Pictures of Authors

[fayefaye]

WHY??! Who ever likes to see pictures of authors? ugly, ugly, brilliant authors. :p

sorry, this part of the forum's a bit of a yawn.... Who do you think is the ugliest author of all time?

[Admin]

Mary Shelley

[imthefoolonthehill]

I think Doestovsky (sp?) is pretty ugly... outside AND in...

[subterranean]

Geez, I have no idea what to post. I mean, judging people's appearrances is not my style.

No one...I guess :rolleyes:

[Koa]

It's fun to see pics of writers...they're always different from how I imagined them... Or I think 'look, behind that ordinary/weird/ugly/whatever face, there were these impressive thoughts...'

[fayefaye]

The picture of Austen at this site is horrifying, worse than Shelley. fool was right about Doestovsky, too. Don't know what Franz Kafka looks like. sub-Sometimes it can be fun to be mindlessly shallow. Course, don't want it to get to the point of incredible inanity.

[Koa]

Hey have you seen the pic of Tolstoy on this very site?
Talk of..ehm...not too attractive... (at least to 21st century eyes... :D)

[Demona]

for a writer appearance is nothing... *supporting subterranean*

[Koa]

we ddint say it matters, did we?
yet they couldnt help having an appearance...
how I wish we were all invisbile, only Minds would exist. No bodies, no concrete beings, just Mind.

[fayefaye]

Sometimes I like to pretend I'm invisible. And slip into crowds and disappear.

[Demona]

Originally posted by Koa
we ddint say it matters, did we?
yet they couldnt help having an appearance...



But if it does not matter why to discuss it anyway?
There are so many useless things people waste time on anyway...

[Jay]

Maybe discussing it for the discussion's sake? Everyone has an opinion, no matter how it might not matter, so why not hearing it? One has the possibility of deciding to reply or not to reply ;).
Anyone, please, tell me to shut the f*** up! I am annoying even myself, don't know why I'm posting all the things anyway.

[Koa]

Originally posted by Demona
But if it does not matter why to discuss it anyway?
There are so many useless things people waste time on anyway...

If we discussed only things that matter, we'd shut up most of the time, and life would be boring as hell.

The photos are there, I can't help looking at an author's face and think of his/her words, not because I want to judge their appearance but just for curiosity...They lived, they had a body and a face whether they wanted it or not... Maybe it's just a way to get nearer to a writer's 'humanity' so to speak...

Why being so fussy about why we discuss what? If you think it's idle to talk about this, don't talk about it and don't fire the other cos they do, even if just for the sake of it.

[Demona]

Originally posted by Koa
If we discussed only things that matter, we'd shut up most of the time, and life would be boring as hell.

oh, I believe you underestimate people. :)



The photos are there, I can't help looking at an author's face and think of his/her words, not because I want to judge their appearance but just for curiosity...They lived, they had a body and a face whether they wanted it or not... Maybe it's just a way to get nearer to a writer's 'humanity' so to speak...

interesting point. never thought of that.



Why being so fussy about why we discuss what? If you think it's idle to talk about this, don't talk about it and don't fire the other cos they do, even if just for the sake of it.

Hm....somebody is very touchy in here. I'm just trying to figure out some things. I do have a right for that, don't I? heh

[fayefaye]

Originally posted by Jay
Anyone, please, tell me to shut the f*** up! I am annoying even myself, don't know why I'm posting all the things anyway.

lol, Jay-I feel like that AAALLLLL the time, and nobody ever tells me to shut up(don't know why) and we're not going to tell you to either. Besides, I love your posts. :)

demona-koa isn't touchy, she just wanted to share her opinion.

koa-good point about the writers humanity. I never really thought of it like that.

[Demona]

Originally posted by fayefaye
demona-koa isn't touchy, she just wanted to share her opinion.


khm...I would appreciate your spelling my name as it is displayed on the forum and I think that Koa can speak up for herself. ;)

[Jay]

Ooops, someone needs me to ring a bell or throw a white towel into the ring? ;)

Faye, if you do like my posts, then you're as crazy as I thought ;):D

[fayefaye]

yeah, I think I'm going nuts!!

Demona- I spelt it demona. apart from the capital, there's no real difference. Leave me be!

