Virginia Woolf dismissed what she called EM Forster’s ‘laws for writing literature’ –

Set out in his Aspects of the Novel lecture series –

As proof that:

‘Nobody knows anything’.

A phrase that William Goldman would retrofit to the science of motion picture making.

Somerset Maugham claimed that Aspects taught him that:

‘The only way to write novels was like Mr. E. M. Forster.’

A sentiment Nietzsche might have seconded.

(After he was done insinuating that all philosophies –

Save his own –

Are sublimated autobiographies.)

Forster’s prescriptions and proscriptions seem most self-centred when assessing characters.

Particularly, the distinction he draws between what he dubbed flat and round persons.

‘It is only round people who are fit to perform tragically for any length of time and can move us to any feelings.’

I used to believe that this was true.

Plainly.

Now, that it is untrue.

Obviously.

At least, I hope that’s the case.

Otherwise, soon we’ll all be serial-killer groupies.

Mob wives.

Nazi sympathisers.

Why?

Well, without trying, we can’t help but absorb –

Read/see/hear –

Every aspect of these globular characters’ histories.

HERE COMES POOR EVERYBODY’S BODIES

To round up Forster’s conception of Rounds:

They’re Gladstone bags.

No –

Steamer trunks.

In which entire libraries of personal requisites may be stuffed.

Transported.

Conveyed.

‘A round character gives readers a slightly new pleasure each time they come into the story, as opposed to the merely repetitive-pleasure result of a flat character.’

It’s their wondrously protean nature that works the trick.

Each aspect of their multifarious viscera satisfies someone.

Meaning that their blunderbuss personalities attract everyone.

‘Never caricatures,’ Forster says of them.

Conceded.

‘Highly organized.’

Hamlet?

Raskolnikov?

Or does Forster believe that neither are cycloidal?

Otherwise, the second statement opposes the first.

Tidy-mindedness doesn’t apply to his own convex characters.

Lucy Honeychurch.

Helen Schlegel.

Or does he mean that they’re highly organized by the author?

Eliot would have disagreed.

With regard to the great Dane, at least.

FLATTENING OUT A FLAT CHARACTER

Forster’s Flats are briefcases.

Attaché cases.

Less.

Able to sustain a single sheet of character detail only.

A line.

They –

‘Never need reintroducing, never run away, have not to be watched for development, and provide their own atmosphere—little luminous disks of a pre-arranged size, pushed hither and thither across the void or between the stars; most satisfactory.’

Much of this may be applauded.

All of it.

Then he ruins it by claiming:

‘It is only round people who are fit to perform tragically for any length of time.’

ONE MUST HAVE A HEART OF STONE TO READ THE DEATH OF A FLAT WITHOUT LAUGHING

Most of the principal protagonists in myth, legend, religion are Flats.

Or, at best, Flats pretending to be Rounds.

Nevertheless, they move us.

Inspire us.

The tragic hero, firstly.

Oedipus suffers catastrophe on calamity.

Has to suffer nemesis for his tragic flaw.

(As the Greeks floored it.

And determinists determinedly second.

That is: not something the hero is responsible for.

Rather, a trait of character.

Attributed at birth.)

But, after all is said –

And he is done –

The original motherfucker is a Flat.

To o’erleap to another mother lover:

The most annular soul in Shakespeare is Hamlet.

As personality-crammed as any protagonist may grow without hazarding a Mr. Creosote level detonation.

But does his leaving move us more than Ophelia’s?

Perhaps her madness feeds her up?

Makes her morbidly obese?

No.

It’s not nearly, Learly complex enough.

Nevertheless, her one-notedness drowns out the excesses of her sometime beau.

ENTER, PURSUING A BEAR

The most pleasing character in Shakespeare –

After the A roles –

Perhaps even the Bs –

Is Paulina.

Rudely introduced in The Winter’s Tale Dramatis Personae as:

Wife to Antigonus.

She boasts a surprisingly high word count.

Around ten percent of the play’s total.

(Often the case with Flats, oddly.)

But is rarely gushed over.

On or off the stage.

Because she has a single purpose.

Summarised in her declaration:

‘Do not you fear: upon mine honour, I will stand betwixt you and danger.’

And she’s true to her dictum.

Pursues it so determinedly that she serves as deus ex machina.

A good goddess, naturally.

Though as single-minded as a T-1000.

Even at the risk to her own arc.

Sure as a super-hero.

And not a Marvel one.

Angst-ridden, grey.

More Golden Age DC deity.

Nevertheless, her fierce defence of Hermione never fails to move.

OTHELLO’S A BUGGER TOO, MIND YOU

Emilia is stabbed by husband Iago for obeying an equally dimensionless moral code.

But I’ve never seen a production of Othello in which her passing isn’t tragic.

And her corpulent husband’s a consummation devoutly wished for.

Nor where I’ve felt a thing for Desdemona’s passage into darkness.

Or Othello’s.

Leopold Bloom is the most endomorphic character in literature.

A prototype for the let-it-all-hang-out good/bad dads familiar from The Simpsons and Family Guy.

