Gorey's gone but not his song.

Edward Gorey

My pleasure piques on a bright day when I drive by a large sign with black lettering. The sign reads "Edward GOREY House." Gorey, having floated up to heaven from Cape in spring, 2000, has had his Yarmouth Port home turned into a museum. Best known for giving birth to bizarre ideas that combine horror with humor via fragmented plots and meticulous drawings, Gorey lives by his rules even after death. His peculiar writing remains like no other as does his artistry.

I was fortunate enough to go to Edward Gorey House's grand opening. On the outside old trees have been cleared away, revealing a sturdy gray home. On the inside are unfinished, half-this, half-that walls. Very quiet. Display cases include Gorey's favorite household items and work sketches. As you go through the halls large, black and white works include Gorey's "Dracula" poster (created for Brahm Stoker's theatre version). Then there's a children's room where kids can color, with a fund for animals.

About a block away on route 6-A, is Parnassus Bookstore, an old two-story building nearly overlapping the road. Further along, behind Northside Nursery on the left, is Jack's Out Back, locally famous cafeteria-style restaurant. Parnassus and Jacks were two favorite Gorey haunts. The bookstore’s owner knew "Ed" as a regular customer who would pop in on his way to Jacks.

Gorey's Books

One of Gorey's most popular books, The Doubtful Guest, is reported by Amazon.com as "serving as a prime example of the beauty, eccentricity, and brilliance of [his] work." The book involves a penguin-like creature wearing a scarf that enters the mansion of some pale humans. The doubtful guest tears books and peels its shoe soles. The funny part is after 17 years of terrorizing, the guest is still "showing no intention of going away."

In his autobiography Ascending Peculiarity, Gorey marvels over his own desire to disturb. Nowhere is this more evident than in the book The Loathsome Couple, Gorey's work about a couple named Mona and Harold who meet and discover they share an interest: killing children. Before readers realize what their mutual hobby is, an illustration of Mona and Harold looking at one another in their yard highlights these words: "In the autumn of that year they decided to embark upon their life's work" -- a few pages later Gorey draws an open door to a room. Beneath the drawing states, "They spent the better part of the night murdering the child in various ways."

What, you say, is inspiring about terror? What is inspiring is Gorey's way of confronting the subject: through twists of irony, rhyming couplets and oddest characters.

In 1998 Gorey created another of his renowned books, The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas. Bookpage contributor Alden Mudge interviewed Gorey in his Yarmouth Port home regarding the book which begins with a large bug-like creature jumping out from beneath a tea cosy. The following are excerpts:

"'I used to spend a lot of time anguishing over these things,' Gorey says. 'As the years have gone by, I've found...I think first ideas are just as good as endless revisions.'"

His train of thought Gorey explains, is motivated by Jane Austen / 19th-century English novels. He adores reading, and is in and out of local bookstores once, sometimes twice, a day.

Mudge's interview "concludes:"

"…Our conversation begins less than 15 minutes after the humiliating broadcast of President Clinton's grand jury videotape concludes.

'About a month ago, I decided I would give up the news the way I gave up smoking,' Gorey says...'I really do feel we're getting so far from reality...I'm hoping we'll go back to something primitive as soon as possible.'"

I ponder that last statement. Something primitive evokes the art and writing of high imagination, the sort that allows one to create whatever one darned well pleases, in no particular order.

*Links:

Edward Gorey House -- Want to go to Gorey's house? Check-out the link at http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/ When you get there, peruse the gifts you can buy: Gorey books, cards, even t-shirts!

Goreography -- Current / recent Gorey news, articles, interviews, and gifts: http://www.goreyography.com/west/west.htm