Someone wrote into the Wall Street Journal to ask if Cynthia Grossen could recommend another fictional hero as swoony as Twilight‘s pallid Edward Cullen. Grossen gives some picks, but we think we can add to it.
Grossen lists some Hall-of-Famers: Darcy, Rochester, Zhivago, Rhett, and, inexplicably, Rebecca‘s Maxim de Winter. More idiosyncratically, she calls out the heroes of The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Bel Canto.
To this, we’d add The Chosen‘s Reuven Malter (what? I was a nerd); Laurie before he grows up; Captain Wentworth; Fuck Head; Florentino Ariza; the Invisible Man; the Elephant Man; Huck Finn (is that pedophilia?); Natty Bumppo; Newland Archer (hey, Day-Lewis has good taste!); Dickon, and, last but not least, Ishmael.
But we’re just getting started!
Fictional Men Worth Loving [Wall Street Journal]
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
