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So a week or so I posted a review on Amazon for The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, in which I said:

To put it mildly, this book was drudgery. None of the characters are very likable. Madeline is a whiny bore. Leonard is often a bully. Mitchell is a creep who should be watching Madeline with high-powered binoculars. There's no reason I'd ever want to read about any of these people. Nor do I care who marries who or doesn't marry who. They could all fall off a cliff for all I care.

 The other day then someone responded:

Annoying as heck when a reviewer complains that the characters aren't likeable. If you want likeable characters, go hang out with your friends. It is fallacious to equate likable characters with a good book. What about Iago? And Lady Macbeth? People who complain about unlikable characters should go back to Young Adult books or simple formula driven novels.

Now the thing is, I don't always mind it if a character isn't a Boy Scout.  If the commenter had paid attention she would have seen the part where I recommended "Less Than Zero."  There aren't many likable people in that book.  What's the difference between the kids in "Less Than Zero" and those in "The Marriage Plot?"  Those in Less Than Zero actually do stuff.  Interesting stuff like snort coke off urinals and party a lot.  Whereas in "The Marriage Plot" there's a lot of navel gazing and sitting around in boring classes.  There's also some graphic sex stuff, but that's too little too late.

I don't really read a lot of books about people who are Boy Scouts.  Recently I read a series of books by Lawrence Block about a guy named Keller who seems like an ordinary guy--except every so often he gets on a plane and goes to murder someone for money.  See, that's interesting.  Whereas in "The Marriage Plot" confused twentysomethings not sure what to do with their lives are played out.

And if you're the commenter you might sneer and say, "Well you just like genre books."  Which couldn't be farther from the truth.  I read a lot of literary books and a lot of them don't feature characters who were exactly likable.  For example, "The World According to Garp."  Seriously, Garp is kind of a prick.  He's self-righteous a lot of the time, even though he has no right to be.  But he does interesting stuff.  He goes to Vienna, he buys hookers, he becomes a famous author, he pisses off a lot of people, and ultimately gets murdered.  Not so likable guy, but likable book because it's not just sitting around in classrooms and pining away for people who aren't worth pining for.

Or take "Portnoy's Complaint" by Philip Roth.  It's a book about a neurotic guy who's almost a sexual deviant.  He's really not likable in the sense that I'd want to hang out with him, but his story is likable.  Other examples:  the Rabbit novels by John Updike, the Bascombe novels by Richard Ford, "Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe (and "A Man in Full" for that matter), "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis, so on and so forth.

All right, so it's not just that I'm some simpleton who wants characters to be Ned Flanders.  When I say the characters are unlikable and I don't care if they fall off a cliff, what I'm saying is they're BORING.  They're the kind of people you try to avoid at a party because they'll just go on and on talking your ear off with some dull story they think is super interesting until you want to shoot yourself.

Now if you want to avoid that, don't worry whether your character is a good person; what's important is whether your character is in interesting situations.  Also, if your character is a bad guy, make the narrative fun to read.  If you plod along in dull third person omniscience with little wit or charm, then it's only going to draw more attention to the fact your characters are so boring and whiny I'd like to push them right off that cliff.