Born to Be Posthumous

by Mark Dery

  Like all of us, Gorey was a product of a time, a place, and his parents. Speaking of whom, his mother was too bourgeois to be crudely racist, but she wasn’t exactly progressive in her attitude toward persons of a dusky hue, either. An offhanded remark in one of her letters to Ted at Harvard speaks volumes: “Have you ever noticed the ads in Ebony magazine? I was hysterical over them—Ed had a copy out here and I was looking at it—they have all the same ads that the other magazines do, only they put in colored people. The colored elevator operator in Ed’s building asked him if when he was through with Ee-bōny he would let her have it.” (See Helen Garvey Gorey, letter to Edward Gorey, n.d., circa fall 1949, Edward Gorey Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.) Helen’s mockery of a looking-glass reality where “colored people” mimic the white world—to her a kind of reverse minstrelsy that is clownishly funny on its face—drips with amused condescension.

  How much of this half conscious, lightheartedly “benign” racism rubbed off on Gorey we don’t know. Ken Morton told me in an e-mail dated November 21, 2017, that he “never witnessed [Ted] speaking about race at all, in any context, positively, negatively, or neutrally. I think his views on race boil[ed] down to a kind of lack of awareness or obliviousness.” Of course that blind spot, equal parts obliviousness and insensitivity, is a distinguishing characteristic of white privilege, as it’s come to be called. Seen in a contemporary light, at a moment when Trumpism has emboldened white supremacists and activist voices like Black Lives Matter are demanding a racial justice long deferred, the whiteness of Gorey’s worldview—a truism evinced not only by his art but also by his literary and musical tastes—is striking.

  70 D. Keith Mano, “Edward Gorey Inhabits an Odd World of Tiny Drawings, Fussy Cats, and ‘Doomed Enterprises,’” People 10, no. 1 (July 3, 1978), 72.

  71 Edmund White, “The Story of Harold by Terry Andrews,” in “My Private Passion,” The Guardian, February 17, 2001, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/feb/17/classics.features.

  72 Terry Andrews, The Story of Harold (New York: Equinox Books / Avon, 1975), 254.

  73 M. G. Lord, e-mail message to the author, May 3, 2018. I’m entirely in Lord’s debt for her phallus-spotting abilities; somehow, Gorey’s in-joke snuck right by me.

  74 Carol Stevens, “An American Original,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 134.

  75 Robert Cooke Goolrick, “A Gorey Story,” New Times, March 19, 1976, 54.

  76 Philip Glassborow, “A Life in Full: All the Gorey Details,” The Independent on Sunday, March 23, 2003, 26–32.

  77 “1972—A Selection of Noteworthy Titles,” New York Times, December 3, 1972, 60.

  78 “Paper Back Talk,” New York Times, October 12, 1975, 301.

  79 Andreas Brown interviewed on “Afternoon Play: The Gorey Details,” BBC Radio 4 FM, March 27, 2003, http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3dac4cad956e4d2c9572f345ad064637.

  Chapter 12. Dracula: 1973–78

  1 John Wulp, “The Nantucket Stage Company,” chap. 13 in My Life, http://media.wix.com/ugd/29b477_d0aab61ced6f4a9db8c1ebd89125a360.pdf.

  2 Mel Gussow, “Gorey Goes Batty,” New York Times Magazine, October 16, 1977, 78.

  3 Stephen Fife, Best Revenge: How the Theatre Saved My Life and Has Been Killing Me Ever Since (Seattle: Cune Press, 2004), 184.

  4 Mel Gussow, “Broadway Again Blooms on Nantucket,” New York Times, July 9, 1973, 41.

  5 Edward Gorey [Wardore Edgy], Movies, SoHo Weekly News, May 30, 1974, 24.

  6 Edward Gorey [Wardore Edgy], Movies, SoHo Weekly News, March 28, 1974, 16.

  7 Edward Gorey [Wardore Edgy], Movies, SoHo Weekly News, March 14, 1974, 16.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Gorey [Wardore Edgy], Movies, SoHo Weekly News, March 28, 1974, 16.

  10 Gorey [Wardore Edgy], Movies, SoHo Weekly News, May 30, 1974, 24.

  11 Gorey [Wardore Edgy], Movies, SoHo Weekly News, March 14, 1974, 16.

  12 Quoted in Clifford Ross and Karen Wilkin, The World of Edward Gorey (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 181.

  13 Glen Emil, “The Envelope Art of Edward Gorey: Gorey’s Mailed Art from 1948 to 1974,” Goreyography, September 9, 2012, https://www.goreyography.com/west/articles/egh2012.html.

