Advanced Creative Writing Seminar: The Unlikable Protagonist

How much does the likability of a protagonist matter? David Foster Wallace once disparaged John Updike's penchant for unlikable protagonists, writing that Updike's narrators were becoming more and more despicable, "without any corresponding indication that the author understood they were repellant." Meanwhile, Margaret Atwood has protested that that, "I myself have been idiotically told that I write 'awful' books because the people in them are unpleasant. Intelligent readers do not confuse the quality of a book with the moral rectitude of the characters." In this course, we explore the intricacies of this debate. What qualities of a protagonist are perceived as likable? Are readers fundamentally drawn to characters because of their likability or some other attribute? How often do stories featuring unlikable protagonists employ strategies to make the reading experience more palatable, like delivering the protagonist a comeuppance or cultivating authorial distance? In the first half of the course, we read authors who have either created unlikable protagonists or written on the topic. In the second half of the course, students workshop their own original fiction—either a short story or a section from a longer work—featuring an unlikable protagonist.