The Strange Case of Edward Gorey

by Alexander Theroux, Edward Gorey (Artist)

Originally released in paperback in 2000, The Strange Case Edward Gorey, a biography of the illustrator and children’s book creator, was written by Alexander Theroux who combines artistic analysis, personal reminiscence (the two were friends and neighbors for over 25 years), and an intimate familiarity with Gorey’s œuvre to create the most revealing and intimate portrait yet of the beloved but reclusive and enigmatic artist.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Art, Biography Memoir, Memoir, Literature, American

166 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2000

About the author

Alexander Theroux is a novelist, poet, and essayist. The most apt description of the novels of Theroux was given by Anthony Burgess in praise of Theroux's Darconville's Cat: Theroux is 'word drunk', filling his novels with a torrent of words archaic and neologic, always striving for originality, while drawing from the traditions of Rolfe, Rabelais, Sterne, and Nabokov.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

The following is float’d by Vox Populi.

It is an historical document.

It’s author neither endorses nor disavows its content, its form ; nor even acknowledges or disavows its very existence.

Your all mature adults ; make up you’re own dam’d minds.

(but you have been warned)




____________________
The Meta-Review; Or, The Review as Cannibal
Now, New & Improved with Post-Script

[Curmudgeon warning. You've been warned. I don't want to hear about it.]

a catalog and platform for Mr. Theroux to show us just how many obscure references
"Obscure" because you are not already familiar with them? Should Mr Theroux write only about what you already know?

The writing was pretentious and wordy to the point of using parenthetical statements to explain itself and define words for the reader
"Pretentious"? That accusation is the pit of pretentiousness. I suppose you'd prefer to define the words yourself, an author not ought to clarify his meaning?

there is something to be said for clarity and accessibility.
There is something to be said for an educated reader.

I found myself put out by the author's insertion of himself so boldly in the forefront of the text.
Where should the author be located? I'll let him know.

I found the author trying to outshine his subject.
I find this reviewer is trying to outshine both the book and its author.

I will now however take exception to the author--he was a friend of Gorey's, a fact I would also be proud of (and boy is he ever)
I take exception to your exception. You identify with the author because he is in a position you would like to be in or do you resent the author because he is in a position you would like to be in?

but he is forever letting us know while Gorey was a great genius, by proxy, he was as well for agreeing with everything Gorey thought in most instances while lightly mocking his love of pop culture and even going so far as to say that despite Gorey's saying he was not really sure about God and was not religious at all, the author is and so decided really deep down, Gorey was too..a bit presumptuous I think!
I like this sentence. But Theroux is a great genius, not by proxy, but on account of his books. But, yes, friends do banter about things they have in common and have suspicions about those things on which they differ. I think you are a bit presumptuous to presume on Theroux's presumption.

he overuses words
?????????????? Books are made of words. The more the better. The bigger the better.

and seems obsessed by Gorey's sexuality--(the author himself is straight)
You seem to have the same obsession about Gorey's sexuality as do many reviewers here. Thank you for informing us about Theroux's heterosexuality. Noted.

There seemed a slight undertone of disapproval of the gay lifestyle
You seem to have missed all of what was said about sexuality because you seem to be obsessed with your little pc manner of speaking about sexuality. If anything, Theroux made a point that there is no 'gay lifestyle' as far as it has anything to do with Gorey. What is this 'gay lifestyle'?

So I take a star for crap writing
You've got to be kidding. You probably read Harry Potter.

Less a biography I suppose than a rambling appreciation, a compendium of his eccentricities. . .He seemed to have few friends but was well loved by those he did have, including the author.
Thank you for recognizing the form of the book. You are quite right to not presume that it be a biography. Other reviewers ought to take note.

I came away feeling that the author had relegated Gorey, over time, into a box labelled "nelly queen"
Again, you're kidding, right? This would seem to be a case of projection, placing your own homophobia onto Mr Theroux. That is rather unfair of you. And the 'criticism' of "labeling" is no criticism.

it felt more and more that Theroux stopped trying to understand Gorey. . .and saw him more and more as a stereotype.
Another case of projection. And wrong. If anything, Gorey is presented as a distinct sort of individual, eccentric, with nothing belonging to the category of stereotype. One cannot stereotype an individual.

