Welcome to the fifth installment in the weekly Bamboo Shoots: The Care and Feeding of Pandas. From He Who Must Not be Named to Bella Swan or Mr. Darcy, every reader has at least one character that drives them crazy. This week, I asked my Pandas which literary character they'd most like to kill. But, the fun part of the question is that I also asked them how they would do it. I hope you enjoy their responses as much as I did.
Cheri Champagne, Pandamoon Author of The Mason Siblings Series and The Seductive Spies Series
Without hesitation, I would pick Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. I rather like that she gets taken away by the Centaurs, but I’d have liked to see her trampled. It would be horrific and gruesome, and entirely unintended for younger audiences.
Rachel Sharp, Pandamoon Author of the Phaethon Series
Generally speaking, I’m not a character-killer, but I would love to stray into comic books and give the Joker a nice clean bullet between the eyes around forty years ago. Save everyone a lot of trouble.
Penni Jones, Pandamoon Author of On the Bricks and Kricket
Amy Dunne from Gone Girl. As horrible as she is, I respect her brilliance. She makes an art out of manipulation. But it would be so satisfying for her to suffer a horrible death. I think it would be best if she accidentally kills herself. Maybe she tries to poison Nick and accidentally drinks from his glass. And it’s not a poison that just puts her to sleep. There would be agonizing screams and lots of blood. She’s so meticulous that death by brain fart would be delicious irony.
Jeff Messick, Pandamoon Author of Knights of the Shield and the Magehunter Saga
Dr. Watson, the unsung (mostly) hero of the Sherlock Holmes stories, though more likely the modern television series Watson. He’s a fighter, a scrappy fighter that rarely gives up. He is usually the only one with the backbone to stand up to Holmes’ occasional lunacies. His death would have to be one of prolonged agony, because no matter what was occurring, he would be fighting for his friend, as well as himself. He’s usually written as someone that is vastly knowledgeable, but unable to use it as Holmes does (observation and deduction) but I see him as someone that has a loyalty streak in him that never quits.
David Valdes Greenwood, Pandamoon Author of the Revengers Series
I'd love to write the final moments for Eustacia Vye in Return of the Native. To me, she's the most compelling character in the book, and Hardy short shrifts her. I'd like to reclaim how she dies and see inside her fierce, uncompromising mind.
Laura Ellen Scott, Pandamoon Author of The Juliet and the New Royal Mysteries
Hannibal Lecter, of course! Lecter is a brilliantly conceived monster—especially if the 1980s were meaningful to you—so dispatching him in a way that readers found satisfying and appropriate would be a huge accomplishment. I also think of Lecter as a great example of a particular writer’s problem—what happens when you create a great character who is probably a lot smarter than you are? I think it’s natural for us to write prettier, stronger, more talented characters, but ones that are geniuses? That’s a special challenge.
Dana Faletti, Pandamoon Author of Beautiful Secret and Nana's Secrets
I’m into The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu, and I would love to write a death scene for Aunt Lydia - the harsh and horrible woman who trains the handmaidens with an electric shock cane. I would electrocute her, maybe even accidentally for irony’s sake.
Elgon Williams, Pandamoon Author of Fried Windows (In a Light White Sauce), the Becoming Thuperman Trilogy and the Wolfcat Chronicles
Kilgore Trout, a recurring, usually supporting, character in most of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s novels is a prolific but underappreciated science fiction author of several paperback novels and short stories that have been published, mostly as filler material in porn magazines. The character’s origins in Vonnegut’s work, as the story goes, is rooted in 1957 when Vonnegut was a struggling author with one novel in print, Player Piano. He was living in Truro, MA and working as a car salesperson. He befriended a new resident, Theodore Sturgeon who was an older, struggling science fiction author but already highly prolific. Over the following years, as Vonnegut’s star began to rise, Sturgeon continued to struggle, languishing in obscurity despite continuing to churn out volumes of new stories. Obsessed with knowing someone named after a species of fish Vonnegut warped Theodore Sturgeon into the character Kilgore Trout.
