Good Looking Writers

[Ben Jackson]

Literature has produced so many writers: the classics, underrated/unknown, and the forgotten. Some have served as inspirations (muse as some writers has called it) to some of us (that's those in the academic field), some we have cited in our essays and lectures and debates and life. Writers have captivated us, whether their writing styles, ideologies, speeches and way of life.

Normally, musicians and movie stars and fashion models have captivated us with their beauty and handsomeness, writers have always been in the sidelines due to their academic interests (the present state of the world makes one difficult for people to read this days). So this thread "Good Looking Writers," the second thread I've created, is a companion thread to "Authors Photos" but this thread explores writers' facial beauty and good looks. Please feel free to share your opinions.

 

[Liam]

Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and different cultures at different times came up with their own understanding of what "beauty" meant. The West is completely influenced by the original Greco-Roman idea/ideal of what it means to be beautiful, and I feel like we still cling to this idea/ideal today. And because of the sheer sway that Western culture (especially popular culture) has had in the rest of the world, we have now exported our own, very specific idea/ideal of beauty pretty much everywhere!

That being said, a few years ago a study was conducted in which a group of newborns was isolated from their mothers for a time. When the babies became upset and started crying, the researches asked a group of women to come in and take care of the crying babies. And what the researchers found (this didn't sit too well with the feminists or with body-positivity activists) was that, by and large, when a crying baby was picked up by a woman whom society would describe as conventionally "ugly," the baby would continue crying. And when a crying baby was picked up by a woman whom society would describe as conventionally "beautiful," the baby would quiet down. This has led to all sorts of controversial conclusions about our natural, human response to beauty (that perhaps it is not socially enforced but rather inborn?), but I'm not a scientist, so I can't argue either for or against this theory.

It reminded me of a scene with Shelley Duvall though, from Guy Maddin's wonderfully bizarre film Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, in which she discusses the ideas of Emmanuel Swedenborg with a man that she's in love with, and she asks a very interesting question: "If Swedenborg believes in the complete resurrection of the human body after Judgement Day, would this not mean that those of us who were born less than beautiful, or maimed, or crippled, would forever be resurrected in those same bodies?" I never thought about it that way before, but that line just "shook" me, I started asking all sorts of questions about what is considered "beautiful" by society and how we often treat people with so much prejudice if or when we consider them less than good-looking,

But, I am a creature of my time and culture, so obviously I subscribe to many of the same ideas/ideals of what "true" beauty is.

As far as handsome men go, Jack Kerouac still rates as the most attractive author who ever lived in my book.

Feel free to prove me wrong,

 

[lucasdiniz]

Mieko Kawakami. She wrote "Heaven", a painful novel about two teenagers going through bullying in a Japanese middle school.



Victor Heringer. Not sure if he's got anything translated into other languages. Died in 2018.

 

[Stevie B]

As far as handsome men go, Jack Kerouac still rates as the most attractive author who ever lived in my book.
Feel free to prove me wrong,

I'll see your Jack Kerouac and raise you a Sebastian Junger.

 

[Corswandt]

Ten years ago or so, during my full-time trolling days, I remember remarking that Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão was good looking, and posting this very photo:

Recently, Emma Cline, literature's answer to Amy Adams:

Jennifer Egan and her cheekbones.

Easy to find via Google photos of the smokeshow that was a young Annie Ernaux. I'll leave it to others to post them.

With nonfiction writer Andrea Marcolongo, it's a combination of everything: an Italian blonde with cold blue eyes who nonetheless looks approachable and even comes across as bubbly in some interviews, and with a restless bohemian vibe + cool girl tattoos to boot. I also like the idea of having sharply intelligent and sharply good looking women telling me silly yet reassuring stuff like "Classics still matter" (lolz) or pimping the Aeneid as a self-help book. Anyways, photo as I'm sure she isn't as well known as the others I've mentioned:

 

[Liam]

Emma Cline, literature's answer to Amy Adams

OMG, she literally looks like Amy Adams's twin!! ?

 

[Liam]

Mieko Kawakami. She wrote "Heaven", a painful novel about two teenagers going through bullying in a Japanese middle school.

That young woman is GORGEOUS! And what an excellent photo!! ?