  14 Susan Sheehan, “Envelope Art,” New Yorker, July 8, 2002, 60.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Emil, “Envelope Art of Edward Gorey.”

  17 Color photocopies of twenty-six of the fifty envelopes Gorey mailed to Fitzharris were included in a 2012 exhibition at the Edward Gorey House, The Envelope Art of Edward Gorey: Gorey’s Mailed Art from 1948 to 1974. Fitzharris’s name was replaced with an anagrammatic pseudonym, Hart Sifmoritz, and his address was altered, presumably to protect his privacy, though why that should have been required after nearly forty years is a mystery.

  18 Ross and Wilkin, The World of Edward Gorey, 181.

  19 Raymond Chandler, The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction 1909–1959, ed. Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane (New York: Grove Press, 2000), 142–43.

  20 Gorey’s passport records his arrival in Scotland on August 28, 1975, at Glasgow’s Prestwick airport and his departure from the UK via Heathrow, in London, on September 23, 1975.

  21 Richard Dyer, “The Poison Penman,” in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, ed. Karen Wilkin (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 119.

  22 Skee Morton, letter to the author, August 21, 2012.

  23 Stephen Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” New Yorker, November 9, 1992, 89.

  24 Paul Gardner, “A Pain in the Neck,” New York, September 19, 1977, 68.

  25 Robert Dahlin, “Conversations with Writers: Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 26.

  26 Don McDonagh, “Gorey Sets Spice Eglevsky ‘Swan Lake,’” New York Times, November 3, 1975, 49.

  27 Arlene Croce, “Dissidents,” New Yorker, May 2, 1977, 136.

  28 The collaborative nature of the theater, like that of the movies, sometimes makes it difficult to assign credit—or blame—to specific individuals. Officially, Dracula’s scenery and costumes were by Gorey. Yet Dennis Rosa claimed, in an interview for this book, that the idea of adding a touch of blood red to each scene was his, not Gorey’s. “I had already decided that not only was it going to be black and white,” he told me, but also that “I wanted to add some color to it, and I thought it would be fun to add red—like, blood red.” John Wulp confirmed in my interview with him that the idea was indeed Rosa’s. That said, Gorey’s long-standing technique of adding a single brightly colored element to an otherwise monochromatic illustration, a gimmick he’d been using since the days of his Anchor covers, in the early 1950s, suggests that he was readily receptive to the idea, at the very least, and came up with clever ways of incorporating it into each scene.

  29 Carol Stevens, “An American Original,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 132.

  30 Gussow, “Gorey Goes Batty,” 78.

  31 Ibid., 74.

  32 David Ansen, “Dracula Lives!,” Newsweek, October 31, 1977, 75.

  33 T. E. Kalem, “Kinky Count,” Time, October 31, 1977, 93.

  34 “Faggot nonsense”: Quoted in David Bahr, “Bright Light of Broadway,” The Advocate, January 22, 2002, 67. “Homosexuals in the theater!”: Quoted in Harris M. Miller II, “Proper Priorities,” Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1985, http://articles.latimes.com/1985-04-14/entertainment/ca-8612_1_critic-theater-remarks.

  35 Bahr, “Bright Light of Broadway,” 67.

  36 John Simon, “Dingbat,” New York, November 7, 1977, 75.

  37 Ibid.

  38 Dick Cavett, “The Dick Cavett Show with Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 63–64.

  39 Ron Miller, “Edward Gorey, 1925–2000,” Mystery! website, http://23.21.192.150/mystery/gorey.html.

  40 Edward Gorey interviewed by Dick Cooke on The Dick Cooke Show, a Cape Cod–based weekly public-access cable TV program, circa 1996. DVD copy of videotape provided to the author by Christopher Seufert.


  41 “‘Dracula’ to Close Jan. 6,” New York Times, December 13, 1979, C17.

  42 Carol Stevens, “An American Original,” Print, January–February 1988, 61, 63.

  43 D. Keith Mano, “Edward Gorey Inhabits an Odd World of Tiny Drawings, Fussy Cats, and ‘Doomed Enterprises,’” People 10, no. 1 (July 3, 1978), 70.

  44 Cavett, “The Dick Cavett Show,” 55.

  45 Bill Cunningham, “Portrait of the Artist as a Furry Creature,” New York Times, January 11, 1978, 13.

  46 Quoted in Irwin Terry, “The Fur Designs of Edward Gorey,” Goreyana, October 14, 2012, http://goreyana.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-fur-designs-of-edward-gorey.html.

