The definitive biography of Edward Gorey, the eccentric master of macabre nonsense.’A genius book about a bookish genius’ Daniel Handler, author of A Series of Unfortunate EventsFrom The Gashlycrumb Tinies to The Doubtful Guest, Edward Gorey's wickedly funny and deliciously sinister little books have influenced our culture in innumerable ways, from the works of Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman to Lemony Snicket. Some even call him the Grandfather of Goth.But who was this man, who lived with over twenty thousand books and six cats, who roomed with Frank O'Hara at Harvard, and was known – in the late 1940s, no less – to traipse around in full-length fur coats, clanking bracelets, and an Edwardian beard? An eccentric, a gregarious recluse, an enigmatic auteur of whimsically morbid masterpieces, yes – but who was the real Edward Gorey behind the Oscar Wildean pose?He published over a hundred books and illustrated works by Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Edward Lear, John Updike, Charles Dickens, Hilaire Belloc, Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker, Gilbert & Sullivan, and others. At the same time, he was a deeply complicated and conflicted individual, a man whose art reflected his obsessions with the disquieting and the darkly hilarious.Based on newly uncovered correspondence and interviews with personalities as diverse as John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, and Anna Sui, Born to be Posthumous draws back the curtain on the eccentric genius and mysterious life of Edward Gorey.
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Mark Dery. Born to Be Posthumous
INTRODUCTION. A GOOD MYSTERY
CHAPTER 1. A SUSPICIOUSLY NORMAL CHILDHOOD
CHAPTER 2. MAUVE SUNSETS
CHAPTER 3 “TERRIBLY INTELLECTUAL AND AVANT-GARDE AND ALL THAT JAZZ”
CHAPTER 4. SACRED MONSTERS
CHAPTER 5 “LIKE A CAPTIVE BALLOON, MOTIONLESS BETWEEN SKY AND EARTH”
CHAPTER 6. HOBBIES ODD — BALLET, THE GOTHAM BOOK MART, SILENT FILM, FEUILLADE
CHAPTER 7. ÉPATER LE BOURGEOIS
CHAPTER 8 “WORKING PERVERSELY TO PLEASE HIMSELF”
CHAPTER 9. NURSERY CRIMES —THE GASHLYCRUMB TINIES AND OTHER OUTRAGES
CHAPTER 10. WORSHIPPING IN BALANCHINE’S TEMPLE
CHAPTER 11. MAIL BONDING — COLLABORATIONS
CHAPTER 12. DRACULA
CHAPTER 13. MYSTERY!
CHAPTER 14. STRAWBERRY LANE FOREVER
CHAPTER 15. FLAPPING ANKLES, CRAZED TEACUPS, AND OTHER ENTERTAINMENTS
CHAPTER 16 “AWAKE IN THE DARK OF NIGHT THINKING GOREY THOUGHTS”
CHAPTER 17. THE CURTAIN FALLS
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Praise for Born to Be Posthumous:
‘Edward Gorey has been granted the most remarkable biography, one I believe he could have lived with. What was the likelihood that this singular genius could be restored, with such compassion and grace, within his whole context: Balanchine, surrealism, Frank O’Hara, Lady Murasaki, et al?’
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This time they would stay put: apart from his time in the army, Ted lived there until he packed his bags for Harvard in September of ’46; Helen would call 2620 North Lakeview home until she moved to the Cape in the mid-’70s.
Chances are she picked that address because it was convenient—a walk of about a half dozen blocks—to the Francis W. Parker School, where, a year earlier, thirteen-year-old Ted had entered the ninth grade. It was there that Gorey’s sense of himself as an artist would take shape. At Parker, the outlines of the Gorey persona—eccentrically brilliant, quick with the offhand quip, charismatic and sociable yet unselfconsciously himself—would come into focus.
