Do you ever wonder what your favorite characters actually look like? There’s a tweet today by Mulholland Books that asked if readers ever wondered what Michael Connelly thinks Harry Bosch should look like. Here is the interview the author did with Mark Billingham (it’s a two part series):
MB: Have you always had a strong visual sense of Bosch?
MC: Yeah, I have, but I don’t put it in the books. I don’t have a lot of descriptions of him. I like it when the reader can build their own character or attach it to someone they know, or a movie star or TV star or something like that.
That’s the way I prefer it to be and he stopped short of actually naming anybody. I’m one of those readers who have a very firm picture in her head about how Harry Bosh looks or even Harry Hole (Jo Nesbø) for that matter. One of the things I don’t like is when a writer says their protagonist looks like the hottest actor/actress on TV or film. Descriptions like that can ruin the book for me. Okay that’s a bit exaggerated. It can be somewhat annoying how about that? What is the point of reading than to use one’s own imagination?
I have been way off when my picture of the character clashes with the author’s. What a laugh. In my head I’m going: really? At the end of the day I stick to my picture anyway. LOL. I avoid visual depictions of my favorite characters when and wherever possible. Diana Gabaldon’s fans love to draw Jamie and Claire from the Outlander series and I run the other way when I see them because I don’t want anyone messing with the image I have in my mind already. Even after seeing them it still does nothing to remove the ironclad image I have of them. That’s not always true for everybody else though. There have been some horrible depictions of characters on the big screen, in graphic novels and so on.
Film adaptations are the same. I turn the other way. There are exceptions of course. For me, I may imagine the character wrong. I may add something I like or take away something I don’t. Or totally missed the picture completely. That’s the power of the reader’s imagination: to have characters be whatever you want them to be, right? I think so. Right or wrong. In closing I must mention that the cinema produced two depictions of Lisbeth Salander, but who had the right one? The Swedish or the Americans? or neither? I tend to go with neither. Share your thoughts.
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Notes: pic credit goes to 123RF.com
I’d always had trouble visualising Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano. I couldn’t square the enormous meals with the swimming (and the women throwing themselves at him). The star of the TV version, Luca Zingaretti, has muddied the water further – nothing like any of the versions I’d imagined.
The various Swedish Wallanders are all in the right ballpark, but Kenneth Branagh? No.
I still need to read Camilleri’s books and I’ve heard all kinds of complaints about Branagh’s Wallander. Thanks for the comment!
Great topic. I like to have my own picture too. I prefer when authors keep descriptions somewhat vague, or say things like “thin, intelligent face” and you can picture that how you want. (I think Reginald Hill described Pascoe as looking like a young man from the Home Office). One thing that annoys me about a lot of romance and UF is the author’s need to define attractiveness FOR us by describing every detail.
Exactly! and it’s not even necessary. I prefer vague descriptions too where readers can fill in their own details. Thanks Liz!
I always pictured Spenser as Robert B. Parker because Parker’s description’s were so much like his own life. Now if Mr. Parker were still around, he might disagree with me, but Spenser will always be Parker for me.
In Robyn Carr’s Virgin River books, I always pictured Jack Sinclair as Stacy Keach. Why? I don’t know, but that picture is firmly in my head, and I can’t get rid of it.
Other than the 2 examples above, I usually just have rather generic images of characters. I don’t really like to see depictions on the screen, because they usually don’t coincide with my own.
One more thought. I always liked Sean Connery’s depiction of James Bond far more than I liked Ian Fleming’s books. Okay, I’ll stop now.
Hi Bev, I have a generic picture of Spencer. A young Spencer but his face/looks are not clear to me yet. An aside, I see that Ace Atkins seems to have pleased Spencer fans with his continuing the series. While reading The Maltese Falcon, I clearly saw Humphrey Bogart. Thanks for the comment.