Meet the Author

I've been reading a new author - a grownup author! Not really a new author, but one I just discovered last month while researching for a column on New Yorker authors for MBT. An author of short pieces and columns and books made up of anecdotes, mostly.


Calvin Trillin is, I suppose you might say, a humourist, but not in the broad, hardy-har sense that the name implies. Instead, he has perfected a humour that I can't describe without thinking it sounds like a nice white wine - dry, light, mature, with a slightly sweet and refreshing taste to it, never the bitterness you can find in some. He writes about lots of things - travel, food, his family, politics, things he's noticed in newspaper articles. I started out by reading a book about his late wife, then moved into a book about traveling with his family over the years, and am just now polishing off a second book of collected columns. And looking forward to the stash of more of his work sitting in my book box. So far, not one wrong note, just enjoyable, wry observations.


What I am also noting is that I quite like him. He's a touch old-fashioned, perhaps, certainly at least a generation older than I, if not a bit more, but he doesn't fall into the curmudgeonly role that some older men take on in their commentary. (Rooney, I'm looking at you, mister! Oh, and Don Cherry? Yeah, you too.) Instead, he often comes across as bemused, a simple-ish man in spite of his obviously intelligence and wide travels. I actually highly recommend him for a little light reading.



But his books also opened another question for me. Where was his author photo? We make, upon meeting someone face to face, certain judgments about that person and their personality. I find that someone with an open face draws me in immediately - I like that person before I know why, or if I'm right. On the flip side, i've noticed people with a thinner mouth,. for example, tend to look pinched, stressed, angry, or aggressive in a way that puts me off immediately. Michael Douglas is a prime example of this. with a fuller lip, he might be handsome, but instead, he looks mean to my eye. (God I wish I had some photoshop skillz so I could test that theory.) So I am sort of left curious - what does this person look like? Would I like him right away if I met him? But I haven't seen an author photo.


It's interesting to me, the business of author photos. Because of course, authors take on a certain persona in writing, even more so in the sort of writing Trillin does than in, say, a novel. But in posing for a studied photo, an author is making a definite decision about how s/he wants to appear, what s/he wants people to think about him or her. And it often makes me wonder why they want to appear in certain ways, for many of them are contrived to the point of the absurd. I am, for example, as suspicious of authors in tweedy jackets or carrying pipes as I am of professors with elbow patches - they seem to be playing a role that shows how they envision themselves as Author, rather than beign who they are. It seems pretentious in the extreme. Same goes for authors posing in bomber jackets in front of airplanes, white scarf flying the the breeeze. Okay, we get that you want to be seen as some sort of wild adventurer, independent and daring. I've seen that one more than once, rolled my eyes each time.


Even someone who doesn't seem to have some sort of fantasy they are playing out or persona they are putting on is making some decisions. I recall Rebecca of GGC talking about how she came to include her son Archer in the author photo for her book - out next Tuesday, by the way - that is about her experience in becoming his mother. And her finding it hard to select what to wear. Because you know, the book is about finding your way as a free spirited mother - someone who was wilder, and is trying to navigate the way to being a mother without losing yourself. Well, what do you wear for that? You don't want to be too crazy, because you've matured into motherhood a bit, and don't want to turn off people who see style as at odds with motherhood, nor do you want to be too "mom" when you are talking about not being sucked into the soccer mom role, but retaining a good bit of your own edge. How are you going to work that line? She noted, herself, that posing was tough, because she wanted to look herself, not like someone trying to look like someone they thought they should look like. Well, exactly, I thought.


But then what to make of an author who seems to have decided not to take it on at all? What to think about that? Is he modest? Ugly? Hoping not to put off any one demographic, since as a columnist he is better off the more people he appeals to? It's left me pondering about what he looks like in my mind's eye - and I think he's coming off as an older, bespectacled fellow with greying hair, a man of medium to light build, a man who would wear a cardigan or sports jacket over his buttoned shirt, even at home. A family man who would wear slippers as he read the newspaper, and a robe over his pajamas. Fairly mild-mannered, but always with an dry observation or an amusing tale to share. A hit among his friends, the perhaps quiet at a party. Someone quietly handsome, but not too dashing who might be played by a Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant later in his career when looking for more subtle work, I think, a character they could downplay. In fact, something of a caricature of a mild-mannered fellow at home in the late fifties, early sixties, when things were just a bit more formal - exactly the sort of father you'd expect to see on a TV show of that era, in fact.


But then again, I may be wrong.