That Hideous Sight

The success of an author's career is based
and written in her or his face

in our times; or lack of it,

to remember Thomas Pynchon. He must have a very ordinary face,

a working class face - the face of a car mechanic

or a factory worker. Something

out of place, not fit to adorn

the back-covers of his novels.

We all know that an author of novels like his

must look like the professor

of a small town New England college with a fine pedigree

going back to Ralph Waldo Emerson's circle.

Ashamed, perhaps only after an intervention by a publisher

at the beginning of his long career,

Pynchon hides his features like a turtle inside its shell

to let his work live without the connection to a visage

that would drag them down with it.

He must often be mistaken for a retired plumber,

electrician or a train driver by cardigan wearing people

carrying his volumes in their hands

to read among falling autumn leaves

caressed by sunlight from a major Indie film.

How wise to hide, how disappointed we must be

the day we see his low-class features posthumously

revealed to the world, how disdainfully

people will turn away from new editions featuring

his face, that less than mediocre face,

that will makes us feel like we are
carrying dirt by connection,

unwashed, smelling of sweat,

seeking solace from the editions in which his

grim features have not been printed,

those unsoiled messengers of pure art

disconnected from an aesthetically unworthy author

more Hephaestus than Apollo.

01.01.2017