I had the sense that was just a mask that he would put on when and if it suited him,
You're plagiarizing. That is something you learned from Mr Theroux. That was his observation.

the more I felt that Theroux's grasp of who Gorey was slipped away.
Reviewers say the most ridiculous things.

This, I think, is the best reader-response review of Theroux's Gorey book on goodreads:
What a book.
a must for Gorey fans and devotees. The profile of E.Gorey is done in such a marvelous and intimate way in this book, that all the interviews i have read simply pale. Mr. Gorey simply told snippets and peculiarities of himself in cryptic and misleading answers for no reason other to get a rise out of people. Theroux's book paints the picture I have longed t see about Ogdread himself.
I simply can't enjoy this enough, maybe it is Theroux's personal and intimate style of writing or his first hand true friend account of life with E.G.
It is a joy to read and fun in the details and entertaining as any dreadful and wondrously ghoulish of Gorey's work. A great work on a celebrated and personal artist.
of course now i have to find other works by Theroux, and see what the fuss is about.
Thank you, Dave AET.

the strange mysanthropic tone of the book.
Yep. Gorey, of course, had his own streak of misanthropy.

I didn't think it possible that there was anyone crankier than Paul Theroux, but evidently, there is: his brother Alexander, who authored this.
I'm doing my damnedest to beat Alex on the cranky-meter.

Theroux manages to write in a way that is so alienating that a casual reader might be tempted to give up.
The casual reader is not invited. If by casual you mean illiterate.

I fancy that if a reasonably well-educated person with a devotion to books found Theroux’s verbiage cumbersome, then it is safe to say it was, in fact, too much for a biography of a beloved pop culture icon. But who knows?
You saved yourself with that "But who knows?" "Verbiage cumbersome"--I've never heard such cumbersome verbiage. Also, this isn't a biography.

Perhaps the words enchiridion, coloraturas, the French phrase le cercle lugubrieux, and karfreutagian have slipped into the common lexicon without me noticing.
Use a dictionary.

This is not the sort of book that can tolerate the interruptions that come when the reader is forced to put the book down in order to look up words and French phrases.
You wouldn't have to put the book down if you first learned French. It's not difficult.

But luckily Theroux stops showing off so egregiously around page 15.
You're not resentful of his skills in articulating the English language, are you?

There are some weird, out-of-the-blue statements about homosexuality. . .which fall really flat. I'm not going into it, but I noticed. And grimaced.
Thank you for not going into it. You're review already made me grimace.

so the lack of structure and typos were...quirky?
Lack of structure? Sorry, you weren't looking closely enough. And nothing is as engaging as catching typos.

so the repetitive material and truly shitty editing is grosser.
You should reread your review and clean up the repetitive material and shitty editing.

Not a poorly written book, per se, I just didn't like it. Gorey sounds like a trying personality. More panache than meaning...which if you look at his art, I guess it would make sense. Still, I was hoping for more. He seemed rather a paper-doll, flamboyant, sibilant-speaking gay man that liked to change outfits and say odd things just to be odd. Truth hurts I guess.
Wow! You're not a very nice human being are you? Truth hurts, I guess.

This book was less of a biography and more of a critique/analysis or memorial of his work, ethos and personality. It was a strange book.
Thankfully, one more reader who bothered to understand what kind of book one has here. Thank you, John Pappas.

but I wasn't enamored of the author's preening obsession with his own enormous vocabulary.
I just don't understand how people who love to read can be so fucking resentful about authors who happen to have a larger vocabulary than they and a greater facility with the language. I just don't fucking understand it. Go read your Hairy Potter.

A bizarre tribute/biography of Gorey by a friend and collaborator. The tone is certainly Gorey-Victorian. Bring your thesaurus. This book is a pretentious name-dropping nightmare. It is fine when done to give a snapshot of Gorey's likes and dislikes, but way overdone.
You had it right until you used those dumb words 'pretentious' and 'overdone.' Also, it's not a thesaurus you'll want but a d-i-c-t-i-o-n-a-r-y. Look it up.

The writing was at times a bit too arch.
Yes, that is clever.

