Have you ever met a book character?

[aabbcc]

The title of this thread must sound somewhat... impossible, but I bet that at least once in our lives we have all met that Somebody... Somebody, for whom we wondered, and pondered, where do we know them from, where have we met them, why do they seem so familiar to us - perhaps their sole physical aspect, perhaps their specific movements, the sentences they said perhaps provoked a deja vu in us? Or, more specifically - deja lu?

Were you ever on a train station and met that beautiful young woman which seemed surprisingly familiar? Whom you did not know, but for whom you could have sworn she had something to do with some Levin, and for whom you felt a strange fear?
Have you ever found yourself on a fair and met madame Bovary? And was that her husband not so like Charles?
Ever ended up in philosophical... political... theological... debate with a stranger in a caffe, and recognised Ivan Karamazov in him?
And that thin, worn-out, broke student who lives next door to you... do you not know him from somewhere?

Share your experiences.

[Demian]

I can't say that I've met anyone that eerily fit the bill for a fictional character I've read of. But I would like to relate the very strange experiences of Phillip K. Dick in relation to the novel above. PKD had written this novel in record time, he compared it to channeling due to the ease of his experience. A few years later he met a woman at a party who was dating the Chief of Police at the time. It just so happened that her name matched a character in his book who was dating the Chief of Police. She happened to be cheating on this man, a situation that was mirrored in his novel. Both gentleman had corresponding names to their novel counterparts. After this party he was driving down the road and noticed a man waving for help. He pulled to the side of the road (something he would never do) and offered to give him a ride. As they pulled into the gas station he realized that this was also in his novel. He wrote all of this down in his exegisis and forgot about it for a while. Sometime later he was telling a friend who happened to be a minister about this incident and his friend asked for an outline of his novel. When he read it he called PKD and told him, "This is a futuristic version of the Book of Acts, like a modern day rendering of the Odyssey." Phillip told him that he had never read the book of Acts. "I suggest that you give it a try, then" was his suggestion. When he read Acts he was stunned. Many of the names were even exactly identical. It was at this point in PKD's life that he adopted a curious theory about time. He believed that time was basically an illusion, and that we were all living in apostolic times, ie, the first century. The Devil was pulling this mask of Time and Space over mankind's eyes to make him believe that two thousand years have passed and we were living in the midst of a technological mecca. But this was really his trick as the Ape of creation, to deceive mankind into beliving that Christ would not return. Phillip believed that this was the essence of the Kingdom of God--seeing through the illusory world--and realizing that Christ was at our very doorstep. He later turned this episode into a much more layered and somewhat convoluted mystic idealogy, but the personal testimony remains an integral part of Phillip's exegesis.

[Literary_Cat]

Once I met Vidanric from Sherwood Smith's (rather obscure) young adult novel "Crown Duel." I have no idea how I knew this, and when I went back to read the physical description of the character, the person I saw was not exactly right--but I'm perfectly convinced that it was Vidanric in essence. I just have no idea why...

I also believe I've met Steerpike from "Titus Groan"--he was a kid in my natural science class, and I never could figure out his name.

[PeterL]

Every time I look in a mirror I see a book character. I was used as part of the model for a character in a novel that a college friend wrote. Several other people I know were also models for characters.

Then there are the characters that I have created. The novel isn't finished, but the character were developed partly from people I have known.

[Bakiryu]

I'm usually compared to a book character. By Nabokov. (His most famous one) I won't write her name here but I don't even look/am nothing like her!

[Nightshade]

Once I met Vidanric from Sherwood Smith's (rather obscure) young adult novel "Crown Duel." .

Hey its not obscure its one of my favourite books.

My quasi-uncle writes books and my dad is a reucurring charcter in most of his serieses ( is that the plural of series?) .Its his way of saying thankyou I guess as my dad was one of the people that helped start him off.

[gothic]

It's one of the common things that I cherish from time to time-albeit i read a good number of books,why didn't I ever meet someone resembling a character of a book?It could be my own lacking in the power of observation or it may be that that when I read a book,i observe the writing style,language,tricks of the words,strengh of the author,more than the characteres used in the book.it's not that i don't care about them.there are characters for whom I cried,whose nobility,bravery brought tears to my eyes.but I never went seeking for them,for I believe no earthly character can ever mirror them.