Jonathan Franzen's author photo

Before Jonathan Franzen's days were filled by snubbing Oprah, apologizing for snubbing Oprah, being attacked in Salon for snubbing Oprah and being obliquely praised in the New York Post for snubbing Oprah, he had time to get an author photo taken. Specifically, the one above on the left.

Author photos provide a seemingly unlimited but actually pretty narrow set of choices. If you're not too cool to include a photo of yourself at all, and you don't want to go the absurdist Dave Eggers route ("This is not their dog,") then you're pretty much stuck going with the posed art photo. And once you hire a portrait artist — say, Annie Leibovitz — it's easy to justify, even for the most vanity-impaired writer. I'm an artist, you think. She's an artist. I'm working with an artist.

But what happens if you get a really good photo? We're talking about a photo that doesn't look like any other photo that's ever been taken of you, a photo that, if you used it to place an Internet personal ad, would be used in the site's own advertising for years, or at least much longer than any relationship between you and your disappointed tryst-mate would last.

If you're Jonathan Franzen, you use the photo.

Admittedly, it's possible that the AP photo of him on the right above may actually be a less accurate representation of him than his author photo. Maybe he had just finished forming an especially unflattering word. Maybe he was trying to smirk and beam at the same time, a classic pitfall. But it's not like one of them looks like a picture of Franzen from one angle and the other one looks picture of him from another angle. They are far too different.

The photos aren't clearly of two different people, although it's plausible that they are. The glasses are obviously the same between the two pictures. Beyond that, it's hard to tell. If the man in the first one began simultaneously sweating and smiling, would he look like the second one? Perhaps, perhaps not. The man in the first photo is simply sexier than the man in the second photo.

The first one is a hunky TV lawyer, perhaps Harry Hamlin in his "L.A. Law" days. The second one is a nebbishy assistant professor of applied mathematics.

The first one has a few hairs out of place. This is important. If you were going to go through all the trouble of having an author photo taken to show you in the best possible lighting and at the best possible angle, you'd make sure your hair was perfect, right? So this must be a candid glimpse of what he really looks like.

The second one clearly displays a bit of a double chin. But to dwell on that is to miss the point. Cover it up with your hand — see, still different.

Both of them, one should note, look much younger than Franzen's age of 42.

The first one says, "I am very serious. But beneath my piercing high-literary-tradition gaze lurks the smoldering energy of a social novelist." The second one says, "These results have numerous applications in graph theory and might eventually contribute to a hyperlogarithmic solution to the shortest-path problem."

The disconnect is so great that the only way you can wrap your mind around it is to imagine the two Jonathan Franzens existing in parallel universes, in a sort of split screen. You can move at will between these universes, and often do. As with most whimsical unifying theories created by "clever" writers, it accounts for a lot of the foibles of everyday life. "Sorry, I forgot the rent check — left it in the hunky-Franzen universe again." But the only time you'll really experience the full import of living in a dual-Franzened environment is when you have a date with both of them — on the same night!

Hunky Jonathan Franzen: "So, I was looking at owning another Francis Bacon — you are familiar with Francis Bacon's work, right?"

Nebbishy Jonathan Franzen: "I mean, it was like the coverage of the Lewinsky scandal outdid the actual scandal! And then the coverage of the coverage — it was just crazy! You read Brill's Content, right?"

It should be noted that you can be in both universes at once when you're talking to both Franzens, but you have to say the same thing to both of them.

Hunky: "Oh, I wouldn't order the terrine. It's very hit-or-miss here."

Nebbishy: "You have to try the challah French toast here!"

Really, they're both quite charming, you think. Both of them have this literary affect that you find so adorable. Which one are you going to see next week? You can't keep up this charade much longer. You're not sure what to do. Fortunately, they settle it for you.

Nebbishy: "Uh, listen, I heard that there's that new movie out...you know, by the guy who did Dazed and Confused...it's supposed to be really interesting."

Hunky: "I'll call you."

— Julia Lipman (julia@flakmag.com)