who came close to the emotional life of childhood is Proust, and there his narrator is a bit too precious.

1. Cervantes – Don Quixote, Don Quixote

“At this point they came in sight of thirty forty windmills that there are on plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, "Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.”

Yup.

50 Characters Who've Stuck With Me: Part Four

My computer literally had a melt down in mid-June. After a long delay here are the last two installments of the Characters series.

20. Melville – Captain Ahab, Moby Dick

“''Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!"”

He’s a bit over the top, that Ahab. I’d just be like, “OH SH*T WHALE! KILLITKILLITKILLIT!” But that’s why I’m not a character of classic literature. Melville made some very memorable characters – Bartleby, Ishmael and the rest – but Ahab, who at worst is a living personification of vengeance, is not larger than life. He is kept – just – within the bounds of reality.

19. Rowling – Severus Snape, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

“…you have your mother’s eyes.”

Perhaps it’s because I’m so uncultured. Snape is the first character of his sort I ever ran across. His tragic arc was, for me, new. Not new in that I hadn’t already encountered the concept in life, or ‘Love Actually’ (which also has Alan Rickman) but the first good depiction I’d encountered in literature. His tragedy, perhaps the most common in life, is not Medea’s, or Hippolytus’ or Antigone’s; and Rowling pulls off her most interesting character in the process.

18. Turgenev – Bazarov, Fathers and Sons

“Madame Odintsov looked at Bazarov. His pale face was twitching with a bitter smile. 'This man did love me!' she thought, and she felt pity for him, and held out her hand to him with sympathy.
But he too understood her. 'No!' he said, stepping back a pace. 'I'm a poor man, but I've never taken charity so far. Good-bye, and good luck to you.'

'I am certain we are not seeing each other for the last time,' Anna Sergyevna declared with an unconscious gesture.

'Anything may happen!' answered Bazarov, and he bowed and went away.”

Bazarov – the haughty intellectual torn between the nihilism of the age and his deep commitments to humanity. He is, like many on this list, a tragic figure: destined for great things with his resolutions but brought down haphazardly, inconspicuously almost, having only just begun his story. Written off as an afterthought of accident he had only just begun to make peace with his conflicts.

17. Gilman – The Narrator, The Yellow Wallpaper

“Of course I never mention it to them any more—I am too wise,—but I keep watch of it all the same.

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.”

Gilman’s story is apparently rather contentious. It was my literary introduction to feminism, and the narrator, forced to stay bed-ridden, causing her mental deterioration, made me shiver. The recognition that Victorian and Edwardian women often were amongst the most repressed in modern times comes through with a stark shudder from our narrator’s tale.

16. Solzhenitsyn – Ivan Denisovich, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Shukhov licked his spoon clean and returned it to his boot, then put on his cap and made for sick bay.”

The lean prose of this classic was so well-crafted so as to merit a Nobel Prize, rarely given for a single outstanding work. Denisovich – Shukhov to the narrator – is a gulag prisoner whose life in the camps is one of sweat tempered by cold, hard beds and rules, and spoons kept in one’s boot. That he manages to eke out a personality in the midst of describing the wretched conditions of prison life instead of a generic scene of suffering endows Denisovich with its classic quality.

15. Eliot – Dorothea, Middlemarch

“"They are lovely," said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet on her finely turned finger and wrist, and holding them towards the window on a level with her eyes. All the while her thought was trying to justify her delight in the colors by merging them in her mystic religious joy.”

Woolf said that Middlemarch was “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” Dorothea is not a simple sketch – she does not exist as just a torn lover or a trying to reconcile her joys in life with her religious reveries. Eliot was better than that and portrays Dorothea as a very complex character who does not have all of her problems solved. Nor does Eliot leave the resolutions unresolved for shock value. Instead they are left, for that is how life is.

