Author Look-Alikes, Vol. 18

I give you W. H. Auden and the grandpa from the Gilmore Girls  (Edward Hermann):

Then there’s Ann Patchett and Laura Linney:

Or Sylvia Plath and Peggy from Mad Men (Elizabeth Moss):

Even without gobs of mascara, young Susan Sontag could have given Natalie Wood a run for her money:

And William Styron looks exactly like you'd imagine an aging Piers Morgan:

Author Look-Alikes: Vol. 17

Theodore Dreiser and Carl Reiner. If you don’t see it, I don’t know what to tell you:

Zora Neale Hurston and Queen Latifah: the cheekbones, the nose, the smile, the eyes… it’s all there:

Vladimir Nabokov and Alfred Hitchcock are not a bad match:

Neither are Alexander Solzhenytsin and Edward Norton Jr.:

And when I look at this picture of Charles Dickens all I hear is Vincent Schiavelli screaming for me to get off his train:

Author Look-Alikes: Vol. 16

Shave off Sherwood Anderson’s eyebrows and you’ve got Chris Cooper:

Turn Gustave Flaubert’s hair white and you’ve got Wilford “Diabeetus” Brimley:

Pump E.E. Cummings full of red blood cells and performance-enhancing drugs and you’ve got Lance Armstrong:

Give Saki a smirk and a wristwatch and you've got Bob Hope :

Give Somerset Maugham a consiglieri and a 'family' of hired goons and you've got Don Corleone:

Author Look-Alikes: Vol. 15

Ezra pound is supposed to have died years ago. But are we sure he isn’t running Cuba?

In the category of shaggy-headed, white-haired poets, I give you Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Walt Whitman:

Great smiles, bushy eyebrows, pushbroom mustaches… Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Juan Valdez are both a great credit to their Colombian homeland:

Hair chopped short and smiling eyes, here's Carson McCullers and Annette Benning:

Now, I threw the Kennedy Wildcasts “K” on Tim O’Brien’s hat. But I didn’t really have to. He’d still be a dead ringer for the gym coach in “The Wonder Years” (Robert Picardo). Neither of them seem to go anywhere without their ball caps:

Author Look-alikes Vol. 14

Henry Miller and Jean Luc Picard. “Engage:”

Who can match Evelyn Waugh’s aristocratic airs? Lord Grantham, that’s who:

Swap the pince nez for regular specs and Anton Checkov isn’t that different from a goateed Robert Downey Jr:

Fyodor Doestoevsky wasn’t exactly handsome. In kind of the same way that Ron Howard’s brother isn’t handsome:

I wasn't sure this was really William Butler Yeats, and not a Steve Martin bit character. I'm still not completely convinced:

Author Look-Alikes Vol. 13

Georges Perec and Daniel Stern: “All the great ones leave their mark. We’re the wet bandits.”

Someone get Honore de Balzac a perm and a luchador mask. He’d make as good a Nacho Libre as Jack Black:

Orhan Pamuk and Rick Steves aren’t an exact match, I’ll admit, but they have enough in common—the semi-shaggy “dad” haircut, the “don’t notice my glasses” glasses, the affable and harmless expression—for the one to remind me of the other.

George Eliot. Not exactly a looker, huh? Sadly, the closest match I could find for that schnoz was F. Murray Abraham:

The hair, the dramatic pose, the fact that she’s a little past her prime… alright Mr. DeMille, Katherine Anne Porter’s ready for her close-up.

Author Look-Alikes Vol. 12: Authors with Initials Edition

V.S Naipaul is a celebrated Trinidadian Indian, but those big jowls and heavy eyelids remind me a bit of old Kicking Bird (Graham Greene), a fictional American Indian. "Tatonka."

Here’s beloved chilldren’s author A.A. Milne and Ralph Fiennes. One gave us Winnie the Pooh, the other gave us Lord Voldemort.

With his low-set, bushy eyebrows and big ears, J.R.R. Tolkien isn’t a bad match for the Lloyd Bridges of “Hot Shots Part Deux” vintage.

And J.P. Donleavy’s earnest gaze seems to say, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” doesn’t it? Dead ringer for Alec Guiness.

It took me a long time to think of who T.S. Eliot reminded me of, but take a look at this side-by-side and tell me you’re not concocting theories about Rowan Atkinson being his love child.

Author Look-Alikes: Vol. 11

Young Peter Orlovsky looks like he could have lit “the world on FAH-EE-UH” years before the idea struck Fun’s lead vocalist (Nate Ruess.)

Playwright Tennessee Williams isn’t a bad match for Clark Gable, plus a few pounds and a receding hairline.

And how about Ivan Turgenev? Give the man a shave and a haircut and he could have played Mr. Matuschek or the Wizard of Oz as well as Frank Morgan.

Another writer-to-writer doppelganger: I give you a young Thomas Mann and Australia’s only Nobel Laureate, Patrick White.

And for the fans of Mad Men (and tortoiseshell specs), here’s Truman Capote and Lane Pryce (Jared Harris). 

Author Look-Alikes: Vol. 10

The narrow-set eyes under a straight, low brow hovering over a long nose and pursed lips… I’d say O Henry bears an undeniable resemblance to that dude from Parenthood (Sam Jaeger):

And while we’re on the subject of hit tv shows, can anyone tell me that Mary Shelley doesn’t have a little Lady Edith Crawley in her? Eyes, nose, lips- it’s almost spooky:

And here’s Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared mysteriously during the Mexican American War. Perhaps he found the Fountain of Youth that Ponce de Leon never could, and resurfaced some years later as actor Tom Skerritt:

Joseph Heller’s wooly coiffure and playfully squinting eyes conjure up images of a pudgy Art Garfunkel. Like a bridge over troubled water, he will lay him down:

And doesn’t off-beat children’s author Roald Dahl remind you just a little bit of that quirky speech pathologist of the late king of England (Geoffrey Rush)?

Author Look-Alikes: Vol. 9

It feels like time for another round of these, doesn’t it? I give you the stern, twin gazes of Jose Saramago and Alan Arkin:

And when you look at Margaret Atwood, don’t you half expect her to bring the house down in a Streisandian rendition of “Memories?” (Because I do.)

Then there’s Grace Paley. Keeping it real, no pretension, no time to brush her hair. She’s just gettin’ stuff done, a la Mrs. Weasley:

And since we’ve crossed over into the world of fantasy, let’s examine Lord of the Flies  author William Golding. He looks a bit like Lord of the Rings  hero Gandalf, three months after chemotherapy:

And this last one I’m not going to call a “look-alike” until someone can prove that both pictures are in fact not  one-and-the-same man. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for James Joyce, world-renowned author and banjo-playing contortionist:

Take us out, Jimmy-Jo!