 

[Corswandt]

The Kerouac photo remembered me of an exchange I had with an old web penpal in which she said that one of her Hungarian ancestors who was a young woman in the 1940s and helped others doing (or at least looked the other way while they were doing it) some really bad stuff was very beautiful and added "she would be considered beautiful even today". That's the vibe I'm getting from that photo. Kerouac could totally have been a model in this era.

The same can't be said with say Virginia Woolf's iconic angelic "Waterhouse girl" photos. In those, Woolf is the embodiment of her own time's ideas of beauty, but of our own, not that much. Sadly.

Anyways, I've always liked this photo of a young Gore Vidal and the way he engages the camera:

 

[Liam]

I'll see your Jack Kerouac and raise you a Sebastian Junger.

I'll still take my Jack, Stevie,

 

[Liam]

@Corswandt: That photo of Woolf is literally my FAVORITE author's photo of all time! She is so incredibly beautiful, not in any sort of Barbie-doll way, but a smart and nervous-looking young woman with too much on her mind, I think all of that is captured in this "portrait," ugh, I just love it so much!!

Oh, and I can't see your Gore Vidal photo for some reason. Comes out as a question mark, ? ?

 

[Stevie B]

@Corswandt: Oh, and I can't see your Gore Vidal photo for some reason. Comes out as a question mark, ? ?

You're lucky. He's wearing a sweater vest.

 

[Corswandt]

Oh, and I can't see your Gore Vidal photo for some reason. Comes out as a question mark, ? ?

It's the Carl van Vechten one that you can see at the top of Vidal's English Wikipedia page.

And yes, that Virginia Woolf photo is one of those that really warrants the use of the word "iconic".

 

[Stevie B]

I'll still take my Jack, Stevie,

To continue with my poker metaphor, I'm upping the ante.

 

[Corswandt]

Tried to find a good photo of Ana Margarida de Carvalho without the yucky coloured contacts, but can't be arsed to do it at this ungodly hour.

 

[Stevie B]

OMG, she literally looks like Amy Adams's twin!! ?

I had the exact same thought. I really thought I was looking at an Amy Adam's picture - one of my favorite actors, by the way.

 

[Liam]

^Yeah, although Jessica Chaistain is probably my first and foremost choice at present: she literally can't act BADLY.

Not a lot of people know this, but Amy Adams first made her appearance on one of the episodes of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (which used to be popular in the late 90s, early 2000's), and that is actually where I first saw her! ?

But since then, there have been SO many movies and roles that I absolutely loved: Junebug, Arrival, Nocturnal Animals; Adams is an incredibly versatile actor and can play almost any role!

 

[Stevie B]

^I agree with you about Jessica Chastain. She reinvents herself in every film and is always a standout. I especially liked her in Zero Dark Thirty as well as Take Shelter, though I didn't love the film.

The Twin Cities likes to claim Amy Adams as its own, but she was a only a transplant here, doing dinner theater for four seasons before striking it big in Hollywood. She was perfectly sweet in Junebug, a little film that deserved more attention, and she held her own against Meryl Streep in Doubt, even though Streep's character was so dominant. For some reason, I have little recollection of Nocturnal Animals. I much preferred Tom Ford's earlier film, A Single Man. And you're right about her versatility - who else could pull off playing a nun in one film and a vixen in the next?

 

[Liam]

Have you seen The Tree of Life, probably my favorite Jessica Chastain performance??? The movie is a masterpiece, too!

I also thought that A Single Man was a better film than Nocturnal Animals (more consistent), but the latter was also excellent, and just more raw, emotionally.

My favorite Amy Adams role remains the Arrival though!

 

[Papageno]

What an interesting thread! I find especially those older photos, like Jack Kerouac's, to emanate such mystery, as well as beauty! And VW photo is such a classic...
In any case, I always found young Patrick Modiano to be quite dashing and possess that Parisian chic:

 

[Leseratte]

What an interesting thread! I find especially those older photos, like Jack Kerouac's, to emanate such mystery, as well as beauty! And VW photo is such a classic...
In any case, I always found young Patrick Modiano to be quite dashing and possess that Parisian chic:
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