Book collectors introduced their Favorite Characters during the June 2024 meeting. These favorite characters ranged from the ordinary person to the comic book hero. While most of the characters were fictional, one collector made the case that his favorite writer was himself an extraordinary character.
Fictional Characters
Flash Gordon
In 1934, King Features Syndicate published Flash Gordon as a
competitor to the popular Buck Rogers comic strip which had been running since
1929. The Flash Gordon Sunday comic
strip ran from 1934 to 2003 with reprints continuing until the present. The daily strip ran from 1949 to 1992 and was
relaunched in 2023.
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| Flash Gordon in The Caverns of Mongo |
Raymond, Alex. Flash Gordon in the Caverns of Mongo. New York: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1936. This was the first of 14 novels featuring Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, Dr. Hans Zarkov, and Ming the Merciless. It was the only novel published in hardcover. Alex Raymond, the artist who created Flash and drew him in the comic strips, was credited with authorship but the novel was probably ghost written.
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| Big Little Books Flash Gordon series |
The Flash Gordon comic strip was adapted into the Big Little
Books series by the Whitman Publishing Company in 1934. The hardcover books follow the strip stories
very closely and were designed with a captioned Alex Raymond illustration
opposite each page of text. There were
15 Big Little Books (pictured above) published from 1934 until 1948:
Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo
(1934)
Flash Gordon and the Monsters of Mongo
(1935)
Flash Gordon and the Tournaments of
Mongo (1935)
Flash Gordon and the Witch Queen of
Mongo (1936)
Flash Gordon vs. the Emperor of Mongo
(1936)
Flash Gordon in the Water World of
Mongo (1937)
Flash Gordon in the Forest Kingdom of
Mongo (1938)
Flash Gordon and the Perils of Mongo
(1940)
Flash Gordon and the Tyrant of Mongo
(1941)
Flash Gordon and the Ice World of Mongo
(1942)
Flash Gordon and the Ape Men of Mor
(1942)
Flash Gordon and the Power Men of Mongo
(1943)
Flash Gordon and the Red Sword Invaders
(1945)
Flash Gordon in the Jungles of Mongo (1947)
Flash Gordon and the Fiery Desert of Mongo (1948)
Flash Gordon was first adapted to film in 1936 in a
13-chapter serial starring Buster Crabbe, an actor and Olympic swimmer, as Flash
Gordon. The most notable adaptation was
released in 1980 with Sam J. Jones, and actor and professional football player,
as Flash Gordon.
Mr. Wormold in Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana
James Wormold, the protagonist of Greene's black comedy, is
casually recruited into the British Secret Intelligence Service in Cold War
Cuba. He is an unassuming and somewhat
naïve individual; at the same time, he's very attentive and quick to notice
everything taking place around him. As
the story develops, Wormold is keenly observant and aware of the growing
tensions and escalating dangers but is oblivious to the fact that they are the
consequences of his own actions. Wormold
possesses a subtle and underrated sense of dry humor, but he may be Greene's
best comedic character.
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| Our Man in Havana |
Greene, Graham. Our Man in Havana. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1958. Uncorrected proof copy with textual differences to the first edition. White wraps are printed on the backside of the dust jacket for Anne Piper's Green for Love (1954).
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| Proof in wraps printed on reverse side of an old dust jacket |
Greene, Graham. Our Man in Havana. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1958. First edition. This copy is signed by the author on the title page.
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| Signed title page |
Our Man in Havana was adapted to film in 1959 starring Alec Guinness as Jim Wormold.
Tony in Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful Thing
Beautiful Thing is a small ensemble play centering on the
relationship between two teenage boys.
Tony is the boyfriend of the mother of one of the boys. While the other characters treat him as a
deadbeat, he is generally the most mature and understanding person in the
room. He tries to be a moral guide to
the mother and a sympathetic ear to the son and, while successful, he receives
no credit for his help. By the end of
the play, Tony is the only character of the five who does not get a happy
ending in this drama.
