Arguably one of the most insufferable protagonists in literature is the title figure in Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” — a martyr to unrequited love who ultimately commits suicide. The author soon distanced himself from this early work, despite the fame it brought him. No doubt that was largely because the fuel it provided for the subsequent Romantic movement (which he disdained) proved so flammable; there arose real-life cases of copycat self-annihilation amongst readers who fancied themselves as theatrically bereft as his hero.
Few beyond academics now are likely to recall the huge cultural impact the book had a quarter-millennium ago. Still, you needn’t be savvy
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