Sedentary Gentleman's Fictional Heroes

WE CAN’T BE HEROES

Sedentary Gentleman has often been criticised for making his fictional protagonists too ‘unsympathetic’.

The subject of this blog

So Sedentary Gentleman, having read a blog is best optimised for marketing purposes when containing lists of top tens to engage potential customers, thought he would let you in on some of his ‘heroes’. 

We can't be this

FLASHMAN

Undoubtedly the finest literary creation in all, um, literature. In one story he gets one over on ‘The Master Detective himself’.

I don’t know what made Sedentary Gentleman laugh more: the fact Flashman gets yet another undeserved victory, or the spluttering response of a Holmes worshipping friend when I told her. For my friend, Holmes could never be beaten. It simply couldn’t happen. But Flashman does it.

A coward and a bully

Flashman-ophiles always relish the moments when our man threatens to become too heroic and manages some hideous feat of craven cowardice resulting in the misfortune and often death of a much more noble colleague. The genius of Flashman is, of course, his humanity in the face of horror, stupidity and ridiculous Victorian morality. 

Sedentary Gentleman recalls clearly, back in the late 1970s, reading the blurb in the back of a paperback about the adventures of the school bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays. He thought it the most brilliant idea ever. That a coward, a bully and a knave could ‘star’ in a book was almost beyond belief – after a short lifetime of ‘good’ heroes, this was such a daring conceit.

Although obviously Sedentary Gentleman hasn’t read Tom Brown’s Schooldays, there is an odd childhood memory of a BBC version – of a young boy being ‘roasted’ over a flame by this character ‘Flashman’ and his bully boy chums. Those blurry early TV flames, the knots tying the boy (presumably Tom Brown) to a metal fire guard, the bullies laughing and taunting; feeling the horror and despair of the victim... Let’s leave it there, eh.

Flashman definitely got me away from the whitebread heroes and pulp plots of James Herbert and King and that. I realised a character could hold a book; that you could have unreliable narrators. You didn’t have to like them; you didn’t want to be them but you could only empathise with them. And more importantly, one didn’t have to ‘resort to the supernatural’. The real world was sufficient from then on; more than enough. And that includes JG Ballard himself – the eponymous ‘hero’ of that comically perverse novel ‘Crash’.

ASH

Out of the Evil Dead. Check out Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness commentary. How he believes the film drops dead (no pun intended) when Ash turns out to be a straight up hero after all. The final shot of Evil Dead 2 is up there with ‘Waiting for Godot’ as a master class in ennui, empathy and existentialism. Yes, Sedentary Gentleman did write that last sentence.

Ennui, empathy and existentialism. With monsters.

Selfish note: as a student, Sedentary Gentleman seriously considered getting himself a tattoo of Ash in the final image of Evil Dead 2. What a wanker. Even worse, he also considered as a teenager a tattoo of Wile E. Coyote – so deeply did he identify with this unlovely creature whose every attempt to succeed was met with spectacular and painful failure. This was in the 1980s, before it was understood tattoos became de rigeur for so many people. So getting old has its benefits.

Sedentary Gentleman, not a fan of this classy art form. His loss

Although Ash is actually a real hero, he is only interesting when he is unheroic; when he is you or I. Army of Darkness was strangely more but less. You gets me?

DUNBAR

The small number of people in the world who can still read would usually cite Yossarian as the hero of Catch 22 but for me it was always Dunbar. An American officer who spends his time practising archery; not because he loves this hobby but because he hates it. Time drags when Dunbar so he feels like he lives longer.

Dunbar’s eventual fate is wonderful; so unbelievably fantastic it will come as a huge disappointment when you read it.

SOMETHING HAPPENED

Our un-named narrator is the greatest, most honest fictional character in all literature. Oh, I said that before. I’ll stick to this being Sedentary Gentleman’s favourite, most psyche-damaging book.

CLAUDIUS

Finally, we have I, Claudius. A book of pure pleasure. Never copied; never bettered. Even the magnificent TV series does not capture the full glory of Caligula and his unfortunately too brief reign. Sedentary Gentleman’s colleague – the same as before – felt bad reading it. The reader is greedy for plot, wants more atrocities, more madness, more callousness. It brings out the worst in us...

What else do you need? Except the 2000AD Judge Dredd story ‘Judge Cal’ which brilliantly and comically reset the Caligula story in Mega-City 1.

TONY COCKSURE AND KTEL BREVELL

Oh, and a brief plug on behalf of the Sedentary Gentleman: his film DISCO – currently in development with Future Sun Films, has many parallels with the decadent Roman Empire. Set in a fictional London of 1978. You could say it’s a pulp rehash of the Anthony and Cleopatra story. Itself a delightful study of two utterly loathsome human beings.

The Theatre proves once again nothing can compare with the live experience

Anyway, Sedentary Gentleman needs his cocoa. There is no real aim for this blog but a few pleasant moments reliving fine books. He doesn’t ask you to like him; empathy is more than enough.

The lesser film version