3:21 a.m. - 2023-05-30
portraits/nonsense-tangent
Pidge, in her blog-paen to the late Martin Amis, sang amongst his praises of what a photogenic youth he was. And she was correct. Those snaps of him and Hitchens, Fenton, McEwan et al...with their immaculately disarrayed Rod Stewart shags, crushed-velvet blazers and bespoke oxfords speak appropriate volumes re: their identity and intentions. This gave me pause to stare at my own modest bookshelf and consider the relationship between the authors represented and their respective (photo) images. To ask, “What makes a good author's portrait?”.
Well, they have to look like their writing, somehow. Some aspect of their mien should be reflective of their substance and approach. Sometimes it's written in their faces, sometimes in the costume or surroundings. And even then, when it's spot-on, it's not always pretty; P.K. Dick looks like a crumpled schizophrenic talking to himself on a city bus...Kafka looks like a frail Jewish lawyer who works at an insurance firm. But I did do some clickety-clackin' around the 'net and found a few examples fit for shares. I apologize that there's no women (already embarrassingly underrepresented in my collection) represented here, but the camera wasn't kind to Edith Wharton, and was a little too-kind to Susan Sontag for my taste.
(The numbers below function as the click-links to each photo, though I reckon you would have figured that out anyway...)
1. All you cool kids at the literary lunch table will scoff at my love of Jack London, and I get it...we were all forced to read To Build a Fire in high school. But maybe that's because it's a “textbook” Modern story? Showcasing a laundry-list of techniques that would go on to influence writers across genres? Regardless, my admiration of the man extends beyond his oeuvre to include his biography. His was a short life fully-lived; dude experienced twice the adventures of Hemingway in half the time...tackling adversity with a zeitgeisty American ebullience and appetite, all the while cranking out 1,000 words a day. Pictured here aboard his 55 ft ketch The Snark w/his (super-fetching) wife, Charmain, anchored off the coast of Samoa. His smile says it all (and their body-language alludes to, ahem, possibly more).
2. And speaking of ebullient zeitgeisty Americans whom intemperance stole from us before their time, here's another Jack, looking every bit the rugged youth who attended Columbia on a football scholarship. The Beats were an image-conscious lot in general and more than happy to pose for the camera, but it always felt like the camera loved Kerouac best.
3. Midwestern, barefoot, and ever-cardiganed...a wastebin full of discarded drafts positioned deliberately in the foreground. This is the only time I've seen Kurt Vonnegut pictured without a cigarette (though it seems someone failed to inform his left hand...).
4. Compliments to the artist who staged this photograph of Borges. The unsettled point of view, the way the parquet fades into black behind his head, the dialogue between hands...the felled animal lain out just-beyond eyesight. A titan amongst my all-time fave authors--and as such he occupies (or did before my bookshelf collapsed) space on the VIP upper left-hand shelf. More on this shelf later.
5. Perhaps the most elegant author photo-portrait I've seen; Calvino perched on a Roman rooftop, like one of the pigeons (!) his eponymous hero in Marcovaldo tried to catch atop his apartment building. Assolutamente perfetto. Remind me to make space for Calvino on the upper-left when I build my new bookcase.
6. Wittgenstein stares here beyond the camera. Considering perhaps the gesagt/gezeigt implications of portraiture; the “transient” nature of the subject (one's bio, one's work and its legacy) vs. the “intransient” reality of a moment frozen in time? Or maybe he's just wondering what's for lunch at the Cambridge faculty cafeteria, you can never tell with cats like that...
7. Okay now it gets complicated, because (bear with me) we're employing a stand-in. The bearded Edward pictured relaxing here with his roommates on Cape Cod is modeling in the stead of another bearded Edward, born 115 years before him...although the works of both live together in my bookcase.
I discovered The Complete Nonsense Book by Edward Lear in, I believe, the 3rd grade at my elementary school library; and thus was born my appreciation of absurdist humor, subversive appropriation of language and the wild potential of an unfettered imagination. I've toted my current copy w/me for 30+ years, and it was well-worn when I bought it; the previous owner having expressed their appreciation in crayon throughout the text. It resides on the vaunted upper left-hand shelf because, in truth, its influence on my nascent aesthetic defines the upper left-hand shelf: Borges, Kafka, P.K Dick, Thomas Mann and company...an influence felt all throughout my collection actually; from Camus to Murakami to George Saunders, it's about the majick. About authors who take our linguistic palette and, either through force-of-will or sleight-of-hand, expand it to create a sense of surprise and wonder. That's the literary high I'm forever-chasing... And it doesn't gather (much) dust up there either, The Complete Nonsense Book. Containing as it does “Four Little Children Who Went Round The World”, one of my all-time favorite short (yet epic!) adventure stories. One I'll still read alone to lift my spirits, or aloud at bedtime to the occasional house-guest whom I suspect might appreciate it. (Also, how has this saga not been adapted for the big-screen? And who, in that eventuality, would they cast as the Quangle-Wangle??*) Anyway, given Lear's status in my personal pantheon, I searched to see if any photo-portraiture existed to do him justice. Alas not really. He was, as I suspected, born too soon. There are a few daguerreotypes of him staring stiff-but-bemused, bearded and clad in a woolen Victorian overcoat during a sitting; but my mental image of him is forever defined by his numerous self-caricatures, where he's often accompanied by his giant housecat, Foss. (I actually have one of these drawings screened on a tee-shirt, a gift from a house-guest who was moved to express their appreciation after a bedtime story-reading.)
The nonsense flame wasn't extinguished with Lear's passing though. That torch would be carried in my lifetime by, among others, Edward Gorey, a brilliant draftsman and scholar of all silly-things-Victorian. You doubtlessly know his work; The Gashlycrumb Tinies are a goth primer/gateway drug, and I believe PBS still uses his animated intro to their mystery series. A slim edition of The Doubtful Guest is parked in my bookcase (albeit stacked horizontally w/the art books, which I covet wildly upon purchase and then go years w/out opening...do I need to buy a coffee table?) Gorey came to mind in this exercise not just as a disciple of Lear's approach, but as a fellow I knew to be photogenic. When he lived in New York in the 70's, he used to wear a massive raccoon coat and mirrored sunglasses which, combined with his giant white beard caused quite a visual stir. But I opted instead for this pic from a Harvard Magazine article (that actually mentions the infamous coat, now encased in glass and displayed at his former residence):
Gorey, who left his money to three animal-welfare groups (including one for bats), became guilt-ridden for parading around in those pelts for so long. Eventually he chose not to wear the coat, but still believed he owed the raccoons something more. Payback came when a family of the creatures moved into his attic. Most owners would have called in animal control, or at least a carpenter to seal off access. Not Gorey. He let the raccoons stay.
Dude left his money to a bat-rescue mission. That is next-level goth right there...
* Don't you dare say Whoopi Goldberg! (Although, now that you mention it...)
