The Wet Codfish Award for Annoying Fictional Characters

[oursin]

In response to this post by frumiousb about Proust's The Captive and The Fugitive, I commented as follows:
Narrator becomes strong contender for 'literary character we would most like to see repeatedly slapped about the chops with a wet codfish' (duking it out with Esther Summerson from Bleak House, the queen of nauseous self-deprecating tweeness).
So: wet

Comments

[chickenfeet2003]

Well the narrator in In Search of Lost Time is so far ahead of the pack that slapping around the chops with a codfish is grossly inadequate. Immersion to the neck in lutefisk is the minimum I would settle for in his case.

If we are to have a poll for second place Sebastian Flyte would be a stong contender as would M. d'Artagnan and his three poncy pals.

[ex_ajhalluk585]

Francis Crawford of Lymond.

In his later incarnations (say in Diplomatic Immunity) a bit of precautionary codfishing would also do wonders for Miles Vorkosigan.

Little Beth - in fact, most of the characters in Little Women.

Andrew Raynes The Charioteer - although I'm not altogether sure of what the author's view of him actually is, so I may be conflating the pov character's irrational besottnedness with Andrew with a more clear-eyed view by the author.

That Alien Fisher-King (in whose case a wet codfish is more than ordinarily appropriate).

Arwen.

[gillo]

Leave my Francis out of this! OK, so he's unbelievably good-looking, shagged Margaret Lennox senseless when he was 16, is more skilled in bed than any dozen other experts, and is hot enough to make his mother-in-law go soft at the knees but....

See above.

*g*

[ex_ajhalluk585]

OK: make that a skate.

[gillo]

Not even a minnow! "His every breath was a caress designed to please" was my mantra in my student days.

Now Niccoló, by contrast - monkfish at least.

[serrana]

Oh, but a good 50% of the leads in genre fiction are candidates for a good codfish-walloping. In fact, I'm trying to think of anything I've read so far this year where I didn't want to codfish-wallop at least one, and usually most, of the main characters.

Yes, it's been a piss-poor year for me, literarily, thus far. All I want is something both escapist and intelligently written...is that really so much to ask? (Yes, it's got to be escapist. We've been averaging two inches of rain a week for the last two months, and the cabin fever is getting ridiculous.)

If you want "serious literary" contenders, I've always had it in for...Jane Eyre, and Hemingway's alter egae.

[anghara]

Thomas Covenant. Wallop him with a whole handful of codfishes.

[matociquala]

He's a lutefisking candidate, too.

[noveldevice]

Codfishing is too good for Thomas Covenant. Tie him naked over a barrel and write on his ass "Honky rides 25c" and then leave him.

[anghara]

He's still be over a barrel whining "I don't believe it" after a week of that...

[gillo]

Much as I adore Jane Austen, I feel Fanny Price has to be a good candidate for a belt round the chops. Just get on with it, luv...

Ophelia, Drip Incarnate?

Dorothea Casaubon. Now there's a girl who needed a good seeing-to...

[intertext]

Not to mention her wretched husband