Unlikable

On characters who self-destruct

I’m a published author, but before all else, I am a reader.

One thing I’ve noticed more lately are book reviews on books written by Arab authors. And often, the characters are heavily flawed, sometimes self-destruct, and are generally difficult to like as a person.

All of which, I think, make an enjoyable read.

But what I’m seeing in these book reviews are 1 and 2 stars, and the explicit call-out of how unlikable the characters are, how they are destructive, how, in my interpretation of these criticisms, they aren’t “neat and clean.”

I wonder where this comes from.

Growing up, I read many books, often those with neat endings, clear character progression and growth, and came to accept these are not just “normal,” but expected, literature.

Now I wonder where those expectations come from, who decides them, whether they limit how we read and write, and whether they are part of a larger systemic issue.

What that issue is, I’m still figuring out. But I do wonder if brown authors tend to write such characters because we see the world through a particular lens of flawed human behavior and have less expectations of defined and expected character arcs. I wonder if we are able to sit with the discomfort of flawed persons, and see the world as far less “good and bad” as we are expected to.

And I think this is a problem.

This three-act structure, with clear character arc, and decided moral growth is just one tradition of literature, and yet we treat it as not just the gold standard, but the only acceptable standard. What I find frustrating about this is the difficulty in sitting with ambiguity.

My favorite Twilight Zone episodes are the ones where the endings are ambiguous, and make me sit with uncomfortable feelings decades after I saw them. The episodes I remember best are the ones that come back to me at points in my life, making me see the world through a different lens, one where I can step back and say, oh, right, this is absurd.

What I find in the differences between literary traditions, of which those that are non-Anglo/European should be considered as, is the texture of simply…being human. There is less pressure to conform, to be orderly, to show progress and growth, to deserve being liked. Instead, there is more exploration of how people are, well, people, and the human experience is not usually wrapped up in a neat and pretty bow.

It’s almost as if in the more accepted Western literary traditions, there is more emphasis on outlining a human and following a certain path, than in Eastern traditions that seem more open to the chaos of life.

I don’t think, though, that this is as simple as West vs East literary traditions. Western/European writers also offer us unlikable, flawed characters, writers such as Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, and they are canonized. But I see the issue arising in reviews of books written by brown and Black authors in America when their characters don’t conform to what is, essentially, white character traditions, and they are subsequently penalized. Penalized by poorer reviews, which have consequences for how well their books sell, which has financial consequences for those writers. It’s as if the accepted traditions can be upended, but only by certain identities.

I think expecting a character to follow a prescribed rubric, and then criticizing them for when they don’t, is not a failure of the writer or the book, but of expectations. But, why are these expectations the baseline for our writing styles? Why does there seem to be a singular way characters must behave, and by extension, society, and why are white literary traditions in charge of outlining these standards?

I do think this all connects to a larger systemic issue, a larger pattern where some stories are considered “universal,” and which are considered more “niche,” or “indie,” or “avant-garde.”

It’s not that Western reviewers are always consciously biased, because it’s the standards built from a specific cultural vantage point that propels a reader’s expectations. But the issue does result in Brown, Arab, postcolonial, post-slavery, etc. writers being judged according to these standards that simply do not fit our experiences of the world.

Confusing familiarity with quality is where the issue lies, and in attributing dislike or discomfort of characters to the book, the author, or the story, rather than to the self. That, to me, reads as a failure of reading, not of writing.