This one is also good and should be quoted in full:
A friend's recollection of Edward Gorey full of quotes and fussy prose prone to lists, commas, subphrases, dashes, and other stylistic tricks--almost as ornate as a Gorey drawing with its urns and clashing pattern wallpapers and carpets. Read the book slowly or some of its meaning may slip by. Sometimes the author falls into redundancy, but he is rescued by his love of subject and the dredging up of a good anecdote or zippy quote. Excerpts from Gorey's work and stills from his favorite films abound.
Thank you, Beth Gallagher. But I would ask about the 'redundancy.' Isn't it true that when we reminisce we often find ourselves going back again and again to those few poignant points? Isn't the redundancy and repetition somehow appropriate for this kind of memoir? I'd like to end this cannibalistic review on the note of your kind review. I appreciate your drawing a comparison between the style of Theroux's book and the style of Gorey's work. That is the kind of close reading that so many reviewers represented in my curmudgeonly, plagiaristic review were simply unable to do.

Post-Script
And now for that most offensive review, that which is chickeningly linked to a blog. But this, my review, is already too long, so I'll shorten up.

Perhaps the editor felt that having such an academic rock star as an author warranted an extremely light hand in the editing department?
Alexander a "rock star." That's fascinating. In a less dumb culture he might be a "rock star." And the editing question and the question of being published by an heroic publisher of graphic novels -- yes, Mr Theroux would be published by a larger house with a larger budget if people weren't wasting their time reading Heiry Potter. Big Shout Out to Fantagraphics for bringing Theroux's work to the public. Thank you. And if you think Fantagraphics ought to have a larger editing budget--buy their books.

Oh, did you catch that "self-indulgent" part? Yeah, it is a little.
Right, you do have to be a little "'self-indulgent'" to sit your ass in a chair and write and write and write and rarely get published and not have your books read by the public and then write some more. If we didn't have self-indulgent people we'd never have gotten ourselves any books. And Jane Austen? Didn't she indulge herself just a little in writing her books? Self-indulgent isn't a 'criticism' of an author, it is a condition of the possibility of having books.

Which brings us to the absolutely most ignorant, shitty thing to say about an author:
The author often moves away from telling the reader about Gorey and goes off on brief discussions of his own opinions and experiences. Granted these are still presented within the context of the author's interactions with Gorey, but they still seem a bit like intellectual masturbation. Let me offer up an excerpt for example:
So we should make the equation between 'self-indulgent' and 'intellectual masturbation.' Fair enough. The equation is true. But isn't masturbation a good thing? We all do it. We all enjoy it. Some people, like this reviewer, develop guilt-complexes when they do it. And intellectual masturbation is certainly not frequently enough indulged in in a culture wherein we are constantly fucked by popular junk product. So I'll ask the question: What is the alternative to 'masturbation'? Fucking. When masturbation is thrown at an author as an accusation, is it not implied that the reviewer would prefer to be fucked by the author? That would be the height of intellectual fantasy because, as Lacan has demonstrated, "There is no sexual relationship." So, dear reviewer, go find an author willing to fuck you.

Then again, I suppose I'm not the one who has taught at Harvard or been nominated for National Book Awards (....yet).
Do you hear the envy and resentment in that? What did Nietzsche have to say about envy and resentment?

Was this supposed to be funny? It's hard to find humor in such humorless and sometimes even slightly abrasive material.
Yes, your quoted passage was funny. And it also demonstrates Mr Theroux's humility in the face of his subject matter, an humility which you are far too conceited to have noticed. Perhaps I'm missing something Yes, clearly you are.

There is a distinct possibility that the book is beyond me. I mean, I get what he's saying about Gorey, but maybe this guy is just a little too...I dunno...Derrida for me to have picked up the book thinking it would be a straight-forward biography
You give it one star because after you picked it up you found that it was a different genre than you first thought? But, yes, apparently this simple little book about one friend remembering and honoring his friend having passed, is just a little beyond you. And you say Theroux is, I dunno, just a little too Derrida for you!!!!! You don't know Derrida from Lady Gaga do you?

Worse, still, is that this chickenlivered reviewer lives ten minutes down the street from Mr Theroux and like a stink-blogger has the audacity to write a bad review rather than walk-down the street and shake Alex's hand and ask about his views about literature and have a coffee with him -- and learn something.

Thusly, I oughta bring this postscript to a close. Read that review yourself and see what a self-indulgent, masturbating blogger this person really is. You get the picture.


[For all of you offended by my plagiarism, I don't wanna hear it. Go read a book instead. And learn a few new words, maybe.]



