"5’6… Not once ounce of excess fat… The left ear much bigger than the right, and malformed, but her hair always covers her ears… Lips formed a tight straight line… Small narrow nose, somewhat protruding cheekbones, broad forehead, and long, straight eyebrows… [Face is a] Pleasing oval shape… Extreme paucity of expression."
Being out of my hibernation for a while (yes, I keep writing; no, I haven't ended writing any book these days), I stumbled upon this site where you can see portraits of literary characters created using law enforcement composite sketch software and descriptions by authors. Above there's Aomame, female main character in Haruki Murakami's
1Q84, one of the latest novels I've read, and enjoyed, along with the description taken from several parts of the book. There are about fifteen more portraits in the site by now, and no doubt soon there will be many more.
Although the portrait of Aomame is quite accurate, I don't think the point of this project is to show us the actual faces of the characters we've imagined, or we're about to be introduced to, while reading a book. Imagination still belongs to us.
Rather, what I found amusing was that, in first place, literary characters are turned into a sort of suspects booked by the police, as if they were outside the law or could be charged with any crime. Some powerful and very real guys would love to have our imagination behind bars, along with all the books that make us think, inspire us, and with which we have a damn great time, isn't it so. So one can say these creepy portraits somehow give a wink to us readers.
And secondly, in
The Composites you can suggest a character to be portrayed, as long as you can provide a good description by the author. How cool is that? You just have to keep in mind that, for instance, they "made an honest effort to do a Cormac McCarthy character, but you just can't work with 'Man. Medium. Two eyes.'" (There happens to be the portrait of one of McCarthy's characters in The Composites, though.) For further details, here's a
link to
The Atlantic about the artist behind The Composites who uses police sketch software to (re?)create some of the best known characters in literature.
So, is there any character you would like to see portrayed? If, as happens to me, you can not decide for any, you can take a look at some that have already been "booked" in The Composites:
Emma Bovary (gorgeous),
Daisy from
The Great Gatsby,
Humbert Humbert (really spooky)...
Read more...
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