Author Photo on the Back Jacket

Don't look at the author photo on the back jacket. It just spoils the whole thing. Don't go to writer's festivals and meet them, or watch them on day-time talk shows. At best you get studied performance, at worst you hear a shattering of dreams.

I make the mistake of wanting them all lined up inside my bedroom like hand maidens. I imagine that I want them to read to me as I make love. I imagine that making love to them one at a time would be akin to taking their variously beautiful books off the shelf and plunging, whole-bodied into them one by one, oiling myself with Ondaatje, curling up with Crace, immersing myself in Donovan or Nin or Delilo, imagining that they would be as skilled lovers as they are wordsmiths.

Michael Ondaatje writes like an angel and he speaks like one too, quiet and kind of monotone in a voice that can send you to sleep before the completion of a sentence. He is a gentle man and a thoughtful man and quite attractive in his own way, but when he reads from a book we hear an angel's soothing lull and it is difficult to see the passion behind the words.

I have lined up several body doubles for the back jacket of my first published novel. I am quite attracted to the author photo of Zadie Smith who looks young and beautiful and quite intelligent. I also know some very beautiful people who would not sue me if I used their photograph to advance my career, I am always open to suggestion.