14. Faulkner – Joe Christmas, Light in August

“He looked like a tramp, yet not like a tramp either. His shoes were dusty and his trousers were soiled too. But they were of decent serge, sharply creased, and his shirt was soiled but it was a white shirt, and he wore a tie and a stiffbrim straw hat that was quite new, cocked at an angle arrogant and baleful above his still face. He did not look like a professional hobo in his professional rags, but there was something definitely rootless about him, as though no town nor city was his, no street, no walls, no square of earth his home. And that he carried his knowledge with him always as though it were a banner, with a quality ruthless, lonely, and almost proud. ''As if,'' as the men said later, ''he was just down on his luck for a time, and that he didn’t intend to stay down on it and didn’t give a damn much how he rose up.''”

Faulkner has a seriously impressive gallery of characters. From autistic Benjy to a boy who thinks his mother is a fish, to a bear, his were all memorable. Christmas is, to me, a distillation of many of the themes and traits of Faulkner’s writing. He is utterly alone – neither comfortable in white society or black, or with the woman he loves, or with the people he works with. His isolation is total.

13. Fitzgerald – Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby

“I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment but he was already too far away…”

Jay Gatsby is the central character, and a seriously lacking presence, in Fitzgerald’s novel. Even after the reveal, the whole back story, every intimate moment and confession, you are still left without a grasp on him. Nick’s five-year odyssey leaves him hardly better off than the first wild parties in understanding the man even though their relationship changes vividly throughout. Gatsby is not some lame excuse at creating an enigma, however. He is experienced as we truly experience others.

12. Doyle – Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

“"The train of reasoning ran, 'Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished."

Holmes specifically sneers at Poe’s rational Dupin. Holmes initially has much in common with Dupin, though, when he puts his mental faculties to use to solve mysteries of the criminal sort. But Dupin is one-off, a scribble of sorts. Holmes over the years got richer and more interesting. His failings were many, and from the start. But his status as one of the world’s most beloved characters is not for nothing.

11. Woolf – Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway

“She was not old yet. She had just broken into her fifty-second year. Months and months of it were still untouched. June, July, August! Each still remained almost whole, and, as if to catch the falling drop, Clarissa (crossing to the dressing-table) plunged into the very heart of the moment, transfixed it, there--the moment of this June morning on which was the pressure of all the other mornings, seeing the glass, the dressing-table, and all the bottles afresh, collecting the whole of her at one point (as she looked into the glass), seeing the delicate pink face of the woman who was that very night to give a party; of Clarissa Dalloway; of herself.”

Woolf, who praised Eliot’s efforts in creating English literature for adults, then surpassed her. Mrs. Dalloway’s inner monologue threading together the different character’s accidental meetings slowly reveals a woman who is identifiable, taken from reality rather than created for a message. A sequencing of thoughts which does not seemed forced.

50 Characters Who've Stuck With Me: Part Three

30. Camus – Dr. Rieux, The Plague

“He knew quite well that it was plague and, needless to say, he also knew that, were this to be officially admitted, the authorities would be compelled to take very drastic steps. This was, of course, the explanation of his colleagues' reluctance to face the facts.”

Rieux emerges, gradually, as the center of Camus' best work. In a small town beset by plague, his wife outside of the city with her own recovery on his mind, he goes about the work of saving lives. He is stoical, but in a particularly French existential way. Which is not a bad thing.

29. Stoker – Count Dracula, Dracula

“"You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already. And through them you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!"”

Dracula is a fairly chilling character. He is intelligent, but in a cunning, destructive, way. His immense powers are diverse, but he understands his weaknesses: so much so that he applies himself fully to ensuring his plans will not fail. The reader anxiously reads on to see if his cares pay off.

28. Dickens – Ebeneezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol

“''You will be haunted,'' resumed the Ghost, ''by Three Spirits.''

Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.

''Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?'' he demanded, in a faltering voice.

''It is.''

''I—I think I’d rather not,'' said Scrooge.”

