Edward Gorey
(February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000)
This goes out by special request to my friend Marc Ponomareff.
This goes out by special request to my friend Marc Ponomareff.
Pity the poor books editors in the 1950s when confronted with yet another manuscript by the persistent Edward Gorey. Back then no one knew quite what to call his small gems with their manic pen-and-ink illustrations of overstuffed drawing rooms, set somewhere between the Edwardian era and the 1920s, and with punch lines taken from the unspeakable horror of their well-dressed characters’ untimely demises.
The rest of the article is here and well worth the time to read, as it contains several humorous anecdotes that depict the eccentric Gorey quite well.
“The Curious Sofa,” which was published under the anagrammatic name “Ogdred Weary” and contains the immortal line: “Still later Gerald did a terrible thing to Elsie with a saucepan.”
“My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible. I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that's what the world is like.”
An Alphabet Book
“All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.... You can describe all the externals of a performance - everything, in fact, but what really constitutes its core. Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is what's left over after you've explained everything else.”
“Nonsense really demands precision. Like in the Jumblies. Their heads are green and their hands are blue. And they went to sea in a sieve. Which is all quite concrete, goofy as it is.”
~Edward Gorey
Interviewer: What is your greatest regret?
Gorey: That I don't have one”
“What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.”
"Books. Cats. Life is good.”
(Note to readers: I've had a lot of problems with the template, which have resulted in changes to the look of the blog and with which I am not at all happy. Until I find something that works and that I can live with visually, this will have to do. If you have any suggestions or comments about what the new look, please let me know.)
~Gina
Web resources for all things Gorey
Review of Ascending Peculiarity, a compilation of interviews with Edward Gory.
+Young+Spanish+Woman+with+a+Guitar+1899.jpg)
.jpg)