But it’s Martin Cunningham –

Whose sole function in Ulysses’ naturalisticchapters is to trip up the slyboots plaguing Bloom –

Who makes me well-up.

He’s cypher svelte.

Obeys a moral code mean as Mani’s.

But something about his steadfast niceness –

Correctness –

Moves.

Gurnemanz –

Veteran knight of the Grail –

Experiences a transformation of sorts.

Exhibits compassion towards Parsifal after wising-up to the kid’s significance.

But suspected that the boy was the pure fool prophesied in Act One.

So, doesn’t trace a dramatic parabola where time covers much space.

And wastes most of his stage presence back-storying.

(To the chagrin of every anti-Wagnerian.)

Nevertheless, he’s the noblest character in Wagner.

BREAKING GOOD

I watched Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul over.

And realised that the Flats moved me as much as the Rounds.

Hank Schrader, Howard Hamlin, Kevin Wachtell.

And one more than any other in the diptych.

Walt Jr lacks a hinter honeycombed with personality potholes.

For that reason, he safegrounds a land of enchantment densely populated with monsters.

When he tells his father that he – Walt Snr – deserves a break, I well up.

Why?

Walt Jr means it.

Indeed, is the only character in the series who means anything.

Whose every pronouncement isn’t motivated by an ulterior.

Consequently, the first show’s tragedy isn’t Heisenberg’s or Jesse’s or Skylar’s.

It’s his.

THE OLD SWITCHEROO, TOO

Rounds arouse our interest.

But their otiose aspect often repels caring.

The knowledge that there’s a slice in their personality pie that’s determinedly repugnant.

Bitter as bile.

So, they merit the tragedy that befalls them.

Flats, contrarily, manage the trick of moving us with only a word or two.

And maintain our sentiment.

Giving us pause to wonder:

Are Rounds the salt, vinegar, chilli that make us swallow the story starch we crave?

A literary-culinary distraction?

Perhaps fiction hasn’t developed over the past two and half millennia as greatly as some fancy.

After all, problematic Achilles was there at the start.

Pouty as Brando.

All that authors conjured up –

In ages before Industrial Light & Magic could misdirect us –

Were characters who were especially effective because defective.

Performed pyrotechnics of personality.

Parlour tricks to attract and distract us.

Amorality.

Immorality.

Finally, however, Priam prevails over Peleus’ son.

(Even Hector’s corpse does as much.)

So, we succumb to mores.

Most inconspicuously conspicuously in dysfunctional family comedies.

The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, The Goldbergs, etc.

After they’re done outrageously pratfalling and pattering, one punchline persists:

Conventional morality.

STARTERS ORDERS PARADOX

All characters start out flat.

When we’re introduced to them.

Nevertheless, we warm to some right off.

Then, get the hots for them.

Though they never acquire curves.

Mr Dick in David Copperfield.

Others never grow to be liked.

Uriah Heep.

No matter how much subconscious subcutaneousness they betray.

Suggesting that, initially, we respond instinctively.

Aesthetically.

Then ingest the motive to learn more.

If a character had to be big and beautiful day one to appeal, we’d never trouble to watch them pack on the pounds.

Or come to care for anyone in life.

BENIGN NATURE

The puzzle is not why we like –

Love –

Flats –

(Physiological thumbnail sketches –

Psychologies laconic as a Cocteau sketch -)

But why we crowd round –

Feast on –

Otiose monsters.

The grossest figures.

It has something to do with our perception of our own true natures.

Necessarily unrelated to our carapaces.

The myth of the complex character flatters us.

Gives us hope we’re complicated too.

Create and venerate such characters to sop ourselves.

Also, the magical transformation expected from fiction.

The manner in which it doesn’t mirror life.

(A province where individuals deficient of redeeming features prevail often.

Worse:

An inverse correlation matches excess success with want of inwit.)

What governs our award of consideration to overblown anti-heroes?

A rude calculation.

Characters may be flawed –

Like Bloom –

Make mischief –

Like Henchard –

But if they’re benign –

More so than they’re malevolent –

We regard them as a victim of themselves.

Not agents controlling circumstances.

So, come to care for them.

DEVIL IN THE D2

Lucas hinted at Vader’s backstory in the opening episode of the original trilogy.

‘He turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights.’

This inspires us to ask:

Why did he turn to evil?

How?

Also, occasions a new hope:

Might the process be reversed?

Suddenly, Vader’s potential for change seems as real as Luke’s.

Solo’s.

More so, given our want to witness a character win redemption.

The prodigal Jedi come home.

Why do we feast on such meal?

WHAT YOU DO, DO QUICKLY

Forgiveness of others offers all of us hope.

The bigger their transgression –

Longer their confession –

Greater the contrition –

The grander our own potential remission.

The Abrahamic faiths originated this paradigm.

More properly, Dante did.

Milton.

Blake.

Satan was a fallen angel.

But an angel, nevertheless.

So, as with Judas –

The curviest character across the gospels –

We can’t help but wonder whether he’ll be saved finally.

After all, both performed essential missions.

Occasioned passions without which our own psychodramas couldn’t play.

Our redemptions not come to pass.

