ASCENDING PECULIARITY: EDWARD GOREY ON EDWARD GOREY
by Edward Gorey
edited by Karen Wilkin
Harcourt, 292 pp.
Edward Gorey was one of those rare geniuses who managed to cultivate a larger-than-life persona while creating a body of work that maintained a small, intimate appeal. His minutely detailed, illustrated books were written and designed in such a way that, even though you knew that thousands of like-minded readers might at that exact moment be poring over the exact same piece, you were still able to hold on to the illusion that this was a secret, long forgotten bit of ephemera that you alone had discovered in some dusty used-book bin.
Ascending Peculiarity is a nice new collection of interviews with the tall, mysterious, bearded gentleman who was often seen about the streets of Manhattan sporting an enormous fur coat and tennis shoes. Although he claimed that he would submit to interviews only upon pain of death, he gave quite a few during his lifetime.
Despite being typecast as a "Master of the Macabre," we learn that Gorey was a man of many talents and interests. He attended the New York City Ballet every night for 23 years, hated Henry James, loved Golden Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and had a keen interest in the cinematic output of Louis Feuillade. Somehow, he found the time to design award-winning sets for the Broadway production of Dracula, hundreds of book jackets (hey, I just found a copy of Freaky Friday graced with his cover art!), and best of all, his spidery little illustrated tomes of grim humour and nonsensical-non sequitur.
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