F, Marry, Kill: Tom Ripley, Holden Caufield, and Henry James

F, Marry or Kill? You'd have to kill Tom Ripley, obviously, in preemptive self-defense. Marry Holden because he's so sensitive, which leaves Henry, who you wouldn't so much F as spend an awkward evening with unsatisfying results, then never speak to him again and look away when you see him in public.

These guys are three sides of the same three-sided coin, despite the fact that only one was a "real" person, for those of you who are literalists and fictionphobes. (It's so typical of you to hold someone's fiction-ness against them, as if they are second class citizens!) They cannot get into someone else's mind or walk a mile in someone else's shoes because they think other people's shoes smell and will doubtless give them athlete's foot. Other people are inexplicable and annoying and rather gross to these guys. They either hate them or idealize them. They try and fail to make other people better than they are.

Holden believes there are two types of people in the world: idiots and Phoebe. But he knows that he's doomed to be misunderstood or abused by the idiots, and that he's bound to fuck things up with the Phoebies. His saving grace is that Phoebe will forgive him.

Tom believes there are two types of people in the world: Tom Ripley and all the people he despises and/or kills. Thank goodness he has those forgery/murder/identity theft hobbies to keep his spirits up.

Henry believes there are two types of people: Henry alter egos and naive women full of crippling self-doubt or crippling self-confidence. Women are just waiting to be victimized, and all Henry Alter Ego can do is watch and wring his hands and hate them a little for being so dumb.

Thus the core problem for these men is, of course, women, those boorish or beautiful or clingy or coquettish puzzles who insist on being both alluring and repulsive. Women never act right, and they can be terribly pathetic and/or treacherous. Men make no sense to these guys, either, but the great folly of men is when they abuse women or lose their heads over them or both. It's all about the ladies.

So if the game were reversed, Tom would kill you and convince himself it was your fault; Holden would F you and then get way too attached until you had to change your cell phone number just to get away from him; and Henry would marry you just to make you miserable.