Ted Kooser, who notices such things, points out a trend in the author’s photograph — the small photograph accompanying the biographical blurb on book covers. He says the style is to “show people in various degrees of distress.”
I had noticed some odd photos without seeing the trend. I had noticed the trend toward trauma in all things published. I suppose a photo of a smiling author of a book loaded with anxiety might strike people as a mistake, like an actor breaking character.
Kooser says that before the author’s photograph we had the author’s engraving. He says Walt Whitman directed his engraver to enhance the crotch.
Kooser is against the trends, old and new. He wants the author to appear as he or she is.
I was delighted when he gave the poet William Stafford as an example. Stafford appears to be “someone who is more interested in what he is looking at than he is in himself,” he says.
That’s sounds right to me. It’s the way Stafford appears in photographs and it’s the way Stafford writes.
• Sources and notes: “From the Desk of Ted Kooser: The Author’s Photograph” was published April 11, 2016 on the blog of the University of Nebraska Press:
https://unpblog.com/2016/04/11/from-the-desk-of-ted-kooser-the-authors-photograph/
Kooser is a famous poet. For my argument that he is also a wonderful essayist, see “A magnificent book tells what home is like,” Jan. 2, 2022.
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