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Having a good headshot probably helps, too. I guess it would count as a key component of one's marketing package. I'm reminded of this Adam Gopnik article on a
by klenwell 9y ago
Having a good headshot probably helps, too. I guess it would count as a key component of one's marketing package. I'm reminded of this Adam Gopnik article on a discovered Shakespeare portrait:
And that Shakespeare was good-looking as a young man, before he lost his hair and puffed out from home-cooking, seems at least likely, on the fixed general principle that writers who become very celebrated in their youth, as he did, are, to a first approximation, almost always good-looking. Byron and Shelley, Mailer and Updike and Salinger, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Tennyson, Lowell, Ted Hughes—all celebrated in their youth, all not just O.K.-looking but an oil painting, each and every one. There are many good funny-looking writers, but it’s hard to think of good funny-looking writers who get famous young. Funny-looking writers, at least funny-looking male writers, get famous late—Samuel Johnson and Sinclair Lewis and John Milton and Philip Larkin all come instantly to mind—or else they don’t get famous. They get read, but they don’t get celebrated.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/adam-gopnik-look-here-upon-this-picture https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/adam-gopnik-look...
- cgh 9y agoThomas Pynchon is a counter-example. "V." was published when he was 26 and was nominated for the National Book Award. Here is his "headshot": http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2013/08/23/23-thomas-pynchon.w245.h368.jpg http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2013/08/23/23-thom... Of course, he was already becoming famously reclusive by this time so maybe he's exempt from this rule.
- klenwell 9y agoPerhaps that's even why he opted for the reclusive strategy. Anyway, I love that headshot.
- jessaustin 9y agoNo kidding! I've found my new avatar...
- brucephillips 9y agoDavid Foster Wallace was average looking, at best.
- s_m_t 9y agoOf course, having an attractive face is also correlated with intelligence and wealth.