Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky looked so fucking wise it was ridiculous. Beckett looked like some sort of dark wizard. Joyce looked exactly like a mad genius. Pynchon looked like the goofiest gaffster you would ever meet. Gaddis looked like the epitome of the idea of the word "writer." Hemingway looked like a fucking battle hardened wise warrior. Melville looked like what I would imagine fucking Captain Ahab to look like. Nietzsche's incredible mustache made him look like the epitome of "wise philosopher." How much does appearance play in creating the mystique behind writers? I have yet to find a single significant writer who just looks like "some guy." Kafka is the closest I have found, but even he has a very unique, brooding sort of look to him. David might also be another exception, because he looks like a guy desperately trying to create a literary persona and failing and looking like a ridiculous cartoon character. Nevertheless, Is it possible to be a great writer without the wise appearance to accompany your work? Or is the outward appearance shaped by association with your work? How superficial really is this idol worshipping of individuals?
Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky looked so fucking wise it was ridiculous. Beckett looked like some sort of dark wizard...
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This thread strengthens my will to hide and destroy every possible picture of me if I ever publish shit
Hm, i wonder why old, rare black and white photographs taken in a deliberately alluring manner create such a feeling
creepy wizard looking Tolstoy was worst Tolstoy though
because Capitalism ain't stupid?
Woolf kinda just looked like "some thin lady".
Sylvia Plath isn't particularly unique.
you could keep anonymous or employ a pseudonym, senpai.
Toni Morrison just looks like an old lady.
>significant writers
>women
heh... good one I guess?
Le Guin doesn't look like a mythical monster.
She looks like her novels.
How about some men?
Miller definitely doesn't look like his novels, but he was, especially as an old man at least, quite wise-looking or whatever. Not so much in this picture I guess.
I guess his greatness can still be debated, but Ligotti just looks like any middle class dude his age. I could imagine him making audiophile headphone reviews.
Remove the sunglasses from Hunter S. Thompson and his "look" just goes away.
Nabokov doesn't particularly look like a great author. Dunno if he was particularly good-looking when he was young, usually you see pictures of him as an old man.
I'm not going to post them all, but plenty of philosophers look either like just any academic or just kinda normal. Some look "like philosophers" once you know them.
contemporary:
Zizek, well I guess he is kind of like an ancient philosopher in that he is a bearded dude
Badiou, looks like any upper class old gentleman
Judith Butler, not unique-looking but I guess the look does fit her work
Fredric Jameson
Peter Sloterdijk
dead:
Sartre, looked plain ugly, but very unique
Heidegger, seems to depend on the picture. Sometimes it fits, sometimes he looks far too kind, shy and soft. Definitely not an idol-looking guy.
Hegel, looks odd in the painting we have of him but not like some wise guy (FITS HIS PHILOSOPHY EHEHE)
If you saw a picture of Tolstoy without knowing he was a great writer you'd think he was some farmer or a hobo.
Not really
>clean and intact clothes, plus he himself looks clean and intact
Those are both upper class things, especially in the era and place where he lived.
He does not look like a poor Russian from over 100 years ago,
You can even tell from the photo: it is obviously taken to make him look good. You don't really usually get poor people looking like that in old photographs.
Photos of "regular people" are usually much more documentary in nature. Much less like a fancy portrait.
This photo is of Tolstoy. Not only it is an early colour photograph, fancy in itself, but well, just compare the clothes, the shoes, the environment.
I'll be honest: that is the best outfit I've ever seen.
>Tolstoy was walking around looking like that in the late 19th century
>tfw no director and painter will ever come up with something as cool as him in that pic
He always looks like a fairy tale character
I think it's more important the name, I mean, my name is shit and "normal", do you know some good author without a "crazy" name?
Am I right?
Gotta love Sartre
One eye was always looking up so he could think about stuff while he was looking at other stuff.
So which one is the eye he's using? His left one?
Well you see...um ...
Photography is a spook.
well spooked, my property
Camus certainly fits the bill, he was like the James Dean of lit
...
I always thought Marcel's face and posture represented his writing style perfectly.
OP looks like he sucks cocks
An outwardly indifferent but internally artistically suffering?
Super gay?
It looks like a vast, vivid and colourful stream of thoughts from the past is gracefuly flowing in his mind. He is reminiscing something distant in the past, which, in retrospective, he can analyse calmly and objectively.
no it doesn't you douche
Nietzsche looked like a school shooter virgin before he put on the stache
god damn lmao
Let's not forget Barfkowski, who definitely looked the part. Can't find any young pictures of him but he himself says he was ugly.
He was a handsome man in his 20s
pretty much the Oracle from The Matrix
Gene Wolfe looks like someone working at a Pringles factory
He is by no means a great writer but I can appreciate his sustenance of opressing atmosphere
decent descripton
>muh chaotic chalkboard representing the complicated thoughts inhabiting my BRAIIIN
OP a lot of popular authors are popular precisely because they invite obsession about them personally by being eccentric or controversial, or by posing as some kind of spiritual leader or wunderkind. This is a cart before the horse situation.
There's a whole caste of authors who wrote superlative books but who aren't personally interesting enough to end up as figures in a cult of personality.
Take John Williams, for example.
That's Plath's favorite picture of herself. She's actually kinda ugly.
Plath is on the left here. Google "Plath and Hughes" and you'll see a lot of less posed snapshots.
How would they dress if they lived today? Imagine Tolstoy wearing latest Kanye collection
Also would Hemingway be pro or anti Trump
Whoops, forgot the Plath picture.
>when you want to post a picture of yourself to ask people if you look like a writer but no fucking wqy you will
I'd say he looks exactly as his novels unlike Hunter S Thompson who was so obviously fake.