____________
NPR piece from February 2011 with Theroux on Gorey.

____________
Interview at The Comics Reporter.

____________
Interview at The Bookforum by John Madera, December 2011. Recommended.

[Tony Vacation · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note: A longer and revised version of this book was published in 2011, eleven years after this slimmer version was published through Alex’s current publishing home, Fantagraphics.

A delightful freeform eulogy for Edward Gorey, the (sometimes) reclusive and eccentric creator of deceptively simple gothic picturebooks. Instead of approaching a biography in any conventional manner, Theroux tackles the enigmatic nature of his subject by relaying a constant stream of personal anecdotes and asides collected from over twenty-five years of friendship with the big-bearded man. Yes, there are some standard facts sprinkled throughout, such as the whens and wheres of Gorey (“Ted” to his closest friends) birth and death, but most of the book slinkies about Gorey’s heady mixture of highbrow and lowbrow interests, such as his favorite actors (he loved John Wayne but hated Al Pacino), what books he adored (couldn’t stand Henry James but had read and loved every goddamn word plopped on a page by Trollope and Christie), what kind of clothes he favored, how he binged on bad daytime television, his love for kitties (a staple for all mentally unbalanced authors), his obsession with true crime yarns and grade-Z slasher flicks, his opinions of people’s facial hair, and many other et ceteras. By no means an authoritative chronological point-by-point breakdown of every fart Gorey blessed the world with, this book is more of a personal remembrance of all the things Theroux admired in his friend Gorey and, of course, is written in the master’s usual spellbinding gallop of words across the page. The Strange Case of Edward Gorey is an inviting and friendly introduction to Gorey’s work and, more importantly, it is a touching tribute to the passing of a friend. We should all be so lucky to have such a good friend.

[T.D. Whittle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a thoroughly enjoyable read. Besides being funny and enlarging one's understanding of Gorey's loves and loathings, it's chock-full of interesting bits of information that will add to your list of films you wish to see, books you wish to read, music you wish to hear, and Gorey items you wish to acquire.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of the 67-page first paperback edition and not the expanded hardback released in 2011 (to be read in due course for Theroux completionism). As a primer for the works of Gorey, this handsome monograph has achieved its aim—ordered are two meek-budgeted EG compilations—and is, perchance, even better in the longer version. EG comes across as the kind of fabulous eccentric and semi-recluse we all aspire to be in our darkest of hearts and Theroux’s prose is full of affection and fabulous anecdotal info (with emphasis on film and TV preferences). (!)

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Polymath, polyglot, bon vivant, urbane wit, raconteur, blue-stocking’d savant, pan-literate, pan-dimensional, supercalifragilisticexpiAlTheroux-cious! Is there anything that this sumbitch can’t do and excel at?!? The Strange Case of Edward Gorey is, in every conceivable way, a triumph. I came to this book not as a fan of Gorey, but leave appreciating the human being that he was.

Disclosure: I grew up in the High Goth Era—P.H.T. (pre-Hot Topic), B.N.B.C (Before The Nightmare Before Christmas)—in an era and area where Christian Death were as much a religion as a band. Unilaterally, all of my Goth friends were enormous Gorey fans. I never really cared one way or the other. I acknowledged the man’s obvious talent, but his humor seemed lost on his biggest pundits. All that most of them cared about was the macabre element and that there were lots of bats (to, you know, mirror their ennui at having to eat dinner at the table with their bourgeois parents three times a week).

After reading The Strange Case of Edward Gorey I’m a convert. I still don’t really give one whit about his work (although the pornographic sofa one seems interesting), but he is an indefatigably interesting man. I am now a fan of Edward Gorey as a person.

