Edward Gorey

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A while back, Google changed its logo to commemorate Edward Gorey’s 88^th birthday.

 

 

Gorey was an illustrator. I still have some paperback books from the 1960s and 1970s with covers drawn by Gorey. (His style is unmistakeable: scratchy, mock-Victorian, mock-Gothic.)

 

 

But all the while, quietly, he was publishing his own little books: children’s alphabets, morality stories, horror stories, and limericks.

 

 

If you ever watched “Mystery!” on PBS, you’ve seen Gorey’s work; that wonderful animation at the beginning, with sighing women and huge urns crashing on people’s head. Here it is:

 

 

 

 

Gorey passed away in 2000. He lived on the north shore of Cape Cod, in Yarmouthport, Massachusetts. Partner and I have visited his house; it’s a big rambling structure, with a huge bay laurel tree in the yard.

 

 

Gorey collected things. There are buckets full of doorknobs on display! (Older American readers will remember Aunt Clara, on the TV show “Bewitched,” who always had doorknobs in her purse. It’s a sweet affectation to collect doorknobs. To be sure, they can be very pretty.)

 

 

I snatched a laurel leaf from the yard before we left, and pressed it in my ancient copy of “Amphigorey.”

 

 

Happy 88^th, Edward. We miss you.

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Chapter books and picture books

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Last summer, my assistant Ezra said: “Are you going to the bookstore at lunch today? Because I want to go with you.”

 

 

“Why?” I said. “You want a book? I can pick it up for you.”

 

 

“No,” he said with certainty. “It’s the new Game of Thrones book. It’s the first one in six years. I want to buy it myself.”

 

 

So we went to the (now defunct) Borders Bookstore, and I turned him loose.

 

 

He was immensely happy, and I left him alone with his prize. I wandered off to the “graphic novel” section, and browsed for a few minutes, and rejoined him shortly with a big black-and-white Superman anthology. “What’s that?” he said suspiciously.

 

 

“It’s an anthology of some comic books from my childhood,” I said happily.

 

 

He looked down on me (seriously: he was at least five inches taller than me) with disdain.

 

 

He was buying a chapter book and I was buying a picture book.

 

 

Well, so what? I love my picture books. Some of them remind me of my childhood, which is reason enough. Some are artistic / beautiful, which is reason enough again. Some are profound and moving (like “Maus”). Some are just for fun, like my comic anthologies, or my volumes of Lynda Barry and George Herriman and Edward Gorey.

 

 

To quote Charles Dodgson (from - surprise! - a chapter book!):

 

 

 “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'”

 

 

Amen, sister.

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