Comments on: Dante/ Author photos

By: B

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:50:11 +0000

um excuse me but i don’t understand this — a face at rest looks like a face at rest, a grumpy face looks like a grumpy face — but how can you have an intrinsically grumpy-looking face — i mean you can -be- grumpy, so look grumpy all the time — but facial expressions are facial expressions, by definition transitory — i mean your face looks like what you feel at any one time, and what you feel changes — the face that is frozen by a photograph or a forensinc-anthropological reconstructor doesn’t ‘look like you’, or far less than a video would, but like a moment of you — that the reconstructor tried to give dante a neutral expression doesn’t mean he had a neutral-looking face

By: Elif

Elif — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:17:49 +0000

thank you all for the super-interesting and kind comments, and apologies for the delayed replies!

dear georgia, you raise a fascinating question. i am guessing tomato red is for the autumn dante, while maroon is for winter—but in either case, red body sock is an amazing look. perhaps we should try to bring it back for a new season in sf? hm? hm?

dear michael, thank you for the very interesting link—i was immediately captured by the subhead (pitting “standard history” vs “its fascinating underbelly”), and am now wondering how many other standard academic disciplines have fascinating underbellies that could generate a novel, or three…

dear lauren, what an amazing observation about the identical mouths… do you think ms. conrad might consider donating her body to the forensic sciences, in order to establish whether there is a genetic link?? (ps my second book—the one about fascinating underbellies—is totally gonna have candy on the front and a full-page head shot on the back.)

dear lmberbe, you are absolutely right. to me, his expression says more, “i just built a very reliable chair you might pay $30 to sit in.”

dear james, thank you for the beautiful poem! and dear lk, alas, i didn’t make it to see benigni… although georgia, the body-sock expert, did. if i remember right, she said that in english he was playing it too much for laughs… i guess he really wants to convey that he wrote a really entertaining book we might like to pay €16 for…)

By: Georgia

Georgia — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:20:17 +0000

I wonder why Mallegni dressed Dante in maroon, as opposed to the tomato red we’re so used to seeing in paintings. The red body sock and matching coat is a particular favorite:

http://www.museocasadidante.it/images/site/dante/dante_2.jpg

By: Michael Fay

Michael Fay — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:49:28 +0000

Elif –

How nice that you’re back at your blog! I remember meditating over the Inferno at Seminary in 1963, circling closer to where I just knew I would end up.

There was a fascinating piece in the Globe and Mail on Saturday by Sarah Dunant, writing of her love of being lonely in Florence leading to writing three novels about the lost history of women. Here’s the link:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/the-heart-and-the-history/article1198646/

I hope you keep blogging away and can’t wait for the Dante piece.

By: Lauren Mechling

Lauren Mechling — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:52:30 +0000

Dearest Elif,

So nice to stalk you on your web site. I, too, prefer the Dante whose mouth looks like a painfully contorted coat hangar.

As to your which is the face of a true A list writer query, allow me, representative of the fiction for short people faction, to submit the following:

http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2009/06/fug_girls_book_club_lauren_con.html?imw=Y&f=most-viewed-24h5

This paragon of A-list-ness has a piggy bank slot of a mouth that is much more like the “new and improved” reconstructed Dante. So I think that settles it. . . long-suffering is sooo 674 years ago.

sincerely,
Lauren