Which brings up another point: what’s with the reviews of this book? Taking a cue from our Nathan, I investigated outside Good Reads and found scads of reviews (predominantly blogs) that positioned Theroux one tier below Pontius Pilate. What did these GoreyAnna-and-Andy’s want? What’s more, how much more could they expect? This book is a TREASURE as it gives a far more complete view of EG than any hagiography ever could. That’s the problem (not the only one, natch) with modernity: everyone is interested in factoids, not context. Factoids make you a bore at a party and a liability at the bar. Context allows for larger foci, relativism, understanding. So if you’re looking for something that gives ‘just the facts, ma’am,’ go to Wikipedia. Or go cry your eyes out into your giant striped tights—I don’t care. What I care about is that The Strange Case of Edward Gorey is a beautiful testimony to a 30-year relationship between two criminally talented men who genuinely loved one another and what one is left with when the other passes: the gift and curse of memories.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charming, digressive biographical take on the visionary artist Edward Gorey by noted logophilic writer and Gorey associate Alexander Theroux. For potential readers it’s important to know that this is not a biography nor is it exactly a memoir. Theroux takes an idiosyncratic approach, blending a litany of tangential factoids with often random memories of conversations he had with Gorey. I thought I recalled reading somewhere that Theroux is known for not revising his work. If this is indeed the case then it certainly shows in this book. The endless circling back to previously covered ground grows a bit tedious at times, although typically at the point when my mind started to wander Theroux reeled me back in with a fascinating anecdote or observation. So who knows…perhaps it’s an intentional stylistic device. If anything the cumulative effect of all the energetic divagations may in fact be akin to the experience of actually being inside Edward Gorey’s mind, which if Theroux’s assertions are accurate, must have been quite the trivia-packed funhouse. Of course Gorey would likely have hated this book, and so thus did his death facilitate its publication.

(In my library copy I found a tiny dead fly pressed upon the lower left corner of page 126, and for a brief moment I thought it to be an aberrant illustration, but no, it was the real thing.)

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joseph Cornell, Edward Gorey, and James Merrill seem to me to have led exemplary lives.

[Anita Dalton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Review snippet: This book has interesting moments but they are few and far between, and those moments are generally content that will not be new to long-term Gorey fans. Still, it was pleasant being reminded of how eccentric Gorey was, how he eventually stopped wearing fur because of his love of animals, how he sewed stuffed animals by hand as he watched television, how he would do work for anyone who asked, even those who could pay very little.

But after one admits that this book has some charm, one can only list its many problems. The first is that in the first fifteen pages, Theroux manages to write in a way that is so alienating that a casual reader might be tempted to give up. I am a reasonably intelligent woman who has devoted my adult life to reading. I fancy that if a reasonably well-educated person with a devotion to books found Theroux’s verbiage cumbersome, then it is safe to say it was, in fact, too much for a biography of a beloved pop culture icon. But who knows? Perhaps the words enchiridion, coloraturas, the French phrase le cercle lugubrieux, and karfreutagian have slipped into the common lexicon without me noticing. If not, they were odd word choices in a biography such as this. This is not the sort of book that can tolerate the interruptions that come when the reader is forced to put the book down in order to look up words and French phrases. But luckily Theroux stops showing off so egregiously around page 15. Still, not a good beginning.

You can read my entire discussion here.

[Andrew]

Ah, Edward Gorey... whose drawings form some of my earliest memories... and whose name I didn't learn until freshman year when I met quite a few Goth girls with Amphigorey on their bookshelves while we drank gin and smoked American Spirits. And Alexander Theroux's The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, expanded edition, is both: (a) AT at his finest, the collector of strange artifacts and master of the list of the pointless, and (b) Gorey with all his contradictions front and center, the camp homo-asexual, the simultaneous lover of forgotten Victorian novels and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and fuck everything in between, the professional curmudgeon and true American eccentric. I hope that sells you on both Edward Gorey and Alexander Theroux. Both are kindred freaks, and should be saluted for it.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book serves as a catalog and platform for Mr. Theroux to show us just how many obscure references and terms he could put to use while partially relaying conversations he had with Mr. Gorey. The writing was pretentious and wordy to the point of using parenthetical statements to explain itself and define words for the reader--there is something to be said for clarity and accessibility. More than a few times Theroux talks in circles, oftentimes recycling information; the disorganization of the text is distracting. I found myself put out by the author's insertion of himself so boldly in the forefront of the text. Rather than adding a sense of intimacy to the story, I found the author trying to outshine his subject. The most interesting parts were those about Gorey (the first time they were mentioned) and the included illustrations and posters.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific look at Edward Gorey by the novelist Alexander Theroux, who was a friend and neighbor. Theroux is a great writer of prose and he applies his talent and skill to a man not easily defined or described. But he does a great job and I must say I thoroughly relished each paragraph. The e book version, which is an update of the original paperback, contains photos of Gorey and some of his work. Highly recommended for Gorey fans.

