Book Jacket Portraits
Apropos of nothing, an author once told me that if I wanted to become a writer, the first thing I should do is hire a good photographer and get some pictures taken, so in the highly unlikely event that everything worked out, I’d at least have some good book jacket portraits ready to go. The author tipped his glass of wine at me and winked as if he had just imploded my mind with his advice. I asked him about the importance of reading living authors and the cannon, and he rolled his eyes.
“You sound like an MFA student.”
When I said I was, he laughed and told me to get my jacket photos taken while I was thin and young and relatively sober.
One of the people standing in our smoker’s circle (probably another MFA student) nodded and said something about Susan Sontag’s books selling well because of the way she looked in her jacket portrait. When pressed for answers, he said he’d read it in the Paris Review. (MFA program tip: attribute whatever you want to the Paris Review and most people won’t question it. Example: “I read in the Paris Review that reading the first chapter of Twilight aloud will cause rectal prolapse,” or “I read in the Paris Review that John Updike had eight testicles and one of his ex-wives said it was like looking into the eyes of a spider”)
The author said that Susan Sontag was his point whether it was true or not. Your book will sell better if you’re attractive. That’s why it is important to get portraits done while you’re young. I couldn’t help but note that the author was a decade older and seventy pounds heavier than his cherubic jacket picture. In the most depressing way, it made sense. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d gone to a reading and wondered if the octogenarian on stage was lost only to find out it was the author. Their jacket photos had been reused for the last fifty years. But I think literary writers are different. I don’t really trust them until they look like they’re at least forty.
I doubt people are burning Joan Didion’s books because she isn’t the smoking hot reporter in Jackie Onassis sunglasses that her jacket portrait depicts. Would Gravity’s Rainbow really be flying off the shelves if Thomas Pynchon looked like David Beckham?
I suppose that anything helps, and if you look like an underwear model, you have every right to capitalize on it in order to sell your book. But if you’re anything like me and don’t photograph well, or even like having your picture taken, you’re in good company because most writers look like shit. In lieu of getting my headshots ready, I’ll just get better at writing.
I love that photo of Faulkner; what a dreamboat.
Well, it’s too late for the thin and young phase, but I think I might be able to swing for a relatively sober photo…
Nah, I’ll just take your advice instead Scott and work on my writing. Sobriety is overrated anyway.
This is a great piece. I’ll be sure to have a collapsible mantle, tape on van dyke, ascot, and a pipe at hand for a “free book jacket photo day” promotion that I’m sure is the next new best thing and is likely soon to be offered with the purchase of a pound of coffee from Starbucks supporting National Novel Writing Month.
Fortunately, if they happen to be holding this event at a Starbucks kiosk on the beach (as is evident with Faulkner), I have a naturally un-toned upper body at at.
… they make graying hair color, right?
In retrospect, having an “un-toned body at at” doesn’t really make as much sense as it first did. I think I meant to say, “un-toned body at my disposal”.
[...] Roberts and the Pattersons. In other words, it’s not enough for writers to worry whether we are photogenic enough for the book jacket portrait, now we can also be anxious about appearing natural on film. [...]