by Mark Dery
33 Discussing The Strange Case, an interviewer asked Theroux, “What kind of source material did you have?…Did you keep notes over the years?” He replied that the source material for firsthand quotes was “nothing but talking to him and my own reveries,” which suggests that he relied not on tape-recorded interviews but on his recollections—an iffy proposition for anyone but a mnemonist. See Tom Spurgeon, “Alexander Theroux on Edward Gorey,” The Comics Reporter, February 22, 2011, http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/index/cr_interview_alexander_theroux_on_edward_gorey/.
34 Theroux, Strange Case, rev. ed., 28.
35 Ibid., 32–33.
36 Ibid., 43.
37 Ibid., 97.
38 Ibid., 103.
39 Ibid., 118, 123.
40 Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” in A Susan Sontag Reader (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 106.
41 Golding, “Edward Gorey’s Work Is No Day at the Beach,” 21.
42 Edward Gorey interviewed by Christopher Seufert for The Last Days of Edward Gorey: A Documentary by Christopher Seufert. Copy of unedited audiotape provided to the author by Seufert.
43 Johnny Ryan, e-mail message to the author, April 25, 2014.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Simon Henwood, “Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 161.
48 Gussow, “At Home with Edward Gorey,” C4.
49 Craig Little, “Edward Gorey Finds Designs in Fantasy,” Cape Cod Times, December 24, 1979, 15.
50 Gussow, “At Home with Edward Gorey,” C4.
51 McDermott, “The Television Room,” in Elephant House, n.p.
52 Golding, “Edward Gorey’s Work Is No Day at the Beach,” 21.
53 Gorey, Seufert interview.
54 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” 138.
55 Edward Gorey interviewed by Martha Teichner for Out of the Inkwell segment, CBS News Sunday Morning, April 20, 1997. Digital copy of VHS tape provided to the author by Christopher Seufert.
56 Leo Seligsohn, “A Merrily Sinister Life of His Own Design,” Providence Sunday Journal, June 25, 1978, E2.
57 Ken Morton interviewed by Mindy Todd on The Point for the Cape Cod–based NPR affiliate WCAI, February 27, 2014, http://capeandislands.org/post/edward-gorey-lives-documentary#stream/0.
58 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” 138.
59 Golding, “Edward Gorey’s Work Is No Day at the Beach,” 21.
60 McDermott, “The Kitchen,” in Elephant House, n.p.
61 McDermott, preface to Elephant House, n.p.
62 Jean Martin, “The Mind’s Eye: Writers Who Draw,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 89.
63 Clifford Ross, “Interview with Edward Gorey,” in The World of Edward Gorey, by Clifford Ross and Karen Wilkin (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 29.
64 Martin, “Mind’s Eye,” 88.
65 Gorey, Teichner interview.
66 Gussow, “At Home with Edward Gorey,” C4.
67 Martin, “Mind’s Eye,” 89.
68 McDermott, “The Studio,” in Elephant House, n.p.
69 Christopher Seufert to Jack Braginton-Smith in his interview with Braginton-Smith.
70 Christine Davenne, Cabinets of Wonder (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2012), 204.
71 John Forrester, Dispatches from the Freud Wars: Psychoanalysis and Its Passions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 115.
72 Werner Muensterberger, Collecting: An Unruly Passion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 232.
73 “‘Desperate and childless’ woman”: April Benson, “Collecting as Pleasure and Pain,” New York Times, December 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/12/29/why-we-collect-stuff/collecting-as-pleasure-and-pain. “Invests in objects”: Jean Baudrillard, “The System of Collecting,” in The Cultures of Collecting, ed. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 10.
74 I asked the developmental psychologist Uta Frith, a pioneering researcher of autism (specifically, Asperger’s syndrome), if Gorey’s flattened affect and peculiar social style—his cool, aloof air in crowds; his lack of physical demonstrativeness; his avoidance of the sort of how’s-the-family chitchat most people use to establish rapport—placed him on the autism spectrum. Her answer was “a resounding no.” Noting, as a disclaimer, the difficulties of posthumous diagnosis, she enumerated the reasons she felt confident saying that Gorey was in all likelihood not autistic: “1. Gorey’s hallmark irony is incompatible with autism. 2. A keen eye for subtle cues is incompatible with autism.” As for his “cool, aloof style, uninterested in chitchat,” this could, in theory, be a consequence of autism, she allowed, “but there can be more than one reason for aloofness. Some personalities are more introverted and hence seem aloof. Some don’t show emotions as much as others, perhaps [because of] their upbringing…or being cagey and wishing to avoid invasion of their privacy.” See Uta Frith, e-mail message to the author, March 6, 2012.