  47 Angela Taylor, “From Alixandre: Big Names, Sleek Shapes,” New York Times, May 20, 1979, 56.

  48 Georgia Dullea, “Gorey Turns His Talent to Window Shudders,” New York Times, June 3, 1978, Style section, 16.

  49 Faith Elliott, e-mail message to the author, October 23, 2012.

  50 Robert Cooke Goolrick, “A Gorey Story,” New Times, March 19, 1976, 54, 56.

  51 Joan Kron, “Going Batty,” New York Times, January 19, 1978, C3.

  52 Mel Gussow, “‘Gorey Stories’ Are Exquisite Playlets,” New York Times, December 15, 1977, C19.

  53 Jane Merrill Filstrup, “An Interview with Edward St. John Gorey at the Gotham Book Mart,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 33, 34, 36.

  54 John Corry, “‘Gorey Stories’ Could Drive an Author and a Director Batty,” New York Times, June 23, 1978, C2.

  55 Quoted in Dan Dietz, The Complete Book of 1970s Broadway Musicals (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 414.

  56 Carol Stevens, “An American Original,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 134.

  57 Dyer, “Poison Penman,” 122.

  58 Ibid.

  59 Skee Morton, e-mail message to the author, March 30, 2014.

  60 Stephen Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 151.

  61 Lisa Solod, “Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 95.

  62 Ibid., 96.

  63 Hoke Norris, “Chicago: Critic at Large,” Chicago Sun-Times, Book Week section, September 19, 1965, 6.

  Chapter 13. Mystery!: 1979–85

  1 Derek Lamb, “The MYSTERY! of Edward Gorey,” ANIMATIONWorld, July 1, 2000, http://www.awn.com/animationworld/mystery-edward-gorey.

  2 Edward Gorey interviewed by Christopher Seufert for The Last Days of Edward Gorey: A Documentary by Christopher Seufert, August 1999. Copy of unedited video footage provided to the author by Seufert.

  3 Lamb, “The MYSTERY! of Edward Gorey.”

  4 Gorey, Seufert interview.

  5 Ron Miller, Mystery!: A Celebration Paperback (San Francisco: KQED Books, 1996), 6.

  6 Sadly, few of Lamb’s animations of Gorey’s art survive in the latest redesign of the Mystery! title sequence. The opening now consists of a digital animation of a stylized book, its pages riffled by an invisible hand. A few snippets of the original Lamb-Gorey animations flash by at blink-and-you’ll-miss-them speed; the only Gorey element that spends more than a split second on-screen is part of the Mystery! logo—a grinning Gorey skull on a headstone, flashing a wink at the viewer. Happily, the original animations survive, albeit in blurry form, on YouTube.

  7 “Fantods: Viewer Complaints, 1984,” file folder at WGBH media archives, WGBH, Boston.

  8 Alastair Macaulay, “Ballet in London: NYCB and the Royal Go Toe to Toe,” New York Times, March 17, 2008, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/ballet-in-london-nycb-and-the-royal-go-toe-to-toe/.

  9 Amanda Vaill, Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins (New York: Broadway Books, 2006), 269.

  10 “Eliot’s ‘Cats’ Enjoys Spurt of New Interest,” New York Times, October 8, 1982, http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/08/theater/eliot-s-cats-enjoys-spurt-of-new-interest.html.

  11 Edward Gorey interviewed by Marion Vuilleumier for the Cape Cod public-access program Books and the World, 1982. Audiotape recording and transcript provided to the author by Christopher Seufert.

  12 T. S. Eliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 1.

  13 Karen Wilkin, “Edward Gorey: An Introduction,” in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, ed. Karen Wilkin (New York: Harcourt, 2001), xx.

  14 Paul Gardner, “A Pain in the Neck,” New York, September 19, 1977, 68.

  15 John Wulp, “John Wulp by John Wulp,” in John Wulp (New Caanan, CT: CommonPlace Publishing, 2003), 76.

  16 John Wulp, “NYU,” in My Life, 1, http://media.wix.com/ugd/29b477_cd30bbdb68b14c98a6b71ce685c9ae04.pdf.

  17 Robert Croan, “Updated ‘Mikado’ Is Found Wanting,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 20, 1983, 15.

  18 Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp: A Biography (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 451.

  19 Jennifer Dunning, “Performance Pays Tribute to Balanchine,” New York Times, May 1, 1983, http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/01/nyregion/performance-pays-tribute-to-balanchine.html.

  20 Clifford Ross, “Interview with Edward Gorey,” in The World of Edward Gorey, by Clifford Ross and Karen Wilkin (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 33.

  21 Alexander Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2000), 31–32.

  22 Dick Cavett, “The Dick Cavett Show with Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 61–62.

  23 Edward Gorey interviewed by Dick Cooke on The Dick Cooke Show, a Cape Cod–based weekly public-access cable TV program, circa 1996. DVD copy of videotape provided to the author by Christopher Seufert.

