Authors. Do They Really Look Like The Characters They Write About?

For the last week, at the behest of my publisher, I have been agonizing over the author's photograph to use for the upcoming marketing material for my latest novel. They have suggested I pop on down to a local studio and have my imaged snapped as the art director rudely mentioned that the current picture looked like it was taken on a box brownie!!! 

This particular request demonstrated that my vanity is deeply entrenched in my psyche, as I am loathe to deviate from using the head shot that has featured in all of my books. That particular photograph, taken a good three years ago by a staff member, is one of the better shots of me in recent years and therefore I have decided to stick with it.  I feel this to be a little fraudulent as, truth be told, age has wearied me somewhat  since that particular picture was snapped.

This set me to thinking about authors and their underlying streak of vanity when displaying their image on a dust jacket.

Curious, I selected several novels from our library to see if other authors feel the same way as I do.

John Grisham I noted has not aged a single day in the twenty or so years that he has been publishing his numerous novels. He stands, nonchalantly leaning against a wall gazing confidently into the camera smug in the realisation that his latest tome will sell several million copies. The thing is, it is the same photograph used on the dust jacket of his very first novel, published all those years ago. Does this mean that bestselling authors become Dorian Grays, retaining their youth and vibrancy, while somewhere upstairs in a dingy attic, a book cover grows old for him?

Grisham retains that boyish, devil may care, handsome look accentuated by the confidence that even if he wrote a novel on the intricacies of Norwegian Folk Dancing, or sheep shearing in Estonia, it would fly off the shelves.

I have just finished Howard Jacobson's, " In the Land of Oz,' his hilarious romp through the nether regions of Australia. Throughout the book, Mr. Jacobson constantly refers to his Jewishness and his adulation of Woody Allen. He bumbles around the huge continent, telling tales of snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef  (even though he cannot swim) drinking with tough bike riding outlaws in an outback pub or encounters with other travellers of similar vintage in caravan parks across the country.

As the reader I conjured up an image of what I think he looked like, as the book is written in the first person, and could not go beyond the look -alike image of Woody Allen. Mr. Jacobson does not include a photograph in the author’s credits so I will forever have this image of him as being a nervous Jew from New York out of his depth in the outback of Australia, always on the verge of getting sunstroke or being bitten by a venomous serpent.

Racy spy novels, romantic Victorian tales and thrillers are all written by people who I suppose look nothing like the characters they invent, but somehow, those of us who scribble in that particular genre somehow picture ourselves in the title roles fulfilling our own fantasies and the reader be damned.

 We delude ourselves, becoming the characters we create; the suave, unflappable hero who, like a Brad Pitt or George Clooney, can throw on any item of clothing and look like they have been dressed by John Paul Gaultier. I guess that's why we write and invent stories creating larger than life characters oftentimes to fulfill our own shortcomings when it comes to looks. When I do meet the rare person who might have read one of my books, they often remark, " gosh, you look nothing like I thought you would." Thats a bit like going on a blind date and being told the same thing.

So, having written this piece I will continue to use the long ago picture for the dust jacket. After all, we all like to stay forever young, even if I don’t look anything like George Clooney or John Grisham for that matter.

However, maybe Annie Leibovitz has a gap in her schedule, for she could definitely make me look a little like Grisham.

Paul v Walters is the best selling author of several novels. When not cocooned in sloth or procrastination in his house in Bali  he scribbles for several international and vox pop journals.

His latest offering, Scimitar was released in September 2016.