Steve Silberman, the author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, had an interesting take on why Gorey might be perceived as autistic, even if he wasn’t. “There’s no clear boundary to the spectrum,” he told me. “As Lorna Wing, the cognitive psychologist who coined the term [Asperger’s syndrome], says, the spectrum shades imperceptibly into eccentric normality”—a description that fits Gorey to a T. See Steve Silberman, e-mail message to the author, March 23, 2012.
76 Carol Verburg interviewed by Christopher Seufert for The Last Days of Edward Gorey, September 2001. Transcript provided to the author by Seufert.
77 Muensterberger, Collecting: An Unruly Passion, 233.
78 Ed Pinsent, “A Gorey Encounter,” Speak, Fall 1997, 47.
79 Ibid.
80 Gorey, Teichner interview.
81 McDermott, “The Entrance Room,” in Elephant House, n.p.
82 Gorey, Teichner interview.
83 McDermott, “The Entrance Room,” n.p.
84 Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (Point Reyes, CA: Imperfect Publishing, 2008), 7.
85 Leonard Koren, “The Beauty of Wabi Sabi,” Daily Good, April 23, 2013, http://www.dailygood.org/story/418/the-beauty-of-wabi-sabi-leonard-koren/.
86 McDermott, “The Living Room,” in Elephant House, n.p.
87 Edward Gorey, “Edward Gorey: Proust Questionnaire,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 187.
88 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” 149.
89 Edward Gorey, “Miscellaneous Quotes,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 240.
90 Quoted in S[arane] Alexandrian, Surrealist Art (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1970), 141.
91 Marcel Jean, History of Surrealist Painting (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 251.
92 Gorey, Teichner interview.
93 Ibid.
94 Julien Levy, Surrealism (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1995), 102.
95 McDermott, “The Alcove,” in Elephant House, n.p.
96 Gorey, Teichner interview.
97 Tom Haines, “E Is for Edward Who Died on the Cape,” Boston Globe, June 9, 2002, M5.
98 Fascinatingly, the Black Doll turns out to have been based on a homemade figurine Gorey once owned. “A friend of mine made the original Black Doll—which, I believe, I left in a hotel room somewhere,” he said in a 1998 interview. (See Ascending Peculiarity, 205.) According to the Edward Gorey House website, Gorey learned in ’42 that a friend—Connie Joerns—was making a doll for him; when he saw it in its half finished state, he insisted that she leave it faceless and armless. (See “The Black Doll Doll,” The Gorey Store, http://www.goreystore.com/shop/accessories/edward-gorey-black-doll-doll.) “It disappeared in the ’40s and it’s never been seen again,” he said. Yet it clearly left such an indelible imprint on his imagination that it lived on in his art for the rest of his life.
99 John Updike, foreword to Elephant House, n.p.
100 Edward Gorey, letter
to Peter Neumeyer, in Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer, ed. Peter F. Neumeyer (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications, 2011), 187.
101 Ibid., 188.
102 Theroux, Strange Case, 2000 ed., 20.
103 Richard Dyer, “The Poison Penman,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 112.
Chapter 15. Flapping Ankles, Crazed Teacups, and Other Entertainments
1 Christopher Lydon, “The Connection,” in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, ed. Karen Wilkin (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 220.
2 Ed Pinsent, “A Gorey Encounter,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 189.
3 Robert Dahlin, “Conversations with Writers: Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 48.
4 Annie Nocenti, “Writing The Black Doll: A Talk with Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 206.
5 Eric Edwards interviewed by Christopher Seufert for The Last Days of Edward Gorey: A Documentary by Christopher Seufert, September 2001. Unedited transcript provided to the author by Seufert.
