Friday Eye Candy: Brain Candy, Wordsmith Edition

So I just read The Corrections, on Tracey's recommendation, and it occurred to me, as I lingered over the last few delicious pages, that I had maybe developed a whopping crush on Jonathan Franzen, the author.

You know what I mean by that, right? That overwhelming feeling of, oh, wow, I would just so love to curl up in this person's head, or, failing that, maybe just corner them with a bottle of scotch and demand that they explain their brilliance, which is not so much a book crush (where you fall in love with the characters or the lifeworld of the characters or the story or whatever) but a crush on the mind of the person who created a totally compelling literary space and seduced you therein with his or her words. THAT kind of crush.

I have a few of those. Franzen is the just the newest. I don't think he's the most intense of my writer crushes. That honor goes to...

... David Sedaris, who I just want to shrink down to pocket size and carry around with me in my coat, always. Figuratively, of course. He was in Utah recently, apparently. Dooce went to see him, which made me madly, madly jealous of Heather Armstrong. I have to make to do with YouTube David Sedaris, rather than Live In Utah David Sedaris, which, you know, feels like a rip-off:

I also, as you know, have a crush on Amy Sedaris, David Sedaris' sister, who totally counts as a writer because even though she mostly writes recipes and craft ideas and comedy scripts and tips for keeping rabbits, she manages, through sheer force of words, to make these things totally fascinating to me, which is something very close to a minor miracle.

And even though it's totally not fashionable to have writer crushes on British misanthropes, I can't help myself:

Martin Amis. Sorry. Can't help it. I also, as it happens, have a crush on Martin Amis' writing room:

Lady writer crush:

Joyce Carol Oates. Be still my wordy heart.

My longest-standing crush is, however, this lady:

Judy Blume. You never forget your first.

This list is by no means exhaustive - believe me, I could fill pages of virtual space writing odes to my writer crushes - and I've only here considered crushes on living writers. Throw dead writer crushes - you know, Herodotus, Stendhal, David Foster Wallace, et. al. - into the mix, and we'd need a whole 'nother blog (or edition of FEC, as it were.)

Share your writer crushes in the comments!

Comments

[Rhi]

Oh - it's wit that makes me all hott. I'd corner Douglass Adams with a bottle of scotch any day of the week.

[diamondcait]

How, oh, how did I forget JK Rowling?

[diamondcait]

And Lawrence Block. Great short stories and novels both.