I dunno, he just looks like a journalist in that photo. He does not look nearly bohemian enough.
He is not one of the greats but I like Ellroy and he looks like exactly the kind of person who'd write his novels.
Can anyone name even a single author who'd unironically be pro-Trump?
Accelerationists and trolls need not apply.
>x looks like a philosopher
>x actually is a philosopher
>I've known x to be a philosopher my whole life and my picture of how a philosopher should look like has been undoubtedly influenced by x
>x looks like himself
Dali
Ayn Rand
Pound
Orwell
Huxley
>Orwell
lol he'd be a total berniebro
The main reason why I got into Iesenin in high school was because I thought he was a very handsome man.
Why does it matter? It's not like anyone cares about what the author looks like when he's actually reading their works. Interesting people just tend to look interesting.
She looks like a whiny bitch
Highly doubt he'd support a man who hung a flag of the Soviet Union in his office in the 1980s, groveled to the Clintons when he had leverage to accomplish his platform, and aided in pushing interventionist propaganda on the US population because of an unsuccessful election. Three strikes he's out.
Orwell
>a social democrat or democratic socialist
Bernie
>a social democrat or democratic socialist
Claiming that Orwell (or Huxley, for that matter) would be pro-Trump is ridiculous either way.
Do impressions create appearances or appearances create impressions?
does marcellus look like a bitch to you guys?
hahhaha holy fuck user
>kinda ugly
...
Your impression of each informs your impression of their appearances. Joyce looks like a dork to the regular person, Tolstoy homeless, etc...
I JUST WANT A ROLLIE ROLLIE ROLLIE WITH A DAB OF RANCH
see She's average. She has a good body and complexion but her face only looks good from some angles and with the right hair.
I don't know what you're talking about, I'd kiss her and have missionary sex with her
...
By that logic the guys on duck dynasty should all be professors of linguistic philosophy and sam harris should be a desk monkey at dell.
Slavoj Zizek supported Trump
I don't have any proof, but it seems to me that both Solzhenitsyn and Faulkner would probably support Trump
>Can anyone name even a single author who'd unironically be pro-Trump?
Michel Foucault
Louis Ferdinand Celine
Savitri Devi
Charles Dickens
Thomas Carlyle
Wouldn't Zizek fall into the "Accelerationists and trolls" group?
>Slavoj Zizek supported Trump
He literally called Trump disgusting and horrible and so on. I think he even didn't advocate voting for either, didn't he literally say that the right thing would be not to vote? He used that Stalin paraphrase that he really likes, that they're "both worse".
Clinton would be worse because she is the status quo, she would probably just do plenty of shitty things, some decent things and eat up any more radical movement that might be left from Sanders.
Trump would be worse because well, I don't think I need to explain why a leftist would think that.
So he "preferred" Trump because he basically believed that the opposition to Trump would be good. Trump would be "worse" than Clinton, but due to his disruptive power, might end up the better winner, forcing the American left/"left"(the democrats) to reinvent itself, maybe create space for a radical opposition.
Yeah, besides, he didn't really "support" Trump.
Tbqhwy just about everyone.
Pynchman probably voted Trump because while he's got Illuminati vibes Clinton's were considerably worse.
can you gobble tolstoy's cock more, please? it's really inspiring.
If there was wisdom behind every beard, all goats would be prophets.
Is that supposed to be impressive or something? People dress like that all the time. Yes, Tolstoy knew how to shit out boring monolithic novels but don't glorify every aspect of the dude.
I wasn't precise enough on one point. He is also afraid of "everyone" uniting against Trump (as that would be a piece of shit of a movement, probably unable to form any real new demands, probably far too willing to settle for Clinton-like "unite everyone from occupy wall street to wall street" positions).
Otherwise what I said is there, more or less.
Honestly though I think he dun goofed in his commentaries before the elections. He did not actually believe in a Trump win, so maybe he was too eager to use Trump as a tool to criticize the mainstream left. However, it does seem to me that the Trump win has managed to create some promising movement in the US. I don't live there, so I can't be sure... I need to wait until later. There's also a lot of bullshit going on, of course.
for the love of dick, this. the guy was a slave rapist douchebag that forced his wife to breastfeed until she had mastitis and forced her to continue, kept her impregnated constantly, considering her a literal child factory. he wrote a book about a whore who killed herself and a loser who mowed grass. sucking his cock constantly is not impressive, and it won't get you accolades or make you a better author. it makes you look like a dog with his tongue up a dead man's asshole.
Not impressive necessarily, but pretty obviously not a poor Russian farmer or a hobo from 100 years ago. He looks more or less like what he is: a part of the upper classes, or at the very least, a middle class person (if we wouldn't know the age the photograph is from).
I don't think most writers look particularly noteworthy. In fact, I've often found myself disappointed by the appearance of writers I enjoy. I suspect you're probably imparting certain qualities of their appearance based on their greatness and traits you associate with them because of their writing.
As well, yes, but not a vulgar kind of gay.
Most photos make him look like an absolute madman
> muh slaves
The engels caricature of him in hippels bar is the coolest thing ever, don't lie. He looks exactly like he's willing to drop The Doom of Occidental Culture just because he feels like it.
>muh literature taste is refined because i read a slave rapist
Yeah but Beckett is a fucking dark mage.
one eye on the streets, one eye on the pussy
Sam harris is a desk monkey at dell.
If slaves didn't want to be raped they would just have to throw themselves on a sharpened hoe. They bring nothing but dishonor onto themselves.
wow we really arae spooks
oh you.
it's true tho, don't want to be a slave, don't surrender in war
i think you misunderstand why they were slaves, being born on a patch of land owned by a lord would be an example, it's not as though they were captured like africans.