The Supporting Cast

The Supporting Cast, Volume 1, by David Galef provides a rigorous examination of the role minor characters play in the fictional process. While literary criticism often focuses on protagonists, this work of history and criticism argues that flat and subordinate figures are crucial to understanding narrative structure. Drawing on E. M. Forster's landmark studies, the text explores why certain minor characters remain salient in the minds of readers and how they contribute to the comedic or structural elements of a story.

This scholarly study of English fiction and literary technique investigates the theoretical limits of characterization through structuralist taxonomies and reader-response theory. Galef applies these concepts to the works of Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf, analyzing the function of narrators, allegories, and doppelgängers. As a resource for those studying characters and characteristics in literature, this book offers sustained analysis and a detailed character index for Woolf's Jacob's Room.