Christopher Howse

How much can you tell about E.E. Cummings from this photo?

Goffredo Fofi's Portrait of the Writer argues that a photo reveals much about an author. I'm not sure

E.E. Cummings, ‘looking like a plainsman fresh out of the barbers after delivering 300 head of Texas longhorns’. Credit: Getty Images 
issue 09 November 2013

Do you think you can tell things about writers from the way they look in a painting or photograph? A more demanding test: from their books can you predict how authors look? It sounds unlikely, yet, upon seeing a photograph of an author, we do find ourselves exclaiming: ‘That’s not how I thought he’d look!’

In Portrait of the Writer there are 250 photographs with a potted biography opposite each.

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