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| Beautiful Thing |
Harvey, Jonathan. Beautiful Thing. London: Methuen Drama, 1994. Stage script. The play premiered at the Bush Theatre in London in 1993. It opened in the West End at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1994.
Harvey, Jonathan. Beautiful
Thing. London: Methuen Film, 1996. Screenplay to the 1996 film adaptation with
images from the film.
Beautiful Thing was adapted to film in 1996 with Ben
Daniels as Tony.
Elio Perlman in André Aciman's Call Me by Your Name
Elio is the central character and narrator of Call Me By
Your Name. He is a seventeen year old
who initially resents Oliver, the doctoral student his parents invite to spend part
of the summer as their house guest in Italy.
Elio soon realizes his attraction to Oliver and recognizes his own
bisexuality. Elio is a complex character
demonstrating a broad range of emotions as he struggles to understand his
emerging sexuality. In one moment, he
seeks Oliver's attention, but as soon as Oliver responds to his attempts, Elio
quicky retreats. He can be confident and
courageous, then instantly insecure and withdrawn. In Aciman's masterful writing, these emotional
swings can take place within a single paragraph if not a single sentence.
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| Call Me by Your Name |
Aciman, André. Call Me by Your Name. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. First edition.
Call Me by Your Name was adapted to film in 2017
starring Timothée Chalamet as Elio.
Flavia de Luce in Alan Bradley's mystery series
Flavia de Luce is an eleven-year-old amateur detective and
heroine of Alan Bradley's mystery series named for the character. She is interested in chemistry and especially
fascinated with poisons. She is fearless
and unflappable, funny, and wise beyond her years. Most importantly, she has a knack for
unearthing mysteries which everyone else wishes would have stayed buried. The series begins with The Sweetness at
the Bottom of the Pie which is set in the English countryside village of
Buckshaw in 1950.
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| Flavia de Luce series |
Bradley, Alan. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. New York: Bantam Books, 2009. The first title in the Flavia de Luce series. This book is followed by:
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag
(2010)
A Red Herring Without Mustard (2011)
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows (2011)
Speaking From Among the Bones (2013)
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (2014)
The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse
(short story) (2014)
As Chimney Sweeper’s Come to Dust (2015)
Thrice The Brinded Cat Hath Mewed (2016)
The Grave’s A Fine and Private Place (2018)
The Golden Tresses of the Dead (2019)
The next installment in the series, What Time the
Sexton’s Blade Doth Rust, is forthcoming, scheduled for release later this
year.
A Flavia de Luce film adaptation is currently in the works
and while some cast members have been announced, the casting of Flavia has not
yet been disclosed.
Real-Life Characters
Edgar Allan Poe
A collector of Edgar Allan Poe selected the writer himself
as his favorite character. His choice of
Poe was based on his interest in not only his writings but also the individual
behind the stories and poems. The
collector explains, "Through my years of collecting, I found I was not the
only one with this fascination of 'Who was this unusual individual?' Sixty biographies sitting on my shelves from
the 1860’s to the present reflect that interest. From an academic perspective to popular
culture, from across the globe, Poe has made the transition from being studied
by scholars to comic books to Vincent Price movies. The two books I selected are only the tip of
the iceberg when discussing the character of Edgar Allan Poe."
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| The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe |
Bonaparte, Marie. The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho-Analytic Interpretation. London: Imago Publishing Co. Ltd., 1949. Foreword by Sigmund Freud. Edgar Poe; eine psychoanalytische Studie was first published in German in 1934 and later translated into English by John Rodker. The first part of Bonaparte's book offers a biography of Poe including his bibliography. The second part proposes a psychanalytic reading of the use of the mother in Poe's writing grounded in Freud's theory of the Opedipus complex.
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| Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend |
Wagenknecht, Edward. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963. Wagenknecht, a literary critic, examines how Poe’s writing reflects his personality and disposition. He seeks to correct some of the earlier wrong impressions and slanders of Poe which continue to haunt his reputation.
