Some of my dearest friends, God bless them, loved my book, but worried that my font is too personal, too friendly, too feminine, even. They worried that I would not be taken seriously. They insisted that writers must always and only select a dry, mechanical font that uses sharp serifs and rigid geometric forms with strokes almost Greek in their perfection. You must write in a serious font to get taken seriously, they said. Try Bembo or Bookman, if you want to be regarded as an “authority” on designer writing. But where is the personality, the body language of my thoughts? Where am I, where is Valerie Kirschenbaum, in Bembo? Who recognizes me? I do not even recognize myself. It is as if my thoughts have been homogenized and my soul — my visual soul — has been sterilized.

It is not yet a concept for a writer to design his or her own font. But just as Goudy recognized the need for corporations to brand themselves through fonts, some day writers will brand themselves with fonts, too. The next generation of Kings and Crichtons, Steeles and Sontags, will bear the names not only of writers, but of fonts, too.

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