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November 17, 2004
Photo Op
As a first-time author sweating the details of publicity and jacket photos, I’ve been well aware of Marion Ettlinger. Her photo credit under an author photo signals that the writer in question is being positioned as a literary contender. But this New York Times piece by Lee Siegel analyzes her status with eviscerating thoroughness:
“Just as the Brazilian photographer [Sebasti-o Salgado] unintentionally romanticizes grim, back-breaking labor in his attempts to ennoble the workers he portrays, Ettlinger's photographs separate fame from achievement in her attempts to, well, separate fame from achievement. This isn't so easy to pull off: her obscure authors look like children forced to wear adult-sized clothes in preparation for a party they haven't been invited to. The few actual famous people Ettlinger has shot survive her grandiloquence by the sheer force of having come through life and triumphed in their work. Elizabeth Hardwick, for example, is one of the very few writers in the book to look down and away from the camera, as if she sensed something secretly deflating about Ettlinger's superpolished inflations.”
The question remains: To be Ettlingered or not to be Ettlingered? I’m not the first author-to-be to face the uncomfortable issue, as this very funny Salon story by George Packer reassured me:
“Publishers have always expected readers to judge a book by its cover. Now they expect a writer to be judged by his face. Given the unlikelihood that good books will be written by beautiful people, publishers can either lower their literary standards or improve their authors' faces. More and more seem to take the second approach.
I've gotten used to picking up a book by someone I know personally and checking the back flap to see what authorship has done to their appearance. Dark background, unusual garment, oblique angle, tilt of head, hair falling forward, chin resting on hand, cool gaze: my nervous-smiling, twisty-nosed, sad-eyed acquaintance has undergone the most startling transformation. I never understood how it was done.”
Posted by Rachel at November 17, 2004 12:12 PM
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