Scrooge approaches his reform like many of us, in the classic Augustinian tradition – "make me a saint, but not yet." Using his wit as a shield he tries to parry the extraordinary sights and happenings throughout the classic, but in the end is overwhelmed with sincerity.

27. Kerouac – Dean Moriarty, On the Road

“It was drizzling and mysterious at the beginning of our journey. I could see that it was all going to be one big saga of the mist. 'Whooee!' yelled Dean. 'Here we go!' And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; he was back in his element, everybody could see that.”

The embodiment of recklessness, Dean is the kind of guy who thinks freedom is “a full tank of gas and an unlimited credit card”. He and his group ended up being a generational inspiration: a new adventurer for postwar adults.

26. Tolkien – Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings

“You cannot pass! I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udun! Go back to the shadow. You shall not pass!”

Before Gandalf the sorcerer was Merlin. Arguably, Gandalf is now seen as the quintessential wizard. His age, his knowledge, and his abilities keep us captivated throughout. Tolkien clearly depicts him as the linchpin for the fellowship, the most respected and appreciated of all the epic's characters.

25. Ware – Jimmy Corrigan, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth

“''W-who was that on your answering machine this morning?''”

Like others on this list Jimmy sticks with you in an unpleasant way. A man entering middle age he cannot navigate life successfully. His mind isn't childish, though, which is disturbing. He'd be easier to accept, as a character, if he was easily classifiable as 'feeble-minded'. We are provoked since he isn't.

24. Proust – The Narrator, Swann's Way

“I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?”

He goes on to define it in nine volumes of recollection.

23. Steinbeck – Lennie Small, Of Mice and Men

“Lennie covered his face with huge paws and bleated with terror.”

The man with the child's mind, Lennie is a deeply sympathetic and tragic character. Steinbeck's laborers are all portrayed with pathos, but Lennie is not being overwhelmed by historical forces – his personal struggles are of his own actions and grasping to do the right thing.

22. Shelly – The Monster, Frankenstein

“''I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy."”

Compare the above recollections, when the Monster engages his creator with the story of his flight and persecution, to that of Boris Karloff's portrayal, later inspiration for Lurch. Abandoned by his creator his struggles have us thinking his nobility is greater than that of Frankenstein's selfish obsessions and loathing for the life he has made.

21. Conrad – Kurtz, Heart of Darkness

“''Oh, but I will wring your heart yet!'' he cried at the invisible wilderness.”

Not Kurtz's most famous line, but emblematic of his peculiar relation to the wilderness. Achebe has condemned Conrad's work for its blatantly racist depictions of Africans; but the psychological aspect of Kurtz and our protagonist is the reason for its classic status. Kurtz doesn't so much stick with, as haunt us.

50 Characters Who've Stuck With Me: Part Two

40. Miller – Batman, The Dark Knight Returns

“This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscle--broken, spent, unable to move. And, were I an older man, I surely would... But I'm a man of thirty--of twenty again.”

Consistently considered the most complex portrait of the caped crusader, Miller's Batman is now fifty-five, retired and struggling to cope with his former identity. His choice to put the suit back on unleashes a series of events that culminate in one of the most rewarding fights in pop culture history. Perhaps more critically it also allows for a compelling look at how we cope with who we once were.

39. Lowry – The Giver, The Giver

“"Simply stated, although it's not really simple at all, my job is to transmit to you all the memories I have within me. Memories of the past."”

I must have been one of the first classes to read The Giver and, like most since, was struck between the eyes. The last remnant of a civilization lost he is profoundly isolated, yet this is not his principle characteristic. Rather his sage warmth resonates as a guide into the past.

38. Le Guin – The Child, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

“It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible.”

The Child in Le Guin's short piece of horror will haunt you. The story could simply have been an ethical allegory, but so much attention and detail goes into developing The Child that you, too, are convinced that you'd walk away from Omelas.

