A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

It was a terrible year for physically unattractive writers of literary novels. Even Al Gore didn't have such a bad year compared with physically unattractive writers of literary novels. In the publishing industry, the term "literary novel" is used to distinguish serious attempts at fiction from novels like, say, Love Story--the trash classic that the aforementioned Gore got in Dutch for suggesting was based partly on him. (The mix-up, as I understand it, came from Gore's impression that he was the model for the main character, Oliver Barrett IV, when in fact he'd been the model for a Harvard Yard lamppost...

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