[Demona]

Originally posted by fayefaye
Demona- I spelt it demona. apart from the capital, there's no real difference. Leave me be!

There is for me.

[sine]

I guess it would definitely have to be Mary Shelley.
But let's not forget that she was depressed most of the time. Husband's death ring a bell to you?? Okaay, what about her son's death?? I don't think she would have cared to put on some makeup.
Doesn't really matter anyways, because she was a great authoress. Most poets/authors at that time wrote to relieve themselves of their personal conflicts with their outward appearances because society deemed them "not appealing enough".

[Koa]

Yeah I am touchy, so what? Among the many things I find it hard to stand, there are fussy people. What are you going to complain about next? Our punctuation maybe? Discussing photos of authors can not matter to some, capitals don't matter to others... Can't we just all live???

Just out of curiosity, Demona, what where you trying to find out? How easy it is to wake up my touchy side? Or did you feel the need to come out with the 'appearance doesn't matter' thing, as noone had done that yet and we needed a rethorical remark like that cos we're evidently here to judge like n a beauty contest?

*takes a deep breath* OK I don't want to sound (too) nasty but honestly I don't like your attitude, sorry if I am too bitter but I can't help it. I'll try not to get so flamed again from now on, but I needed to.

[crisaor]

Originally posted by sine
I guess it would definitely have to be Mary Shelley.
But let's not forget that she was depressed most of the time. Husband's death ring a bell to you?? Okaay, what about her son's death?? I don't think she would have cared to put on some makeup.
Yeah. That wasn't a happy marriage, to say the least.

[Demona]

Originally posted by Koa
Yeah I am touchy, so what? Among the many things I find it hard to stand, there are fussy people. What are you going to complain about next? Our punctuation maybe? Discussing photos of authors can not matter to some, capitals don't matter to others... Can't we just all live???

Just out of curiosity, Demona, what where you trying to find out? How easy it is to wake up my touchy side? Or did you feel the need to come out with the 'appearance doesn't matter' thing, as noone had done that yet and we needed a rethorical remark like that cos we're evidently here to judge like n a beauty contest?

*takes a deep breath* OK I don't want to sound (too) nasty but honestly I don't like your attitude, sorry if I am too bitter but I can't help it. I'll try not to get so flamed again from now on, but I needed to.

:eek: And after that you actually say that I am fussy? LOL :)
Take it easy. Everybody is allowed to share his/her opinion. If you don't like mine - it is not my problem :)
Who can actually define what is "beauty"? It is a purely subjective topic...besides even if all participants come to the same conclusion that someone is definitely the most beautiful or the ugliest - then what?:confused:

Anyway, it is your business, from now on I'm out of this topic and not going to answer any of the comments in my address.

have a nice day! ;)

[Demona]

and yeah, Koa, thanks for spelling my name correctly. I appreciate that :) heh

[Jay]

*Trying to keep her mouth shut ... succeeding as far :)*

[Koa]

I wonder where the hell we were trying to define beauty.:mad: :mad: :mad:

It's easy to say beauty doesnt matter and all that sort of stuff, but people DO care about it, otherwise I would have been a supermodel, not the fat ugly teenager some years ago.

And most of all, that had nothing to with authors. It wasn't a beauty contest, just a way to realise that those words we read were written by a human hand, not a spirit.

I'm surely talking to myself, but unlike Jay I'm very very bad at shutting up (I do talk too much infact :D).

[Shea]

I would like to address the Mary Shelly issue because I agree that the picture on this site is terrible. But she was actually known as a beauty. Here's a link to another picture:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~androom/major/choice.htm

And I don't think there was anything personally wrong with her marriage to Percy, she was depressed because she kept having miscarriages due to Percy dragging her out of her home in the middle of the night to move because he couldn't pay the rent. And the children she did have all ended up dying except her son Percy who turned out to be rather a literary disappointment.

She very much loved her husband and was devistated when he drowned.

[crisaor]

Originally posted by Shea
And I don't think there was anything personally wrong with her marriage to Percy.
From what I know, everything was wrong with that marriage. Their relationship was always a cold one, Percy kept cheating on her (with her knowledge) and he never respected her writing skills. He edited quite a few things in Frankenstein.