37. Spiegelman – Art Spiegelman, Maus

“Vladek started working as a tinman in Auschwitz in the spring of 1944...I started working on this page at the very end of February 1987.”

The semi-autobiographical work portrays the artist and son's challenges to come to grips with his father's Holocaust internment. The two processes are intertwined, and Spiegelman dutifully takes us through his difficulties along the way.

36. Christie – Hercule Poirot, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“He talked a lot about the little gray cells of the brain, and of their functions. His own, he says, are of the first quality.”

Poirot, as many accounts state, may be the only fictional character to get an obituary in the New York Times. He began as a detective of the Holmes-bent: he eventually alleviated the need for evidence almost altogether; he became the arch-rationalist of human motive and intent.

35. Satrapi – Marjane, Persepolis

“''Yes...But...When you run, your behind makes movements that are...How do you say...Obscene!''

''Well then don't look at my ass!''

I yelled so loudly they didn't even arrest me.”

Persepolis chronicles Marjane (the author) as she grows up, loses God, rebels (against her society) and revolts (politically). Part of Iran's initial liberal revolution her experiences are increasingly the template of Iran's urban, globally-connected, more savvy youth.

34. Lee – Boo Radley, To Kill a Mockingbird

“What Mr. Radley does is his own business. If he wanted to come out, he would.”

Scout is an amazing narrator, as anyone can relate to her. Atticus and Tom are tremendous heroes and moral guides. Boo might have been a literary McGuffin. But Lee succeeds in creating a mysterious figure who manages to reveal himself to the keenest readers.

33. Hemingway – Francis Macomber, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

“Francis Macomber was very tall, very well built if you did not mind that length of bone, dark, his hair cropped like an oarsman, rather thin-lipped, and was considered handsome. He was dressed in the same sort of safari clothes that Wilson wore except that his were new, he was thirty-five years old, kept himself very fit, was good at court games, had a number of big-game fishing records, and had just shown himself, very publicly, to be a coward.”

Hunting and war seem to be the premises that cowardly action is played out in most fiction. In Africa Macomber wants to bag a lion, but while he continues to try other forces in his life are unraveling as well. Despite his apparent advantages in life he cannot overcome these – with tragic results.

32. Graves – Claudius, I, Claudius

“My readers must not therefore be surprised by my practised style: it is indeed Claudius himself who is writing this book, and no mere secretary of his, and not one of those official annalists either, to whom public men are in the habit of communicating their recollections, in the hope that elegant writing will eke out meagreness of subject-matter and flattery soften vices. In the present work, I swear by all the Gods, I am my own mere secretary, and my own official annalist: I am writing with my own hand, and what favour can I hope to win from myself by flattery?”

And so Claudius introduces himself. An unremarkable Roman emperor, Graves manages to create a diarist, or annalist, whose observations reveal much about his own mind – defensive in response to his lame body and stuttering speech – which is sharper than those around him.

31. Abbey – George Hayduke, The Monkey Wrench Gang

“Time is relative, said Heraclitus a long time ago, and distance a function of velocity. Since the ultimate goal of transport technology is the annihilation of space, the compression of all Being into one pure point, it follows that six-packs help. Speed is the ultimate drug and rockets run on alcohol. Hayduke had formulated this theory all by himself.”

Hayduke had been a green beret in Vietnam, and readjusts back home by becoming an eco-terrorist. In an earlier era you can picture him just as gleefully terrorizing the West. But Abbey does not create a larger-than-life caricature: Hayduke consistently is only too human.

50 Characters Who've Stuck With Me: Part One

Avoiding the world of poetry and playwrights here are fifty literary characters who have stuck with me, and, I'm guessing, are good candidates to stick with others.

50. Dick – Pat Conley, Ubik

“On her bare, dark forearm he made out a tattoo, CAVEAT EMPTOR, it read. He wondered what that meant.”

