Best Books About Psychos, Obsessives And Other Loons
From the Wall Street Journal, a collection of the best books about the worst people.
Excerpts:
This Sweet Sickness
By Patricia Highsmith (1960)Patricia Highsmith admitted that she found writing about psychopaths “easy”—and who could forget the suave, amoral Tom Ripley or the petulant Bruno Anthony in “Strangers on a Train”? With the character David Kelsey in “This Sweet Sickness” she shows us not only a man being mad, but one going mad.
. . . .
Morvern Callar
By Alan Warner (1995)When Morvern Callar discovers that her boyfriend has cut his own throat, she hardly reacts at all: “There was fright but I’d daydreamed how I’d be.” So begins this extraordinary novel by Alan Warner. We follow Morvern as she hides her boyfriend’s corpse in the attic, empties his bank account and submits the novel he has been writing to a publisher—under her own name.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire after a few days)
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Now, I won’t comment on the fact that “Psychos, Obsessives and Other Loons” is sandwiched in between two blogs about agents acting in strange ways. That can only be pure chance.
I also think it ok that WSJ uses its pages for cross-promotions on behalf of News Corp authors. It’s business, after all.
But to call these the “Five Best Books: Psychopaths in Fiction” seems highly dubious. I think almost everybody here could come up with better ones (by the way, I haven’t read “Morvern Callar”, only seen the film, but I don’t remember the heroine as a loony – strange ok, but psychopath?).
My personal hero is Robert Wringhim from James Hogg’s “Confessions of a Justified Sinner”.
Then you have a whole bunch of Russians like the narrator from “Notes from Underground”. The governess from James’ “Turn of the Screw” shouldn’t be left out, and to close the circle and come back to publishing, the editor in Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”, Charles Kinbote, is an interesting character as well (to say the least).
Anyone with fictional agents on the loose?
Stefan – Agreed. This is just one author’s opinion on the subject.
I hadn’t thought of the juxtaposition with the agent posts, but it does all fit together.