6 Nocenti, “Writing The Black Doll,” 207.
7 Ibid., 206.
8 Carol Verburg, Edward Gorey Plays Cape Cod ([San Francisco?]: Boom Books, 2011), 13.
9 Nocenti, “Writing The Black Doll,” 206.
10 Edward Gorey interviewed by the Boston-based TV and radio interviewer Christopher Lydon, circa 1992. Unedited audiotape. Copy of tape provided to the author by Christopher Seufert.
11 Ibid.
12 Edward Gorey, “A Design for Staging the ‘Horace’ of Corneille in the Spirit of the Play,” December 6, 1947, 3, Edward Gorey Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
13 Ibid., 4.
14 Verburg, Edward Gorey Plays Cape Cod, 26.
15 Ibid., 27.
16 Patti Hartigan, “As Gorey as Ever: Macabre Artist Delights in Sending Shivers Down People’s Spines,” Boston Globe, September 3, 1990, Living section, 37.
17 Verburg, Edward Gorey Plays Cape Cod, 23.
18 Edwards, Seufert interview.
19 Jane MacDonald interviewed by Christopher Seufert for The Last Days of Edward Gorey: A Documentary by Christopher Seufert, n.d. Unedited audiotape provided to the author by Seufert.
20 Jane MacDonald interview with the author in Chatham, Massachusetts, circa 2010.
21 George Liles, “Quirky Language Fills ‘Elephants,’” Sunday Cape Cod Times, August 19, 1990, 52.
22 George Liles, “Gorey’s Salome Takes Wrong Turn,” Cape Cod Times, February 6, 1995, B6.
23 Pinsent, “A Gorey Encounter,” 190.
24 Lydon, “The Connection,” 221.
25 Ibid., 222.
26 Gorey, Lydon interview.
27 Carol Verburg interviewed by Christopher Seufert for The Last Days of Edward Gorey: A Documentary by Christopher Seufert, September 2001. Transcript provided to the author by Seufert.
28 MacDonald, Seufert interview.
29 Verburg, Seufert interview.
30 Carol Verburg, phone interview with the author, April 29, 2011.
31 Verburg, Edward Gorey Plays Cape Cod, 19.
32 Verburg, Seufert interview.
33 Verburg, interview with the author.
34 Verburg, Seufert interview.
35 This is Gorey at his most hopelessly, hilariously obscure. “Poopies Dallying” refers to Hamlet’s observation, in the so-called First Quarto edition of the play (an early pirated copy, judged spurious by scholars), “I could interpret the love you beare, if I saw the poopies dallying.” (See William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, ed. Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey [New York: Routledge, 1992], 75.) “Hamlet means to say that Ophelia’s love is no better than a puppet show,” writes the Shakespearean scholar Friedrich Karl Elze, “and that he should be able to act as its interpreter if he could see the puppets, i.e., Ophelia and her lover, dallying or making love.…[I]t is to be gathered that there must be some indecent double entendre in the expression ‘the puppets dallying,’ which is still unexplained…” Also see Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Hamlet, ed. Karl Elze (Halle, Germany: Max Niemeyer, 1882), 192.
36 Verburg, Edward Gorey Plays Cape Cod, 17.
37 Verburg, Seufert interview.
Chapter 16. “Awake in the Dark of Night Thinking Gorey Thoughts”
1 Edward Gorey interviewed by Christopher Lydon for The Connection, November 26, 1998, WBUR (Boston’s National Public Radio affiliate). Audio recording provided to the author by Christopher Seufert.
2 David Streitfeld, “The Gorey Details,” in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, ed. Karen Wilkin (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 181.
3 Simon Henwood, “Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 170.
4 Irwin Terry, “Les Échanges Malandreux,” Goreyana, March 12, 2010, http://goreyana.blogspot.com/2010/03/les-echanges-malandreux.html.
5 Was E. D. Ward’s “mercurial” nature an allusion to another Edward’s sense of gender and sexuality as fluid? Clearly Gorey was in touch with his feminine side, from his campy affectations—the flapping hands, the swooping vocal style—to his remark, in a letter to Peter Neumeyer, that Herbert Read’s novel The Green Child didn’t grab him because “it is so exclusively masculine/active/positive/whatever in tone and concept, etc. that I am a- (as opposed to un-) sympathetic towards it temperamentally.” See Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer, ed. Peter F. Neumeyer (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications, 2011), 203.
