Would You Want To Be Friends With Humbert Humbert? On Literary Characters’ Likeability

“[Inspired by Claire Messud’s recent outburst,] we surveyed a group of novelists – Donald Antrim, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Rivka Galchen, and Tessa Hadley – asking them how often the question of likeability has been posed about their characters … and why this persists as a criteria for so many readers.”