One of the great things about engaging with fiction is that I can watch nasty people doing questionable things from a safe distance. I’m also fond of morally gray characters who make a good case for sympathizing with them, and who are aware of their grayness/shittiness to some extent. I am interested in both varieties of dirtbag. Need not contain a redemption arc.
Some points of reference: I have already read *Lolita*, though it merits a reread. I have recently grazed through *How Should A Person Be?* and, though the characters are plenty awful, I found it too shallow and pretentious to keep reading. My ideal would be something along the lines of Kaaro, the protagonist in the first *Rosewater* book, which I read a couple of months ago. He’s a real asshole with a misogynist streak, but I found myself rooting for him anyway. That, or Olga Tokarczuk’s portrayal of Jacob Frank in *The Books of Jacob*, i.e. charismatic, manipulative, sometimes abusive, and possibly mentally disturbed, but you can’t stop reading because he’s a vortex for all kinds of weird, disruptive stuff. (Big book, halfway through that one now.)
Incidentally, I do have one limit, albeit a soft one: I would like to avoid *surprise* sexual abuse/assault as much as possible. If your rec contains that but you still think the book is good, just give me a heads up.
by samsara_suplex
4 Comments
Bukowski’s *Pulp* came immediately to mind. Not sure the character is entirely a dirtbag, but he’s… Rough. I found it to be wildly entertaining.
The Flashman series by George Macdonald Fraser. Flashman id a coward, bully, rogue.
A Clockwork Orange fits your description but it’s pretty heavy on sexual assault. Gone to See the River Man also has an awful protagonist but there is, again, sexual assault
The titular character in Macunaima: The Hero Without Any Character by Mario de Andrade