[David Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having once had dinner with Ted Gorey I was very hopeful about liking this book. While it did provide a look at what it must have been like to be part of Gorey's circle of friends (which seems very small and exclusive indeed) I came away feeling that the author had relegated Gorey, over time, into a box labelled "nelly queen," and though I don't think those words appear in Theroux's book, it felt more and more that Theroux stopped trying to understand Gorey (apparently a very complicated and unlikely task) and saw him more and more as a stereotype. This led to my disappointment because while Ted Gorey was many things, and no doubt could wear the affectations of a nelly queen, I had the sense that was just a mask that he would put on when and if it suited him... but that there was so much more going on. Somehow, the longer this book, the more I felt that Theroux's grasp of who Gorey was slipped away.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a book.
a must for Gorey fans and devotees. The profile of E.Gorey is done in such a marvelous and intimate way in this book, that all the interviews i have read simply pale. Mr. Gorey simply told snippets and peculiarities of himself in cryptic and misleading answers for no reason other to get a rise out of people. Theroux's book paints the picture I have longed t see about Ogdread himself.
I simply can't enjoy this enough, maybe it is Theroux's personal and intimate style of writing or his first hand true friend account of life with E.G.
It is a joy to read and fun in the details and entertaining as any dreadful and wondrously ghoulish of Gorey's work. A great work on a celebrated and personal artist.
of course now i have to find other works by Theroux, and see what the fuss is about.

[Beth Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend's recollection of Edward Gorey full of quotes and fussy prose prone to lists, commas, subphrases, dashes, and other stylistic tricks--almost as ornate as a Gorey drawing with its urns and clashing pattern wallpapers and carpets. Read the book slowly or some of its meaning may slip by. Sometimes the author falls into redundancy, but he is rescued by his love of subject and the dredging up of a good anecdote or zippy quote. Excerpts from Gorey's work and stills from his favorite films abound.

[Reese Lightning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeously written, on the subject of a most fascinating character. I've always enjoyed Gorey's work, but I've now discovered a deeply kindred spirit, right down to his love of names. If you've any interest in how I personally function as a human being, read this book. It puts into words my very psyche, and is now an all-time favorite.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bizarre tribute/biography of Gorey by a friend and collaborator. The tone is certainly Gorey-Victorian. Bring your thesaurus. This book is a pretentious name-dropping nightmare. It is fine when done to give a snapshot of Gorey's likes and dislikes, but way overdone.

[Ursa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt like I was wading through bad party conversation to ferret out tidbits on Gorey.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a biography but a heartfelt memoir of the friendship between the author and the eccentric Gorey. Marvelous.

[Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

aka, Edward Gorey: the Ur-Hipster

an interesting book to read. this shows an Edward Gorey I didn't know, because I'm familiar with him mostly only as the author of work that I love. in this book, he becomes human, with a tendency to say incredibly nasty things about people and no patience for doctors. his passion for commercial media seems to drive Theroux bonkers, since he repeats over and over again that Gorey somehow loves Buffy and also the kind of obscure classics that intellectuals can quote at one another, as if these are mutually exclusive. it suggests that some intellectuals are entirely not fun at all. it also allows Theroux to make extensive lists of movies, books, actresses, TV shows, music, etc. to showcase his own wealth of knowledge (things Edward Gorey loved. things that remind Theroux of Edward Gorey. things that Theroux thinks about). we get a lot of commentary from Theroux as he goes, often in the nature of "this may be a Gay Thing." he makes a big deal out of pointing out similarities Gorey has to famous gay artists, such as Auden; there is a bit of a digression about Aubrey Beardsley (Theroux speculates that he's a mostly heterosexual bisexual) and phalluses in art, tra la la.

so, the lists seem like a sampling of conversations with Edward Gorey who, according to Theroux, like to have discussions wherein one made lists (of actresses with widow's peaks, for example). the commentary seems like things Theroux must have spent years speculating about, remarks that he swallowed and wants to give voice to now, when Gorey cannot bite back. (there are little suggestions here and there that, although Theroux paints them as friends, he at times annoyed Gorey, or invited some of Gorey's harsh remarks upon himself.)

