Richard: Dear Mr. Heaney Seamus:

Thank you for your prompt response to the Swedish Academy’s request for a recent head shot, which we intend to use on the revamped Nobel Prize website. Providing the public with up-to-date information on Nobel laureates—the living ones, anyway—is very important to us and to our constituents around the globe.

However, the review committee feel there are a couple of problems with the image you submitted—the most obvious being that it is not, in fact, a head shot. In fact, your head is the very thing missing from the shot. Perhaps that’s some of your much-vaunted irony. Or perhaps you intended to make a pun on the male genitalia—although that seems a bit lowbrow. Even for you.

Furthermore, the committee find the background of the photo a bit cluttered and “personal”. Of course, we appreciate that you read quite a lot (though it appears the bulk of your library consists of paperbacks, which seems potentially unwholesome). However, we feel that a more conventional head shot against a simpler background—one of your native potato fields, perhaps?—would better serve our purposes.

On a personal note, for many years I have wondered if the carpet indeed matches the drapes, so to speak; I am glad to see that they do, and that the former still shows no hint of gray. You are a paragon of Irish virility, Seamus.

I thank you in advance for your attention to this matter and look forward to receiving a new headshot from you in the very, very, very near future.

David: I have a congenital phobia that remains unnamed by science. This psychological disturbance involves extreme panic at the sight of books being abused. It’s difficult for me to even type out my critique of this interior as the constant tearing of my eyes, uncontrollable hand shaking and gastrointestinal cramping is restricting my abilitttty tupdoe e&j@09340 to TTYyPE ttttt ttype…
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Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

Curtis: It’s amazing that there is no support structure holding these immense volumes of information in place. Nothing, it seems, but the magic of gravity, physics, and a little spit to brace this triumphal arch of wisdom against the wall. Normally I’d say that using any kind of chair or other furniture to buttress the ascending portions of the structure would be cheating, but I’m so immensely impressed with the span and breadth of the run that I cannot help but applaud this intensely human monument.

Also of some note is the naked man with a glowing head who stands in defiant obstruction of the left section of the piece.