Day One

It's a little cliche to include a "hi I'm new!" post in a blog, I suppose, but as I have found, taking pains to avoid a cliche can in turn become a new cliche.

Take for example the anti-hero. There was a time when the "paragon of virtue" hero (cf. King Arthur, Robin Hood etc.) was a little passe. So authors and storytellers create the "anti-hero," notable examples including Batman, the protagonist of "The Catcher in the Rye" and Macbeth. There characters, while being more interesting than your average protagonist due to moral ambiguity (Salinger's "hero" is an antisocial and arrogant slacker, Batman constantly wrangles with angst about his parents and Macbeth is the quintessential Greek Tragedy hero) and an often less than heroic outlook, can in turn become a cliche. How many adventure stories have you read with a "silent, square-jawed hero" who bravely lays down the law only to spurn the advances of the fair maiden and stick two fingers at the grateful public? I feel this concept of "hero with character flaws" may in turn become as passe as the "knight in shining armour" archetype was prior to it.

Where then lies the solution to avoiding cliches? Admittedly, I feel literature would suffer if time-worn howlers like "Once upon a time" and "And they all lived happily ever after" returned in force. But to have a purely virtuous character in a depraved world? A far more interesting proposition, and one which creates a strong dramatic contrast. Take the Savage in Huxley's "Brave New World" - he accepts the evils of the world because they make him free, yet he is ostracised because of his non-conformity. The inconstant and amoral societies of fiction (especially dystopias) often create good foils for virtuous people, and they need not be Salinger-esque dropouts or Orwellian rebels to create an interesting plot.

So where does this leave us? Ah! I haven't introduced myself. In Inconstant Reader, you may well find reviews of books in an irreverant fashion, short fiction and general musings on the world of fiction as a whole.

Happy reading!