who’s your literary crush
Legal niceties permitting, The Guardian wonders which literary character you’d marry.
At present, I’d have to say Arthur Clennam. But that’s mostly to do with Matthew Macfadyen. Other than that, my favourite literary characters tend to be a bit troubled. Diseased even. Not really the sort you want to hop in bed with.
Take Flannery O’Connor’s Mrs. Turpin from the short story “Revelation”. The flipside of ‘crush’. But I dare you to find another one worth her weight in thought.
In the following excerpt Mrs Tuprin is standing on the pig parlour speaking to God…
“What do you send me a message like that for?” she said in a low fierce voice, barely above a whisper but with the force of a shout in its concentrated fury. How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?
“Go ahead” she yelled, “Call me a hog! Call me a hog again. From Hell. Call me a warthog from Hell! Put the bottom rail on top! There’d still be a top and a bottom!”
A final surge of fury shook her and she roared, “Who do you think you are?”