  24 Robert Dahlin, “Conversations with Writers: Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 43–44.

  25 Christopher Lydon, “The Connection,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 225.

  Chapter 14. Strawberry Lane Forever: Cape Cod, 1985–2000

  1 Tobi Tobias, “Balletgorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, ed. Karen Wilkin (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 16.

  2 Stephen Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 139.

  3 Andreas Brown, “2012 Hall of Fame Inductee: Edward Gorey,” Society of Illustrators website, https://www.societyillustrators.org/edward-gorey.

  4 Kevin McDermott, “The House,” in Elephant House: or, The Home of Edward Gorey, by Kevin McDermott (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications, 2003), n.p.

  5 Elizabeth Morton, “Before It Was the Gorey House,” Yarmouth Register, June 28, 2012, 9.

  6 David Streitfeld, “The Gorey Details,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 176.

  7 Alexander Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2000), 51.

  8 Mel Gussow, “At Home with Edward Gorey: A Little Blood Goes a Long Way,” New York Times, April 21, 1994, C1.

  9 Mel Gussow, “In ‘Tinned Lettuce,’ a New Body of Gorey Tales,” New York Times, May 1, 1985, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/01/theater/in-tinned-lettuce-a-new-body-of-gorey-tales.html?ref=edward_gorey.

  10 Edward Gorey interviewed by Marian Etoile Watson for the New York–based WNEW-TV/Channel 5 program 10 O’Clock Weekend News, 1985, archived on Mark Robinson’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rrzaif-DT4.

  11 Gussow, “In ‘Tinned Lettuce.’”

  12 Ibid.

  13 Ibid.

  14 Jane MacDonald interviewed by Christopher Seufert for The Last Days of Edward Gorey: A Documentary by Christopher Seufert, n.d. Unedited transcript provided to the author by Seufert.

  15 McDermott, preface to Elephant House, n.p.

  16 Irwin Terry, e-mail message to the author, September 29, 2015.

  17 Gussow, “In ‘Tinned Lettuce.’”

  18 Ron Miller, Mystery!: A Celebration Paperback (San Francisco: KQED Books, 1996), 7.

  19 This quotation, transcribed from an article about Gorey, seems to have come unstuck from its citation. To date, an exhaustive search hasn’t recovered the source of the passage quoted. Nonetheless, the substance of it—that bemused audienc
e members sometimes left before a performance was over and that Gorey’s hearty enjoyment of his entertainments was undiminished by such defections—is corroborated by Edward’s own remarks in published profiles and by comments from the Gorey players in my interviews with them.

  20 Edward Gorey interviewed by Dick Cooke on The Dick Cooke Show, a Cape Cod–based weekly public-access cable TV program, circa 1996. DVD copy of videotape provided to the author by Christopher Seufert.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Clifford Ross and Karen Wilkin, The World of Edward Gorey (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 184.

  23 Claire Golding, “Edward Gorey’s Work Is No Day at the Beach,” Cape Cod Antiques & Arts, August 1993, 21.

  24 Jack Braginton-Smith interviewed by Christopher Seufert for The Last Days of Edward Gorey: A Documentary by Christopher Seufert, circa summer 2002. Unedited audiotape provided to the author by Seufert.

  25 Ibid.

  26 Walpole, an eighteenth-century aesthete, wrote the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764); it was inspired by his vision, on waking from a dream, of a giant armored fist on the staircase. Very Gorey. Also very Gorey was Walpole’s manor, a fantasy castle that sparked the Gothic revival of the 1800s. From the outside, it’s a Gothic wedding cake, all white stucco battlements and pinnacles; on the inside, it’s a “rococo gothick” fantasia, with ornate vaulted ceilings and serpentine passageways inspired by Gothic cathedrals and medieval tombs.

  27 Braginton-Smith, Seufert interview.

  28 Alexander Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, rev. ed. (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2011), 117.

  29 John Madera, “Bookforum talks to Alexander Theroux,” Bookforum, December 23, 2011, http://www.bookforum.com/interview/8796.

  30 Theroux, Strange Case, rev. ed., 20.

  31 Ibid., 31–32.

  32 Theroux’s most glaring error is his assertion, on page 166 of the revised edition, that Gorey’s ashes “were strewn over the waters at Barnstable Harbor on a day overcast and gray and hammering with rain”; in fact, it was a radiantly sunny day without a cloud in the sky. There are others: on page 135 of the same edition, Theroux cites “When in doubt, twirl” as “one of [Gorey’s] more well-known and often-repeated quotes”; in fact, that aphorism belongs to the choreographer Ted Shawn, as Gorey himself noted in the original quotation.