THAT’S OUR HITLER!

All of us are galley slaves of determinism.

Even murderers.

Despots.

Why, then, do we acknowledge this with some –

Sympathise –

Commiserate –

But not others?

It’s a question of the perception of effort.

Theirs or ours?

Both.

Some are perceived to make no attempt to overcome the gravitational pull of their base morality.

Consequently, it’s difficult to sympathise with them.

Why?

Because our own efforts to rehabilitate them would almost certainly go unrewarded.

Otherwise, rejection of their cellular horribleness makes no sense.

The wholly unreformable should merit more of our pity.

Not less.

TRAGIC FLOOR

Jude Fawley and Tony Soprano are both persons of interest.

One is richly round.

Tragic, too.

The other a big bear of a character.

Den to litters of conflicting sensibilities.

But tragic?

What’s the difference?

One is benign.

The other bellicose.

Anyone watching The Sopranos episode Employee of the Month –

Wherein Tony’s shrink, Dr. Melfi, is raped –

Wills her to confess all to the only psyche she knows who might exact the justice –

Rough –

Denied her.

Simultaneously, we know that she won’t –

Can’t –

Do as much.

Perhaps we’re attracted to Tony because we’re conflicted similarly.

Have suffered lesser injustices.

Situations that might have been resolved most swiftly by violence.

He enables us to rehearse vicarious waywardness.

Jude Fawley.

Tony Soprano.

One causes us to shake our heads with sympathy.

The other rattles our consciences worryingly.

The first we’d like to call emergency services to attend to.

The second call on to service an emergency.

Yes –

But, still, we don’t like him.

WE NEED ANOTHER HERO

The hero is invariably a blank sheet of a character.

Curt as a business card.

Bearing a single injunction.

Defined by their heroic action only.

The villain is as exhaustive as an Edwardian broadsheet.

Their every bathtowel-sized page grey with micro-dot font.

A creature only undone by their wickedness.

Does this suggest that –

Given choice –

We’d all entertain evil –

For the ride –

But are constrained to hurrah heroism for its likely destination?

ACTOR MANAGER

Some movie stars override the best worst intentions of the writer/director/producer.

My public wouldn’t accept me doing that, they say.

This turns the script goldenrod.

Authors succumb to this temptation similarly.

Round their heroes.

Not to fulness but niceness.

Don’t fill them out.

But file them down.

Sand off their sharpest edges.

Sticking points.

Put too much of themselves into a character to make judgement of them impartial.

Anything other than approving.

Making us aware of motivations that absolve any voice of vice.

This is most often the fate of the hero.

But may be as problematic with the anti.

The villain, even.

Too much psychic shading –

Spectral pleading –

Strikes us as phoney.

Why?

Outside art, we perceive strangers from the outside in.

Even those closest are understood via the senses only.

As constructs of percepts.

Circumstantially suspect.

SELF-ABUSERS ANONYMOUS

Most of us have a poorer apprehension of ourselves than writers offer us of their characters.

We befriend Bloom, say, on the basis of Joyce’s presentation of his psyche.

A perception of interiority we can’t claim of ourselves.

That object we glimpse in the mirror.

The fixed one in the bathroom.

The silver of self-consciousness.

We understand others –

Even those closest to us –

Through brief glimpses, too.

This explains the primacy of Flats.

How we identify with characters fleetingly glimpsed.

Life presents others in this fashion.

Paradox.

Character depth is charged.

Caution: may blow up in author’s typeface.

Be dismissed as unreal.

Too ornate to persuade.

Engender ennui, rather than verisimilitude.

In the way in which catty characters in a reality TV show may seem no realer –

Less real –

Than cats in a cartoon.

CASTING ASIDE

Some of us conceive of others as the people we’d like them to be.

Not as the ones they are.

Hoping that with enough encouragement –

Management –

They’ll become so.

And, so, enrich our repertoire of psycho-interactions.

We need heroes/villains/simpletons/charlatans/et cetera.

So, award others one of these roles in the repertory company of our heads.

To stage our own myth.

This happens with fiction, too.

If a character doesn’t take the hint –

Conform to the role we want them to assume –

We lose interest in them.

No matter how surprising they seem on the surface.

LIFE FOLLOWS ART FOLLOWS LIFE

Jimmy McGill is an ancillary character in Breaking Bad.

Walter White’s tragedy.

But chief protagonist in Better Call Saul.

His own.

Fiction’s reconstruction of life reflects our personal conception.

Most stories concern themselves with the progress of a single individual.

The chief protagonist.

All other characters –

No matter how circular –

Are subservient to same.

This is how we replay our own adventure.

The cares and affairs of others –

Their ecstasies/tragedies –

Are mere B and C strands in our own arcs.

Stage business to shade our own stories.

Anti-democratic.

Elitist.

Non-egalitarian.

COLD CODA

YOU SEE, HERE TIME BECOMES SPACE

Perspective determines the Round/Flat dichotomy.

A character may appear shallow from a particular point of view.

As with a person, however, they are always curvilinear from their own.

Space separates the states.

Granted the opportunity to learn their history –

The time –

A Flat would balloon into a Round.