What 7 Classic Literary Characters’ Dick Pics Would Look Like

Ah, dick pics. They’re as much a part of modern life as push notifications and Rihanna’s Instagram, and yet they’re noticeably absent from the literary universe. The greatest authors of the 20th century didn’t tend to concern themselves with the phenomenon — largely because it didn’t exist in its monstrous current form yet — and precious few pages of classic novels have been dedicated to dissecting this low-brow art form.

It’s time we addressed this oversight, and I’m the person to take up the mantle. Being well and truly a creature of the Internet age, I can’t go more than a couple of days at a time without thinking deeply about dick pics. I’ve run Critique My Dick Pic (NSFW; actually, just go ahead and assume that all the following links are NSFW) for more than three years, a website that works exactly as it sounds: I receive thousands of dick pics and critique selected submissions according to their photographic merits, considering elements such as the lighting, angle, and pose and finishing each review with a bold letter grade (“Thank you for submitting to Critique My Dick Pic. Your dick pic gets an A+”).

The thing about seeing upwards of 5,000 penis pictures in a few short years is that it’s made me good at guessing what any particular punter’s effort would look like. So I turned my imagination to the protagonists of seven classic novels to answer the question on everyone’s lips: “What would my favorite literary character’s dick pic look like?”

Sal Paradise (On The Road, Jack Kerouac)

Sal is the kind of fake-deep backpacker type who would put “sapiosexual” in his Tinder bio but ignore smart women who don’t happen to look like Nadya from Pussy Riot, so of course he’d take a terrible dick pic and think it was brilliant. His dick pic would be a bog-standard log shot but he’d send it with a caption two paragraphs long, explaining how he’d noticed the way the sunlight was streaming through the window on an idle morning (read: while jacking off) and decided to “capture the eroticism of the moment” by whipping down his pants and snapping a rudimentary birds-eye-view shot of his semi-erect penis. His underwear and feet would be visible in the shot and he’d send the same picture to four different women, each of whom would flinch upon opening it.

Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee)

Atticus Finch would experiment privately with taking, but never send, a dick pic — which is a shame, because the end result would be a phenomenally artistic shot. He’d include his entire body within the frame and pay meticulous attention to the lighting, pose and setting, carefully considering each component and creating dozens of drafts until the final result was perfect. After he’d crafted an exquisite final product — a dick print, not a full-blown cock shot, because he knows the value of subtlety — he’d suddenly feel self-conscious, guiltily deleting all the evidence. Not a single woman would ever know how good Atticus Finch’s dick pic was, but he’d know.

Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger)

Holden Caulfield is a teenager and it’s gross to imagine what even a fictional minor’s dick pic would look like. I’m not some kind of sicko.

Winston Smith (1984, George Orwell)

Within the confines of the 1984 universe, Winston could never find the requisite moment of privacy to take a dick pic — which is a good thing for Julia, because his dick pic would be an artless and utilitarian advertisement for size. In an earnest attempt to accurately represent his erectile measurements, Winston would include a beer bottle for scale, rendering his dick pic acutely unerotic and laying bare his painful insecurity about his perfectly average penis.

Mr. Darcy (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen)

Too elitist and humorless to create one of of his own accord, Mr. Darcy would take a dick pic only at Elizabeth’s insistence. “I dearly love to laugh!” Lizzy would badger, and surly old Darce would reluctantly oblige, taking a hurried and ultimately blurry dick pic to the great delight of his sarcastic wife, who’d roast him relentlessly afterwards.

Meursault (The Stranger, Albert Camus)

Meursault’s dick pic would be an extreme close up of the head of his penis, capturing the veins, glans and frenulum in graphic, clinical detail. He’d be as coolly indifferent to Marie’s response as the universe is to him, and he’d consider the entire process of capturing his reproductive organs on film in the hope of causing a fleeting moment of arousal an allegory for how meaningless everything truly is. In other words, Meursault would be a dick pic bore.

Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Jay Gatsby would bring the full force of the most state-of-the-art photographic technology to his dick pic production, yet still manage to create an underwhelming shot. He’d employ tripods and make overinvolved use of diffusers and reflectors, all for the sake of a middling, C-grade photograph. Gatsby’s dick pic wouldn’t be bad per se but it would be painfully overproduced, and Daisy would feel faint pity at how hard he’d hard he’d tried to impress her. Were the technology available to him, he’d 100% slap on a Clarendon filter.