Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey (Harcourt), selected and edited by Karen Wilkin, is a collection of twenty-six years’ worth of interviews of Gorey, the eccentric American artist and writer. He was best known for his intricate pen-and-ink drawings, which have been described as whimsical, sinister and everything in between. The book came out in 2001, just a year after Gorey died, so one can’t help thinking of the word opportunism. But all cynicism falls away as soon as one begins to read. This is a beautiful artifact and an intelligent, splendidly edited appreciation of Gorey and his work. His major artistic influences: nineteenth-century English novels and the New York City Ballet. His favourite author: Agatha Christie. His most traumatic birthday: the thirtieth. His most adored book: The Tale of Genji, which he read over and over in several translations. His analysis of how things work: “I do think it’s stupidity that makes the world go round.” But Gorey was no snob. He loved yard sales, soap operas and movies—for a time in New York, “I would see a thousand movies a year.” In 1977 Vanity Fair asks: “What is your most treasured possession?” He says: “The one most recently acquired.” Vanity Fair: “What do you dislike most about your appearance?” Gorey: “Everything but my toes.” Gorey began writing his idiosyncratic books— some ninety of them, “Victorian novels all scrunched up”—during the 1950s when he was in his mid-twenties and working for Doubleday/Anchor as a book designer. “I became very well known for my covers for Henry James,” he told the National Post in 1999, “whom I hate more than anyone else in the world except Picasso.” Ascending Peculiarity overflows with such deluxe surprises, arranged so that the portrait-story gathers momentum and meaning, but so that Gorey—a shy and reclusive man—is never overscrutinized. Vanity Fair: “What is your motto?” Gorey: “O the of it all.”