Everybody doodles. There’s just something about an idle moment and a blank space on a page that invites a little design or two. Plus, there is some evidence that active doodlers are also active thinkers and imaginers. After all, John Keats doodled flowers in the margins of his manuscripts, and Leonardo DaVinci is famous for his love of doodling. There’s even a whole book dedicated to the doodles our various presidents have scribbled – we hope not while they were supposed to be paying attention to anything important. But everybody’s doodles are different – like dreams, they are culled directly from the loose bits floating around in our brains, and their expression is really only inhibited by the doodler’s physical abilities and/or hand-eye coordination. Authors – especially those who wrote with pens instead of those soulless computer things – are prime doodlers. They have a million ideas going through their heads at once, so it makes sense that something would spill out as a little drawing on the side. Check out our gallery of doodles by famous authors, and let us know what (if anything) you think it tells us about them.
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath liked to doodle in her diaries, creating illustrations of her life, her dreams, and in this case, her nightmare about being chased by a hot dog and a marshmallow.
[via Kool Things]
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace draws on Cormac McCarthy’s face. We doubt those glasses and fangs are anything less than respectful.
[via HRC]
Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov’s drawings and annotations on the first page of Kafka’s the Metamorphosis. He certainly had some thoughts about the language – or at least the translation.
[via Space in Text]
Also, Nabokov’s doodles of (what else?) butterflies on (what else?) a notecard.
[via LIFE]
Franz Kafka
And of course, Kafka’s own doodles, many of which have made their way into his books, particularly the man at the desk. Poor Franz.
Samuel Beckett
Beckett’s doodles from the “Watt” notebooks are as weird and wide as his writing.
[via HRC]
Allen Ginsberg
When recipients were willing, Ginsberg would often inscribe books with a little something extra. We’re not sure what to make of all the “AH”s – anyone know? Our best guess: the seed syllable ‘ah’ in ‘Om Ah Hum’.
[via Poet's Path]
Mark Twain
Okay, so these are more than idle doodles – they’re instructions to Twain’s printer regarding the weather indicators he drew at the start of each chapter, “to save the space usually devoted to explanations of the state of the weather in books of this kind.” Always thinking, that Mark Twain.
[via Twainia]
Henry Miller
From Miller’s insomniac period. Definitely the creations of an over-excited mind.
[via]
Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut’s doodles are well known, as they have been incorporated into many editions of his work and are even serving as elements of the covers in recent printings. However, that doesn’t make them any less great. You know what that asterisk is.
Charles Bukowski
This doodle is attached to a letter he wrote to the Sycamore Review, published in issue 3.2. We have no idea what it is supposed to be. A “good doggie”? A guy with a big nose and a bottle of whiskey? We don’t know.
[via Sycamore Review]
Jorge Luis Borges
[via NDU]
Borges’ self-portrait, drawn after he had gone blind.
Any theories on our doodlers or famous doodles we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments!
Comments (41)
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s doodles
http://shelleysghost.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/shelleys-notebooks
Great post. I wish all nerds were this cool.
E. E. Cummings has tons of doodles featuring naked women and copulating couples on drafts and notes for his poetry and lectures… probably need to get into the Harvard archive to see them, though. But trust me, they’re there.
Are Thurber’s doodles too famous? I’d nominate him, but I think his cartoons are as popular as his prose.
[...] 10. The idle doodles of famous authors. Like the one below from Sylvia Plath, who liked to doodle in her diaries, creating illustrations of her life, her dreams, and in this case, her nightmare about being chased by a hot dog and a marshmallow. [Flavorpill] [...]
David Sedaris once drew a stick of TNT in a book he signed for me.
[...] – Veel bekende schrijvers zoals Kafka en Allen Ginsberg maakten nogal wat krabbeltjes. [...]
In the mid-90s, Terry Pratchett autographed one of my copies of “Good Omens” with a big toothie Death’s-head grin (and what is probably his standard comment: “We made the Devil do it!”).
wow! so this happens :) thanks for sharing
I’m not the only one!
After his first reading here at the University of Oklahoma (in 1974?) I hosted a reception for Allen G. at my funky apartment — I had a can of “peach” colored spray paint and invited Allen to sign the ceiling over my bed with it. In large letters he managed “Al” in what looked almost like a peace signed. I slept for many years under that doodle.
[...] to a few fraught attempts at underlining), my joy of looking at others’ continues unchecked. Flavorwire has a brilliant piece on the doodles of writers, including Sylvia Plath, Franz Kafka and Samuel [...]