In Sci-Fi most women come in two stock types: 'one of the guys' who totes a gun and kicks ass, or arousing martians/robots. (Of course there are also the normal templates as well, such as the Damsel.) Conley, however, is a well-developed woman who somehow skirts both of these classic stereotypes while eventually revealing something more complex.

49. Voltaire – Dr. Pangloss, Candide

“Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: "There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts."”

Pangloss is the dopey, ever-optimistic 'mataphysico-theologico-cosmologist'. The classic example of a muddleheaded academic Pangloss continually preaches that this 'is the best of all possible worlds' to cheer Candide, despite the earthquakes, executions and dismemberments affecting our poor hero.

48. Borges – Ireneo Funes, Funes the Memorious

“He remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebracho.”

Borges wasn't really known for his characters, but Funes proves a fascinating exception. Funes remembers everything he's ever experienced, with each moment of his life a distinct mental image from the last. How he copes presents an intriguing character portrait.

47. Carroll – The Cheshire Cat, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

“'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'”

Alice is, for my money, the best Victorian character after Phineas Fogg. But of all the peculiar people and creatures she runs into in Wonderland and the Looking-Glass World few resonate, or are as beloved, as the Cheshire Cat. I think if cats could talk they'd converse with us much in the same way – sparse, decisive pronouncements before disappearing.

46. Gogol – The Nose, The Nose

“''Good sir,'' Kovalev went on with a heightened sense of dignity, ''the one who is at a loss to understand the other is I. But at least the immediate point should be plain, unless you are determined to have it otherwise. Merely — you are my own nose.''
The Nose regarded the Major, and contracted its brows a little.”

The Nose is Gogol's most peculiar story – a man loses his nose and finds it a bread roll, followed by its putting on a suit and traipsing around St. Petersburg. The Nose acts in a manner befitting a Russian petty official, as perhaps our noses would if they had coats and boots of their own.

45. Kafka – The Officer, The Penal Colony

“''It’s a remarkable apparatus,'' said the Officer to the Explorer and gazed with a certain look of admiration at the device, with which he was, of course, thoroughly familiar.”

As maybe the most disturbing portrayal of a cog in the system the Officer is totally desensitized to his monstrous apparatus – a device used on the condemned that, in the Officer's deluded mind, leads not only to a punishment, but a sort of grisly revelation.

44. Marquez – The Old Man, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

“He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away and sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor's voice.”

The silent central figure of Marquez' story is pitiful. Is he an angel? Some sort of sideshow freak? A random sailor? He is similar to Gorey's Doubtful Guest: he shows up, doesn't explain himself, and seemingly waits.

43. Adams – Marvin the Paranoid Android, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I didn't ask to be made: no one consulted me or considered my feelings in the matter. I don't think it even occurred to them that I might have feelings. After I was made, I was left in a dark room for six months... and me with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.”

Marvin is the ultimate pessimist, misanthrope and downer. Extraordinarily intelligent he can't help but complain, mope, and bring everyone down around him. Who doesn't know someone like Marvin?

42. Orwell – Boxer, Animal Farm

“"I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm. It must be due to some fault in ourselves. The solution, as I see it, is to work harder. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings."”

Boxer may well be the most tragic character on this list. The allegory of Soviet revolution sees the pigs controlling the other animals, but Boxer, the worker, has blind faith in their leaders. The noble plow-horse, whose unfailing solution to problems is to condemn himself with his slogan “I will work harder!” is the inspiration to the other animals on the farm. How the pigs reward him will move you.

41. O'Connor – The Misfit, A Good Man is Hard to Find

“''I never was a bad boy that I remember of," The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, "but somewheres along the line I done something wrong...''”

The Misfit, a criminal in the backwoods, seems to have no real motive. His mind is somewhere between unhinged and too rational. As he interacts with our main characters we get a full biography but it doesn't help – the Misfit is maddeningly, worryingly inscrutable. The famous story's conclusion, from the lips of the criminal, has now become classic.