Question: Best Heroes Have Flaws?

By Joe Hight

Iusuallyfind that the most heroic characters in books are the most flawed, too.

I made that statement to author Constance Squires, who teaches creative writing at UCO, during a recent lunch to discuss her upcoming book. I shared my belief that characters of books are a refreshing contrast to the barrage of advertising, social media, TV and other messages that we receive daily about perfect people pushing their perfect ways to be accepted, successful, physically fit or beautiful.

That’s when she made a statement I’ll never forget: “The act of trying to be perfect introduces the most gaping of imperfections.”

As I read her latest novel, “Live from Medicine Park,” I find proof of what she said in the character Ray Wheeler, a filmmaker striving to make a documentary about an aging Oklahoma singer named Lena Wells. However, his imperfections are vast: He doesn’t really care about Wells. He’s being sued. He’s been fired as a college adjunct. He’s awkward at small talk. And he makes a horrible first impression on Wells at a reception she throws in his honor.

And that’s just the beginning of the book.

It’s hard for me to relate to movie and TV reality stars, models and celebrities with millions of social media followers. But I can sure relate to Ray Wheeler, mainly because this fictional character has flaws just like the rest of us.

As Constance said, those types of characters “make you feel more human. We are way more complicated” than those advertising messages tend to tell us.

Former UCO professor and author Sheldon Russell’s main character in his Hook Runyon series is fascinating beyond his fearlessness as a railroad detective. He’s missing an arm, smokes and sometimes drinks heavily, could be mistaken at times for a hobo, and lives in a railroad car that bulges with books that he collects. In David Baldacci’s “Memory Man,” Amos Decker is more than a private detective and FBI agent. He has a perfect memory because of a head injury he suffered during his first NFL football game, dresses and eats poorly, is awkward in any social situation, can’t sleep at night and constantly wanders into precarious situations.

Then, there’s the character Starr Carter, fascinating beyond being a black high school student with a white boyfriend. She’s the teenage heroine in Angie Thomas’ novel, “The Hate U Give,” which has been made into a movie premiering this fall.

Starr, caught between two worlds, struggles to find her voice. She acts one way in the mostly white private school where her parents send her and the other in her own mostly black neighborhood where gangs are prevalent. The worlds ultimately collide when her childhood friend is shot and killed by a police officer.

Good nonfiction books also provide good examples.

Ron Chernow’s “Alexander Hamilton” was fascinating beyond a character who was a famous American and founding father. Hamilton was brilliant, but flawed, with a bad temper, a personality that created enemies, feelings of inadequacy because of his upbringing and bad judgment, that ultimately cost him his life.

Zora Neale Hurston’s “Barracoon/The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo,’” was fascinating beyond her main character being the last surviving African of the last American slaver. She revealed in Cudjo Lewis’ own words the struggles in his African culture that caused his slavery and the personal conflicts in his own life as a free man in this country.

Sam Anderson’s entertaining “Boomtown” reveals his main character’s many mistakes and issues, flaws that turned Oklahoma City into what Anderson calls “one of the great weirdo cities of the world” with its own NBA basketball team.

In my own personal life, while writing the upcoming RoadRunner Press book about Father Paul Hight, I found his own flaws revealed flaws in systems that he faced. Those included the Roman Catholic Church that laicized him, the mental health institutions that sought to treat him and the criminal justice system that eventually led to his death in 2000. He became much more than the older brother and Catholic priest I idolized while I was growing up.

So, if you are becoming increasingly bored and irritated by perfection messages, find a good novel or nonfiction or poetry book, including those written by our many talented Oklahoma writers. There you will find refuge in the heroic characters and the many flaws that make them fascinating beyond a title or fame.

Joe Hight is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame editor who is UCO’s Edith Kinney Gaylord Chair of Journalism Ethics. He also is director of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame and president of Best of Books in Edmond, whose own book is due for release in February.