And then there’s his frequent use of female pseudonyms: Mrs. Regera Dowdy, author of The Pious Infant and translator of The Evil Garden; Madame Groeda Weyrd, the fortune-teller famed for her Fantod Pack of oracular cards; Miss D. Awdrey-Gore, the Agatha Christie–esque mystery novelist; Addée Gorrwy, the Postcard Poetess, whose epigraphs enhance The Raging Tide and The Broken Spoke; and Dora Greydew, Girl Detective, the Nancy Drewish heroine of a series by Edgar E. Wordy.
In that last regard, Gorey is part of a well-established tradition of male artists playing with gender and identity by adopting female alter egos, of which Marcel Duchamp, all dolled up and lipsticked as Rrose Sélavy in photos by Man Ray, and Andy Warhol, bewigged and heavily made-up in self-portraits in drag, are only the best-known examples.
It’s interesting to note, too, that Gorey often cast male members of his Cape Cod troupe in female roles: Vincent Myette played Salomé in Gorey’s production of the Oscar Wilde play, and the heavily bearded, broad-in-the-beam Joe Richards was called on to play female characters on several occasions. Apparently Gorey got a kick out of Richards’s performances: “To my favorite female impersonator,” he wrote in a book he signed for the actor.
7 Irwin Terry, “The Pointless Book,” Goreyana, October 16, 2010, http://goreyana.blogspot.com/2010/10/pointless-book.html.
8 Tom Spurgeon, “Alexander Theroux on Edward Gorey,” Comics Reporter, February 22, 2011, http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/index/cr_interview_alexander_theroux_on_edward_gorey/.
9 Irwin Terry, “The Just Dessert,” Goreyana, June 11, 2011, http://goreyana.blogspot.com/2011/06/just-dessert.html.
10 Annie Bourneuf, “Gorey Loses His Touch,” Harvard Crimson, October 15, 1999, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1999/10/15/gorey-loses-his-touch-pthe-headless/?page=2.
11 Stephen Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 140.
12 Ibid., 142.
13 Paul A. Woods, Tim Burton: A Child’s Garden of Nightmares (London: Plexus Publishing, 2002), 105.
14 Henry Selick interviewed in The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, a behind-the-scenes TV special that aired on CBS in October of 1993, archived on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis.
15 Eden Lee Lackner, “A Monstrous Childhood: Edward Gorey’s Influence on Tim Burton’s The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy,” in The Works of Tim Burton: Margins to Mainstream, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 115.
16 Daniel Handler, e-mail message to the author, August 22, 2016.
17 Michael Dirda, “The World of Edward Gorey,” Smithsonian, June 1997, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/review-of-the-world-of-edward-gorey-138218026/#HQYc2sO3lFK0fh4e.99.
18 Daniel Handler interviewed by Christopher Seufert for The Last Days of Edward Gorey: A Documentary by Christopher Seufert, archived on Seufert’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIOut8ZWgPA.
19 Martyn Jacques interviewed on the NPR program Day to Day, October 28, 2003, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1481865.
20 Edward Gorey, Q.R.V. Hikuptah and Q.R.V. Unwmkd. Imperf., in The Betrayed Confidence Revisited (Portland, OR: Pomegranate, 2014), 95, 85.
21 Alan Henderson Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 2.
22 Gorey, Q.R.V. Unwmkd. Imperf., 78.
23 Ibid., 83.
24 Thomas Curwen, “Light from a Dark Star: Before the Current Rise of Graphic Novels,There was Edward Gorey, Whose Tales and Drawings Still Baffle—and Attract—New Fans,” Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2004, http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/18/entertainment/ca-curwen18/4.
25 Gorey, Q.R.V. Unwmkd. Imperf., 79.
26 Mel Gussow, “Edward Gorey, Artist and Author Who Turned the Macabre into a Career, Dies at 75,” New York Times, April 17, 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/17/arts/edward-gorey-artist-and-author-who-turned-the-macabre-into-a-career-dies-at-75.html.
27 Ron Miller, “Edward Gorey, 1925–2000,” Mystery! website, http://23.21.192.150/mystery/gorey.html.
Chapter 17. The Curtain Falls
1 Kevin Kelly, “Edward Gorey: An Artist in ‘the Nonsense Tradition,’” Boston Globe, August 16, 1992, B28.