Although Kilgore actually dies in several of Vonnegut’s books, the dates of his birth and death vary to suit a particular story. As a reader and budding writer, this drove me nuts. I always felt it was a somewhat sloppy style not making things consistent between books. Don’t get me wrong, I love Vonnegut’s work, especially his older stuff. His sharp witted, dark humor and sense of irony pulled me into his work and made me a fan. I have often cited Breakfast of Champions as my favorite novel. I am certain it is his best. But the inconsistency issue with Kilgore Trout continued to bother me until I realized that in each of Vonnegut’s books, it is a different version of Kilgore -- like he was born anew into each episode, as if he were in a different dimension. A completely new world is constructed around him with an entirely new set of possibilities and misadventures. This proved impactful in the development of my own writing philosophy although I have sought consistency between books that share characters. However, nothing needs to be permanent if you define the world as completely variable.
Although I continued to be a Vonnegut fan, reading every one of his publications, including an ill-fated play he penned, I feel BOC is the pinnacle of his creativity. Everything after that is anticlimactic. I blame it all on Kilgore Trout. Although he was not the main character in BOC, he figured prominently and in many outrageously absurd circumstances. Because Kilgore endured such torment and usually survived, I believe his actual death should be something spectacularly stupid and pathetic but also related to his chosen career, writing-- like maybe getting a necktie caught in his typewriter (yes, back in his day, that was how he wrote things.) He might strangle to death before he is discovered weeks later, mainly because of the offensive smell coming from his rented room when his landlord knocks on his door in an attempt to collect the unpaid, overdue rent.
In reading Vonnegut’s many books, the appearance of Kilgore comes as a subtle indication of some lunacy ahead. For example, in the aforementioned BOC Kilgore removes his shoes (but not his socks) to cross a creek downstream from a chemical factory. But when he emerges on the other side of the creek, the dissolved plastics in the water semi-permanently bonded his socks to his feet and ankles. The fact that I read the book when I was in college and still remember things like that should indicate something, I guess. I’m just not sure what, other than the book made an impression on me. Vonnegut’s writing style had evolved into a freewheeling, anything goes sort of reading experience that heavily influenced my own style. Although I never really liked Kilgore, I could sometimes identify with his struggle for dignity if not recognition in the face of a confusing, often offensive and uncaring world.
Despite the origins of Kilgore from a real life acquaintance, there is a good bit of Vonnegut in Kilgore. For many years he struggled as an author, publishing books but falling short of the level of success and recognition he sought. This period of his life, being a writer with a loyal following but not quite a bestseller, is documented in his son’s non-fiction work, Eden Express. With the publication of Slaughterhouse Five everything in the Vonnegut household changed. When the novel was made into a movie, the abrupt transition for Mark’s father from relative obscurity to fame and fortune was cited as a contributing factor in the son’s warped perception of the world and growing paranoid delusions that led to his being institutionalized for a time with schizophrenia.
I suppose my alter ego in my own fiction is Brent Woods, the Main Character in Fried Windows. Like Vonnegut’s use of Kilgore Trout, Brent appears in many of my novels. And there is a spectacularly glorious death scene I have in mind for him as you might expect for someone who is considered quasi-immortal, having surviving for a few hundred years. There is a scene I have already written for the sequel to Becoming Thuperman where Will meets a future version Brent who, of course, already knows Will even though Will has only then just met Brent. In an alternative future of Earth, Brent lives on a tropical island off the coast of Antarctica. Yeah, it’s that kind of warped world. Brent is the last man on Earth, literally. And he is there only to assist all the ghosts who are trapped there to reach the necessary portals to escape to a holding area for disembodied spirits. Anyway, during the conversation, Will complains about being unpopular, except that he is now pretty good at pitching. Brent, who like Kilgore was an obscure author for most of his life before giving up on fame, responds:, “You get used to that after a few decades.”
I hope you've enjoyed these glimpses into some of our Pandas. Be sure to come back every Wednesday for another interesting question and answer post.