after reading other reviews here and thinking about it, it's unfair to complain that this book is about Theroux. he wrote it. yes, he's probably capitalizing off of his ability to drop this big name, but, on the other hand, he's giving us this very personal insight to someone that we will now never have the chance to encounter or know. (although once upon a time, as Theroux informs us throughout the book, Gorey's number used to be publicly listed in the Cape Cod phone book, and some people did call him or come to his home.)

at points, Theroux makes it seem that Gorey basically had no respect for women; he uses the word "fey" frequently to describe Gorey; and while reading, I kept getting the feeling that there was some anti-Semitism buried a bit shallowly. I couldn't tell how much of this captured the real Edward Gorey and how much of it is a reflection of the workings of the mind of Theroux. frankly, I would have liked this to focus more on Gorey. to be more direct, rather than meandering. would I have appreciated sections with headlines and central topics? I think so, yes. maybe that's unfair, and I've simply missed the point of the book. (I am reading the older edition, I think, so maybe that's my problem.)

but let me tell you, when I read this bit (on page 16):
At the time I happened to be writing a book on the color black. Gorey and I were chatting - from his gray-painted rickety side-porch we sat watching bees sip strawberry blossoms, and I happen to remember it was a May 6th, simply because I never forget the day that Henry David Thoreau passed away-
I knew what I was in for.

[Dominick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish I liked this book better. I greatly admire Gorey's work, I think he deserves more attention than he's received, and Theroux speaks from a position of personal knowledge and intimate friendship across decades, so he ought to be able to deliver. But this book, call it what you will--biography, memoir--is just not satisfying. It reads like a random collection of recollections, not as a thought-out and organized elegy, or memoir, or biography, or panegyric, or anything really. It's formless. It's repetitive, it revels in lists, it leaps from observation to observation with no discernible pattern or plan (even chronology is of little relevance), and for all the facts and observations it provides, it ultimately does not offer much in the way of insight. Nor is it helped by what seems to be pretty lax editorial oversight; a careful editorial eye would certainly have smoothed out the repetitions, non-sequiturs, rambling, etc--and it might have avoided embarrassing incidents such as a basic grammatical error occurring on the same page (!) on which Theroux contemptuously dismisses television news reporters for THEIR grammatical errors. I'd love to think that this is supposed to be a subtle irony, undercutting the assumed voice of superior authority, but I don't think it is. Disappointing.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theroux says he knew Gorey for thirty years. It is an exhaustive compendium of Gorey's interests and dislikes, his activities, his peculiarities of character. He is more complex person than one might gather from his writings and drawings, and I was surprised to learn that he did a military stint at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah during World War II. He was widely read, a ballet aficionado, a puppeteer and playwright, and also rather reclusive. He was an omnivorous consumer of high and low culture, including schlocky horror movies and TV shows, and a child prodigy. He was a man of unpredictable tastes and opinions and, one would suspect, something of a contrarian at heart. Photographs of him show him to be stylishly bearded and attired by current standards, though an outlier by the standards of the 1980s. As with Theroux's other books, you really have to spend time looking up all of the names, titles and passages he alludes to, unless you are as cultured as he and Gorey were, to truly understand what they're talking about. At the same time, Gorey remains an enigma, a funny, creative, skilled draftsman with a sardonic sense of humor which seems all the more contemporary with the passage of time.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of Edward Gorey, and was excited to check this out. It's really more about the author than Gorey! I realize that Theroux is very intelligent and that Gorey could be kind of obtuse, but the book is practically unreadable. It's a series of biographical anecdotes about Gorey, but they're written using the largest words and most roundabout sentences possible.

I gave this one star for two reasons: I wanted to be able to list it here; also, the illustrations and photographs. I had seen most of the illustrations before, but some of the photos were pretty rare and offered a glimpse of Gorey as a young man that I hadn't seen before.

For serious fans with good vocabularies only.

[Kalle Vilenius · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the only book I’m aware of that has a blurb from the great, deceased Cormac McCarthy. That alone should make a potential reader get interested, even if they had no familiarity at all with Edward Gorey’s work, or with the writer who wrote about him here.

By virtue of having been a neighbour and a friend for decades, Theroux has a uniquely privileged perspective to explore his subject from. Private conversations are quoted, anecdotes given. Some anecdotes barely even relate to Gorey himself, as Theroux can hardly be expected to resist the temptation of sketching an interesting character here and there, such as the curmudgeonly proprietor of Jack’s Outback, Jack Braginton-Smith.

