Bad choices make for good stories – and here are some of my favourite characters raising hell, from a perverted billionaire to a Viking hoodlum to a feckless hospital orderly
Before I got fired I used to tell my students that bad choices make for good stories. Maybe what I should’ve said is that bad choices make for trouble, which makes for good stories. If you think about it even a little, almost every story has a troublemaker making it go, so obviously the list of greats is large. Don Quixote, Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Dean Moriarty, Raoul Duke, Alex in A Clockwork Orange … Bartleby, even, who’s maybe not the most obvious choice, given his politeness, but c’mon: a guy who calmly declines to do as he’s told, until he dies. “I would prefer not to.” And I would prefer not to have to narrow it down to just 10 because, frankly, I’m terrified of that comments section below. Everybody’s going to have an opinion, as they should.
So I’m going to rule-bend here – this is about making trouble, after all – and give you my top 10 under-appreciated literary troublemakers, in the hope that I can introduce you to a few you’ll love as much I do.
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