SpanishRed

Invisibility Week Day Three: The Unlikable Narrator

Added 2024-12-13 07:21:35 +0000 UTC

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HEAR about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.

Meet Holden Caulfield, one of the most famous and unlikable narrators in all of history. The only reason he’s so widely disliked is that he comes from one of the most famous works of fiction ever written. J.D. Salinger did such a stellar job of it that the book is often linked to serial and mass murders.

If you read Salinger’s other work, you’ll find that The Catcher in the Rye isn’t convincing because it’s Salinger’s own voice. It’s convincing because Salinger had the skill to create a credible narrator.

And not all narrators are likeable. I’d even go so far as to say there are too many likable narrators in the world.

Every story comes from two perspectives:

That of the author.
That of the narrator or protagonist.

There are too many likeable narrators in the world because too many authors see the two categories as one in the same. Too many writers create a narrator who is just like them, or an idealised version of themselves. They’re ethical. They’re wise. They’re altogether lovely people.

This is more than just predictable. It’s inauthentic. It makes the author visible to their readers, and this is not a desirable effect. Writers are at their best when they’re invisible, and in Catcher in the Rye, Salinger simply isn’t there. You won’t think of him at all from the first page to the last because he wrote in an era when writers finally started to let go of their visibility on a grand scale.

It’s okay to hate your narrator.

It’s okay to create a narrator who’s a terrible human. It’s a tool as sharp and useful as any other. We can argue all day about whether readers can enjoy an unlikable narrator, but if we do, we must also acknowledge that Catcher in the Rye has sold over 65 million copies.