I like this question a lot:
What books or stories can you think of that importantly feature absent characters? The answers in the thread are cool, too.
The first one that comes to mind, for me, is Ulysses
– where Molly hovers over the whole action and we don’t see her until the very end. But in a weird way, the whole thing is about her.
I would also say “Seymour Glass” – in practically every one of Salinger’s books. Seymour is there … but very rarely in the flesh. But isn’t he just so ever-present anyway?? Seymour is the key to the whole thing.
The Passion
by Jeanette Winterson is pretty much all about Napoleon – but we see him once or twice only. But the whole book has him as a focal point. He’s always on everybody’s mind at all times.
Surfacing
by Margaret Atwood. Woman looking for her father. A feminist fable. Her father is … dead? But he is the key to all her other relationships. I seem to recall that the book climaxes in some kind of group camping trip where the narrator flips out – abandons her party – goes off into the woods – takes all her clothes off, and rolls about in the dirt, eating carrots she yanked out of the mud. I’m quite serious. I love Margaret Atwood but this is how I remember that book. My friend Jackie read it, and Jackie said about it (in this flat deadpan – heh heh): “Sweetheart. Your fatheh’s dead. Put your clothes on.”
Also – even though the first half of Cat’s Eye
by Margaret Atwood prominently features Cordelia – the second half does not. But at every page, at every moment, you, as a reader, are wondering about her, waiting for her … she has taken up space in your brain, taken root. Where is Cordelia?? Of course that’s the point of the whole book.
Billy, from Charming Billy
, by Alice McDermott. I loved that book – anyone read it? Really nice novel, I highly recommend it.
he’s not absent for all of it, but Mr. Kurtz from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness…
Mr. Tallis in Ian McEwan’s Atonement…
…i need to think…
Oh good call with Kurtz!!
I guess maybe the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland – could be considered as MARKEDLY ABSENT – even though he started the whole damn thing. :)
Racking my brains for more …
This is a very minor character, but there is also Mr. McIntosh from Ulysses, whose unknown identity has always driven me nuts.
Searching for Bobby Fischer??
Ok. I know it’s not a “book or story” but the first thing that popped into my head was The Big Chill. And Alex is, of course, quite importantly absent. He is the glue that holds the brilliant ensemble together – because of his absence.
It’s a great question, however, and now I’m going to spend all evening sorting through books in my head.
Oh! The Wizard – in the Wizard of Oz!
Bobby Fischer! Of course!!
Bryan –
I love you.
Marisa –
“Charming Billy” is similar to The Big Chill – except that Billy wasn’t a suicide. It’s family/friends gathered about – talking about him at a big Irish wake – that’s the whole book.
Oh, and this isn’t a novel either … but Michael Furey in “The Dead”.
Margaret Atwood loves absent characters: Oryx and Crake (book of same title), Laura (Blind Assassin), Luke, Moira, the mother, and the little girl (Handmaid’s Tale).
Unless I misunderstood the question, because these characters all appear in flashbacks, just not in “real” time (whatever that means to Atwood, her books don’t have a developed sense of time to me, which gives them the slight “vertigo” quality that I love. )
Longtime lurker, first time commenter with a question for YOU, Ms. Sheila:
HOW do you ever get anything DONE? You post so often, and so intelligently, you must be quite the multitasker! Love it.
Although it’s a memoir and not a novel (though bits of it seem very fanciful and made up), I would suggest Axel Munthe’s “The Story of San Michele”. If only because it’s an autobiography that deliberately leaves out key episodes of Munthe’s life that he tantalizingly alludes to throughout the book, an elaborate author’s joke.
I was going to write Waiting For Godot until I saw the title of your post, so…um…I wrote Waiting For Godot anyway…
Emily of New Moon :-) (I’m obsessed)
Hm. Well, I wonder if you could count Aslan from the whole “Narnia” series. I mean, the books are certainly *about* him in a big way, even though you don’t see him much. He’s in each book, but I remember the first time I read them waiting, waiting kinda breathlessly for that first moment with Aslan. The mystery of him, the way he drives what the characters do. He’s not entirely absent, but he IS a mystery.
Also in Cat’s Eye: Haggis McBaggis!
what about Mr. Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie?
i think there are some Strindberg characters worth mentioning too..
oo, i like the Aslan one. very nice.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is in large part about the missing dad, Thomas Schell. But that’s kind of cheating because he’s dead. I think Oskar’s grandma’s mysterious “renter”is absent in a more conspicuous and ultimately interesting way.
Miss Havisham’s groom doesn’t necessarily play a big role in Great Expectations, but he’s definitely conspicuously absent.
Also, Landon Parke-Laine is very conspicuously absent starting with the second novel (Lost in a Good Book) in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde.
Would a place count? Moscow in The 3 Sisters??? (Mr. Wingfield is a great one.)
Kate – I thought of Moscow as well. Please get out of my head!
There are definitely a ton of plays I can think of where a character remains mostly absent. Harder to think of novels.
The father in Wrinkle in Time. He’s the purpose of the whole story – but he’s not in it until the last sentence.
Melissa –
HAHAHAHA Emily Approaches!! Closer Every Day!
I’ve decided I need to stretch those excerpts out. I’m gonna do a couple from each book. Why not – it’s my blog!! :)
I can’t believe nobody said Rebecca yet. Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier, where Rebecca haunts the whole book and you never even find out the protagonist’s name
And yes please, the more Emily the better!
What about catch-22?
Several Characters had questionable existence: Doc Daneeka, Mudd, The Soldier in White, and Snowden.
how about the “child” of Martha and George in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”… he is definitely important and most assuredly not there!…also..this may be stretching it but while we spend time with Holly Golightly..it is in memory becuase the wholeoint is that the narrator doesn’t know where she is. Nobody does.
Darn, Erin just beat me to it – Rebecca is the QUEEN of absent characters; is there another novel where the title character never appears, not even once? (There has to be some sort of name for that particular literary trick – does anyone know what it is?)
Dr T J Eckleburg in The Great Gatsby always drives me nuts.
Ohh, just read mitchell’s post. Yes, George and Martha’s son coming home for his 21st. Scary.
Just thought of another. Queen Lear?
Thank you for the question, red.
//Dr T J Eckleburg in The Great Gatsby always drives me nuts.//
HAHAHAHAHA me too!!!!!
Moby Dick?
You might also consider Nathan Zuckerman in Roth’s “American Pastoral” — present at the start of that incredible book, but then “gone” for the rest of it, even though the narrative’s his imagined recounting of Swede Lvov’s life.
And also Jeffrey Cartwright in Stephen Millhauser’s “Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright.” Just the title alone should make you want to read this fabulous–and fabulously funny!– book by this wonderful writer (Millhauser). Somewhat similar to the tack Zuckerman takes in Roth’s book, Cartwright narrates the life of his masterpiece-creating, 11-year-old best friend — but without including himself in the story until the very end (and I won’t say why here, in case you haven’t read this book — in which case, drop everything and get it now.)
Lastly (for now), there’s another famous, dramatically pivotal narrator at the (de)center of things, actually appearing (I think) only at the very beginning and the very end of Conrad’s “Lord Jim”: Marlow.
i know he’s not absent for the majority of the book, but at the beginning of Montgomery’s Jane of Lantern Hill, the idea of Jane’s father Andrew is very important [and, naturally, forbidden].
Who is John Galt?
Still can’t get over this question. You’ve got me thinking for days!
And I suddenly remember Ondaatje’s opening to “The Collected Works of Billy the Kid” – he’s got this blank slate/box that readers are invited to fill.
There’s just endless fun with this.