Idle doodles by famous authors

Emily Temple on Flavorwire came up with a genius collection of doodles by famous writers. Read the whole piece here where there are more images. "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."

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.

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.

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.

Samuel Beckett Beckett’s doodles from the “Watt” notebooks are as weird and wide as his writing.

Henry Miller From Miller’s insomniac period. Definitely the creations of an over-excited mind.

See the full piece here.