NPR's Fictional Profiles: Holden, Buffy & Bugs

Still to come in the series: Pentagon correspondent Guy Raz on the Dude, the Coen brothers' iconic slacker from "The Big Lebowski"; "All Things Considered" anchor Michele Norris on Virgil Tibbs, the detective Sidney Poitier plays "In the Heat of the Night"; "Morning Edition" anchor Renee Montagne on Nancy Drew; as well as a summer addendum to the series looking at characters from famous songs, such as "Sweet Lorraine" and "Lovely Rita," the Beatles' meter maid.

"Sometimes you can learn more about a culture's values, concerns and aspirations by examining its great fictional characters," Blair says. "And since fiction writers can play loose with the facts, they can say things journalists can't."

But the best of the NPR profiles are those in which journalists apply their craft and find some essential truth. "We definitely go after these characters as we would go after a nonfiction character, reporting the story and interviewing people," Blair says. In reporter Eric Weiner's piece on Alexander Portnoy, the title character in Philip Roth's novel "Portnoy's Complaint," an editor at a Jewish newspaper and a Yale professor argue that Portnoy's neuroses are all around us even today -- and then Weiner interviews a real Jewish mother. His own.

"Why are you trading in stereotypes?" she challenges her son. "It's beneath you, Eric."

And then this, broadcast over 860 radio stations: "Don't forget to call."

An archive of the "In Character" pieces is available athttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17914370.