Revenge of the Geeks
Writers, are often expected to be boring, dowdy, brooding, serious geeks — the plain ones (not pretty enough, not ugly enough, to be noticed) that sat in a corner reading a book, secretly hating the world.
Well, these writers made being geeky look good:
1) Jhumpa Lahiri won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, but she could just as well be a Bollywood star.
2) I’ve always found poet Louise Glück hot.
Years later, she still looks great:
Now, if only she does better poetry readings!
3) We can never really know what Sappho looked like, but she’s got to be hot. She’s Sappho!
(as painted by Carl Auguste Mengin)
4) Turns out, lover boy Pablo Neruda didn’t need poetry to make the ladies swoon.
5) William Carlos Williams looks like a prep school boy.
6) Sylvia Plath channels the girl-next-door look in this iconic picture of her, though there’s still something dark about her expression. She kind of resembles Claire Danes.
Another less-than-suicidal Sylvia:
7) In this photo with Sylvia, Ted Hughes kind of looks like this certain teen heartthrob:
Incidentally, Robert Pattinson will be playing Salvador Dali in the new film, Little Ashes.
8 ) Young writer of the critically acclaimed Lucky Girls, Nell Freudenberger can easily be mistaken for Anna Paquin (circa the first X-men movie).
She also reminds me of Filipina poet Mookie Katigbak.
9) I’ve always thought that Ben Affleck is Arthur Rimbaud’s second coming (looks-wise, atleast!).
10) In a couple of years, Mark Strand will probably be channeling Clint Eastwood.
11) Ezra Pound could pass for one of these hollywood hunks with his “I’ll-write-any-fucking-thing-I-want” look:
ezra pound.robert downey jr.heath ledger.johnny depp
Ok, maybe it’s just the similar facial hair. And the “I’ll-do-any-fucking-thing-I-want” attitude.
Of course, their (even geekier) big brother is
Albert Einstein
12) I think Anton Chekhov could have been in their little moustached/bearded posse.
Although, he did end up looking more like Teddy Roosevelt.
13) Even I was surprised when I realized that Katherine Anne Porter looks like the glamorous Marlene Dietrich!
14) Finally, I guess it’s appropriate that these two sex symbols resemble each other:
These writers have hollywood-worthy looks, but what makes them even more beautiful is their minds, their sublime soul (in the words of Longinus), and their ability to put into words the human experience.
oido 