Jack’s Outback is related to Gorey by virtue of being an eatery that the artist frequented, and there the author often met with him, just another piece of the mosaic of his life. This piece just so happens to depict an eccentric, rude proprietor, who proudly displayed an original drawing of Gorey’s by his cash register. A little piece of true experience to give flesh to Gorey’s life.

Short as the book is, it paints a much more multifaceted picture of Gorey than this simple sketch of Jack. We learn a brief history of the man from birth to death, spend much time learning of his many idiosyncrasies, the things that made his “case” so strange. A loner, a lover of cats, a consumer of pop-culture, a collector of many an odd thing. He is compared on occasion to other authors and figures from history, with trivia on these figures thrown at the reader for consideration.

Other than having Gorey’s early life described near the beginning and his death at the end, the book follows no real structure in its presentation of these tidbits, of the photographs of the artist and his family, of the occasional pages of his art of the many posters advertising his plays. Gorey’s life and the contents of it, the anecdotes and discussions on books he did or plays he put together are told willy-nilly, almost like a jumble of jigsaw pieces, and its left up to the reader to see what kind of picture of the artist is formed as they themselves piece it all together. Told through Theroux’s lens, this book is as much about him as a perceiver as it is about the subject perceived.

Take, for example, this description of the highly unconventional, experimental nature of some of Gorey’s work as far as the physical books themselves go:

“His experiments with books – pop-up books, wordless books, books literally matchbox-sized, elongated books, books of cards, books entirely populated by inanimate objects etc.”

Now doesn’t that sound a little like Theroux’s own, as yet unpublished Herbert Head? Is this a case of parallel evolution, of great minds thinking alike? Or is there a chain of inspiration to be followed here? Food for thought. Another interesting quote to consider, relates to the reception that Gorey and his curious, decidedly unique books had during his life:

“True works of genius are always held suspect, envied, and constantly ignored. Only later do all the bootlicks assemble. It is forever the conforming, ass-kissing dufus, the obliging conversationalist, the dull predictable Herbert marching in step, for whom worldly laurels are cut, shaped, awarded. Gorey received in his lifetime nothing at all like the recognition he deserved.”

With passion Theroux speaks, and for good reason: it’s not just Gorey this applies to, but himself as well. Game recognizes game. Herman Melville recognized Nathaniel Hawthrorne, though neither met with sufficient praise for their works in life. Who better to sing Gorey’s praises, then, than one who is like him in this matter, who is labouring in the same obscurity? One final quote to close things out:

“Except for my own dear father, I honestly think I can say that I miss Edward Gorey more than anyone else I have known who has passed away.”

And there you have it. Not a long, detailed book about the career and works of Edward Gorey, but a long eulogy by a mourning friend.

[Beremot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theroux takes an unsentimental approach in how he captures Gorey, treating him as an unsolvable puzzle just as much as a close friend of 25 years. But I think that speaks to Gorey's nature more than the nature of their friendship, since the man seemed as aloof and inscrutable as the cats he adored. Having known very little about him before reading this book, I was struck by all the contradictions in his taste and style, his fey sense of humor (to borrow the author's term), and the photos that accompany the text, most of which show Gorey staring disinterestedly in his home or at the Beach in Cape Cod.

I enjoyed learning more about all the literary and artistic figures who influenced Gorey, and I would like to delve into them and return to Gorey's books with a new perspective.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexander Theroux's reminiscence of his late neighbor Edward Gorey is brief, highly opinionated, and a rather modest contribution to the understanding of Gorey's idiosyncratic art. Theroux is sympathetic to Gorey's eccentricities and amused by his somewhat misanthropic worldview, but ultimately has little to say about his subject that is genuinely insightful.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite enjoyable, but docked a star for examples of what looks like careless writing (or editing?), Theroux’s occasional tendency toward run-on sentences, and his much more obnoxious display of his vocabulary, especially in the first few pages.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

They must have had a special friendship.

[Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexander Theroux is much more interested in Alexander Theroux than in Edward Gorey.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this poetic biography/eulogy of Edward Gorey, you can tell it was written by a friend. The biography is loosely organized at best, but every page is full of affection.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

it´s the better books that i´ve read