Characters
When Out of the Gene Pool debuted, the focus was originally around a man named Rufus, a rather large man with hair all over his body, and his family and life in a generic town called Middletown (the state where it was located never revealed). Rufus was married to a woman named Andy (short for Andrea) and had a son named Miller, who resembled his father.
Rufus and Andy were friends with a divorced African-American mother named Jackie Jerzy (who was the only character to have a known last name), who lived next door and had a son named Travis who was best friends with Miller and who tried to reunite his parents at all costs. Andy and Jackie worked together in an office building as well as holding jobs as seasonal cashiers at "Z-Mart", a local discount chain.
In 2004, Janz introduced a new character, Andy's brother Sam, who had moved to Middletown in search of a job. Rufus found him a job at the factory where he worked, but the company that owned the factory shut it down and left everyone out of work. Sam's roommate Zoogie, a small furry being of indeterminate species, moved with him to Middletown and tried to relive his college days, but was unable to.
Another main character was Madame Red, an older, cranky woman with a clown-like appearance and a hostile demeanor. She worked several part time jobs in the town (including flipping burgers at a local chain and writing an advice column called "Dear Kitty" for the local paper) and was married to a man named Herbert, who was never seen and who she always seemed to yell at on a regular basis.
Other characters included Puff Maghee, the star of the local baseball team who took massive amounts of steroids; his girlfriend Bridgett, a spoiled-brat teen pop singing sensation that called Middletown home; Blizzy, a snowman Travis built that came to life every winter but melted every spring; and Alison McDermitt, Zoogie's folk singer ex-girlfriend who reappeared on several occasions, moving to Zimbabwe following her last appearance.
Read more about this topic: Out Of The Gene Pool
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of human history.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Waxed-fleshed out-patients
Still vague from accidents,
And characters in long coats
Deep in the litter-baskets
All dodging the toad work
By being stupid or weak.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)