[...] Idle Doodles by Famous Authors [...]
Bukowski’s doodles are all over the place. His work was recently shown at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA. The image shown in this post is supposed to be a self-portrait with a bottle of booze.
I got to know Allen Ginsberg during the last few years of his life. I asked him about the “ah” picture he wrote in my copy of his cd-box set Holy Soul Jelly Roll, which was something he would often write “ah” as part of his signature/pictures/scribbles.
A devout Buddhist, Allen believed that the chant of “ah” was superior to that of the more common “om.” He felt that when you chant “om” you are closing yourself off from the rest of the world, but when you chant “ah” you are opening yourself up to the world and inviting the world inside you.
My father saw Ginsberg on the subway in New York City and excitedly gave him his copy of Howl, which was in his backpack. Ginsberg took it, opened the cover, and drew a crude map of Manhattan on the inside. I have it back home, I’ll try to dig it out and scan it and send it to you.
I saw a great collection of President’s doodles once-upon-a-time….
[...] this article on Flavorwire (thanks to Boldtype). This one’s my [...]
You gotta love Bukowski: if he wasn’t actually drinking, he was writing about it or drawing it. I bet that his tee shirts were walking billboards for booze; pub names, liquor brands all accompanied with one of those hats that dispense beer!
My grandmother did event and PR work for poet Anne Sexton and she signed a copy of “The Book of Folly” for her. Sexton also drew a dancing Tampon and wrote a poem to go with it. My grandmother asked why it was dancing and Sexton just winked back at her. The poem is quite good, though a bit graphic in some stanzas.
[...] site Flavorwire mostra rabiscos e desenhos feitos por autores como David Foster Wallace, Samuel Beckett e Allen [...]
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806966-doubly-gifted
Loved the blind Borges self portrait. Thank you for bringing it to us.
Noting:
- One Ginsberg “ah” — in a word bubble — seems to point to the only nippled bump on his doodled circular snake.
- I believe Gregor Samsa’s quilt would more readily slide off from his insect belly of “stiff arched segments,” as in Kafka, than from Nabokov’s “corrugated segments.”
[...] Her finner du flere forfatterkruseduller! [...]
[...] Encontré esta pequeña compilación con garabatos de Plath, Wallace, Nabokov, Kafka, Beckett, Ginsberg, Twain, Miller, Vonnegut, Bukowski y Borges. Copio acá a Plath y a Borges. Para los demás, clic acá. [...]
[...] Idle Doodles By Famous Authors [...]
[...] and it’s good to know I’m in good company when it comes to writing in other people’s books. books, personal, writers, writing [...]
Nabokov’s notecard with the butterflies also seems to have a doodle of Pushkin’s profile.
[...] Idle doodles by Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace, Vladimir Nabokov and others. [...]
[...] Flavorwire [...]
Wondering if Ginsberg’s “AH” is really an acronym for the Hebrew/Yiddish phrase that means rest in peace “Alav Hashalom?”
[...] has collected the doodles of famous authors, including Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace, Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, [...]
On Ginsberg’s “Ah”: Perhaps it is a reference to William Blake’s poem “Ah! Sunflower”? Ginsberg’s vision of Blake is well known, and that poem was definitely a favourite of his.
[...] interviews Stephanie Coontz on Fresh Air about her new book about The Feminine Mystique. Lastly: Doodles by famous authors! Shakespeare’s stolen folios! Paravion Press prints stories on postcards, and the Paris Review [...]
Surely, the man at Bukowski’s drawing must be yawning.
[...] пласт записникової культури може зникнути. На сайті «Flavorwire» знайшли дуже цікаву добірку замальовок відомих [...]
Wonderful piece! James Merrill was an “incessant doodler” according to a photo essay in “The Paris Review,” No. 182, Fall 2007. He even wrote a poem called “The Doodler” in fifteen drafts describing the poetic and visual imagining leading up to the thirteenth. Thanks for jogging my memory on this. I’m writing a chapter on Merrill as we speak.
[...] And Flavorwire shows you what some famous writers did with their sacred writing time: Writer’s doodles. [...]
[...] A wonderful selection of doodles from famous artists. The one above is from Sylvia Plath. See more at Flavorpill. [...]
[...] Encontré esta pequeña compilación con garabatos de Plath, Wallace, Nabokov, Kafka, Beckett, Ginsberg, Twain, Miller, Vonnegut, Bukowski y Borges. Copio acá a Plath y a Borges. Para los demás, clic acá. [...]
[...] via flavorwire [...]
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