We Ran Literature’s Most Recognizable Faces Through the Google Arts Selfie App

Which painting does David Foster Wallace look like? We found out so you don’t have to

This week, everyone on the internet (who isn’t in Illinois or Texas or outside the U.S.) has been taking selfies with the Google Arts and Culture app, hoping to be matched with their perfect fine art doppelganger. But what if you ran literary leading lights like Virginia Woolf, Claudia Rankine, and Kurt Vonnegut through the same process? We let Google do its art-world magic on 17 of the most recognizable faces in writing, and came up with some stunning matches—and a few head-scratchers. (All results are 100% real, and all screenshots are unedited except for Stephen King and Donna Tartt, whose best results could only be achieved with a lower-quality photo but were too good to pass up.)

George Eliot

James Baldwin

Walt Whitman

Gertrude Stein

Margaret Atwood

Zadie Smith

David Foster Wallace

Donna Tartt

Claudia Rankine

Oscar Wilde

Michael Chabon

Stephen King

Junot Diaz

Jamaica Kincaid

Kurt Vonnegut

George R.R. Martin

Virginia Woolf