[Shea]

Hmm, I had some trouble finding those things in biographies, but then I also had trouble find the things my instructor said about her as well.

From the sound of that poem ("The Choice" on the link for her picture) and the fact that she never married again (though I know she had a fling) I wouldn't say that she had an all over miserable marriage. Another factor to throw in is that when her mother was alive, her parents openly had affairs with other people. Her father would still "preach" that lifestyle, but I think when it happened to his own daughter, he didn't like it. But perhaps Mary didn't put up much of a fuss with it. In fact, I don't really know of much of anything she put up much of a fuss over. She was too busy mourning deaths.

I wonder why instructors require sources from students, but if they're lecturing, they don't have to tell their students where they got their information! If you have any good sources for info, I'd appreciate them!

[crisaor]

Originally posted by Shea
Hmm, I had some trouble finding those things in biographies, but then I also had trouble find the things my instructor said about her as well.
From the sound of that poem ("The Choice" on the link for her picture) and the fact that she never married again (though I know she had a fling) I wouldn't say that she had an all over miserable marriage. Another factor to throw in is that when her mother was alive, her parents openly had affairs with other people. Her father would still "preach" that lifestyle, but I think when it happened to his own daughter, he didn't like it. But perhaps Mary didn't put up much of a fuss with it. In fact, I don't really know of much of anything she put up much of a fuss over. She was too busy mourning deaths.
Yeah, point. Maybe she didn't find it that bad, and it's my modern view that makes me perceive it as a fu**ed marriage. They were kinda open minded about the fling stuff.

Originally posted by Shea
I wonder why instructors require sources from students, but if they're lecturing, they don't have to tell their students where they got their information! If you have any good sources for info, I'd appreciate them!
Shea, are you talking in general or specifically about Mary shelley? Most of the stuff I mentioned I got from literature in high school and the introduction to my copy of Frankenstein (Cátedra Ediciones, which is in spanish). Also, you might want to check out the movie Gothic. It's an entertaining movie about some of the elements of gothic and it shows a bit on the relationship of Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Claremont, and William Polidori.

[Shea]

I was speaking in general, but I'll try to take a look at the movie at some point, considering I've been assigned to read Frankenstien 3 times!

[ll7783]

The reason Jane Austen looks kinda weird is that (I think) there weren't any portraits made of her. All they know of what she looked like is two sketches made by her sister, and they do admittedly look weird.

[Shea]

Last week, my brit lit instructor showed us six different portraits of Lord Byron. They all looked like different people, maybe closely related but different. Unless we've got a photograph, I think it's hard to really get a true sense of what they looked like.

By the way Crisaor, I found something interesting about Mary Shelly concerning what you said about him always rewriting her stuff. I've had to re-read Frankenstien for a class only the 1818 version this time. In Volume 2 Ch. 7, Delacey's name is misspelled. The footnote that my text gives is:

"The change in spelling, which remains consistent from this point on, raises the possibility that Shelly took over the job of proofreading with this chapter. Mary sent him the second parcel of proof on 24 September 1817, with a note giving him 'carte blanche to make what alterations you please.'"

I guess because she wrote it when she was so young, that she probably didn't have enough faith in herself to write a good enough novel.

Well anyway, thought you'd be interested.

[crisaor]

She was only 20, having barely written something in her whole life, while her husband was a famous poet. Plus, it was a time when the woman would do anything the husband commanded. I guess that was logical after all.
Thanks for that.

[nothingman87]

Hands down, its Flannery O'Conner.

[Koa]

Originally posted by crisaor
She was only 20, having barely written something in her whole life, while her husband was a famous poet. Plus, it was a time when the woman would do anything the husband commanded. I guess that was logical after all.
Thanks for that.

Was she so young??? Damn and I still haven't written a great novel... actually, not even a bad one... :D

I'm going to read Frankestein soon, but I imagined this Shelley lady to be much oldder when she wrote that...

[crisaor]

She wasn't. And she had already lost a child at that age.

[fayefaye]

hm, kinda sad. :(

[ennison]

Judging who's the ugliest author is as valid as most kind of value judgements about writers. It would be a matter of opinion. Sam Johnson was pretty gross. And that Moany Lisa - she's no oil painting!