Behind the Macabre

Once asked what frightened him most, Edward St. John Gorey '50 replied, "Life. Everything about life."

Artist, writer and stage designer who gained infamy through crosshatched macabre-style artwork, Gorey died from a heart attack this April 15. He was 75.

Edward Gorey seemed to live in a world of his own. Not only because he was reclusive and remained a bachelor for life, but because he isolated himself from conventional art trends. His drawings were fanciful and ambiguous, and he refused to explain them. He shunned publicity and Hollywood fame. He expressed strong convictions and behaved in ways that did not necessarily jibe with conventional belief.

But a look at the artist's life and artwork may reveal a greater worldview than mere macabre. And Gorey's artwork is now the only true remaining source for the many questions Gorey left unanswered.

Alison Lurie '47, a close friend of Gorey's for many years, sums up in a memoriam published in the New York Review of Books, her tribute to Gorey's lifetime accomplishments: "Often, characters in Gorey's books who die or disappear leave only a void behind: empty cross-hatched streets and withered formal gardens and rooms with strange wallpaper. We are luckier."

The Gorey Files

Gorey wrote over 90 books and illustrated more than 60 others. His black-and-white illustrations, crosshatched and intricate, were beautifully precise and distinct.

His style soon became associated with the macabre themes of his drawings. He was asked to illustrate the opening credits of the PBS television series "Mystery" as well as many other book covers. Gorey also designed the set and costumes for the Broadway show Dracula, for which he received a Tony Award in 1978.

Gorey's literature was also a bit Surrealist. The text of his short books was often as ambiguous as his illustrations. The short verses often did not follow each other smoothly. But most characteristic of Gorey's literature was his unique ability to describe tragic events with bizarre humor.

Gorey liked to write about death and random disappearances and other ghastly happenings. He often made children the subject of these occurrences. He illustrated the English alphabet in several variations, depicting an unusual, grim or humorous way that children may die for each letter.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies, one of Gorey's most famous books, is one such illustrated alphabet. It begins: "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears."

Karen Wilkin, who co-authored the book The World of Edward Gorey with Clifford Ross, suggests Gorey's drawings were superficially grim, but their bizarre aspects added a humorous tone.

She recalls an Oscar Wilde witticism: "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."

Frankenstein in Chicago

Edward Gorey was born in Chicago in 1925, to a Roman Catholic newspaper report and Episcopalian mother. He began to read and draw at a very early age; he first picked up a pencil at only 18 months, drawing passing trains. But he told the Christian Science Monitor that he was not quite impressed by those drawings.

"I hasten to add they showed no talent whatsoever," he said. "They looked like irregular sausages."

He taught himself to read by age three, and by five he had read Shelley's Frankenstein. By eight he had read all of Victor Hugo's works.

Gorey's only formal art training came during the single year that he attended the Art Institute of Chicago, after graduating high school. But he was drafted into the army in 1944, serving as a clerk for two years at a chemical weapons testing site. When released, Gorey, then 21 years old, came to Harvard in the fall of 1946.

Odd Man in Eliot House

Gorey's life at Harvard revolved around the arts; he concentrated in French literature and was involved in several drama productions as an undergraduate. He roomed, for several years, with future poet Frank O'Hara '50 in Eliot House.

Brad Gooch writes of the duo's college days in City Poet, his 1995 biography of O'Hara. Gooch quotes photographer George Marshall '51-53 who classified Gorey, known to wear capes and numerous rings, as the "oddest person I've ever seen. He was very tall, with his hair plastered down across the front like bangs, like a Roman emperor."

Gooch reports Gorey and O'Hara established for themselves distinct reputations on campus. Gorey romped around in long fur coats and basketball sneakers; when he wore sandals, his toenails were sometimes painted green.

He and O'Hara adorned their Eliot House suite with white modern garden furniture, including a chaise lounge. They used as a coffee table a tombstone taken from Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Gorey often sat atop this table while designing his illustrations.

Poet's Theatre

Undecided in what career to pursue, Gorey remained in Cambridge for a few years after graduation. Both he and O'Hara became active in the Harvard Poet's Theatre, a group of Harvard and Radcliffe students who performed low-budget, self-written plays to small audiences.

They often found space to perform at the Fogg Art Museum, as well as a little house located on Palmer Street. The Palmer Street Theater, which could only house 47 guests, was, in time, taken over by the Coop.

Alison Lurie remembers fondly one of the plays that Gorey wrote and directed through the Poet's Theater. It was called Amabel, and "was very amusing."

"It was very much like the work he became famous for; kind of Victorian, kind of Edwardian," she recalls. "It had the kind of way-out characters and costumes that he had fun creating."

The friends who formed the Harvard Poets Theatre included O'Hara, Kenneth Koch '48 and John Ashbery '49, in addition to Gorey and Lurie. They formed a tight group, according to Lurie.

"The people most involved in the theater saw each other all the time," she remembers. "And we all had a wonderful time."

And they fooled around like typical Harvard students.

"We did odd things," says Lurie. "We would go to the Morgan Memorial, which was a big old second-hand place where we could get costumes; or we would go out to the cemetery and make rubbings with crayons and ink," she continued.

"We had no idea that some of the people involved were going to grow up to be famous poets, so we didn't take ourselves that seriously. The people that took themselves seriously, not all that much became of them."

Gorey was involved with several other plays with the Poet's Theater, but he eventually decided it was time to move on.

Fantod Press

Gorey left Cambridge for New York City. He juggled several jobs, but did not find any that suited him.

"I wanted to have my own bookstore until I worked in one," he told The Boston Globe in 1998. "Then I thought I'd be a librarian until I met some crazy ones. I hoped to get into publishing, but at 28, my parents were still helping me out. Which wasn't good at all."

Gorey eventually settled down to write and draw. Unsuccessful attempts to find a publisher led the artist to print under his own name: Fantod Press. (The Random House Dictionary defines a fantod as a state of extreme nervous or restlessness. In several of Gorey's works, fantods appear as small, winged creatures stuffed in bell jars.)

Throughout his career, Gorey has also published under several different names: D. Awdrey-Gore, E.G. Deadworry, Ogdred Weary--all anagrams of his own original name.

Count Dracula

Once in New York, Gorey adopted a new lifestyle, one of aesthetic pleasure.

He attended opera performances and symphony concerts, visited museums, and most persistently, became an avid ballet fanatic. Gorey later recalls choreographer George Balanchine as one of the most important influences in his life. At one point, Gorey attended not only each of Balanchine's ballets, but every performance of every show.

After Balanchine's death in 1983, Gorey would withdraw from the city to a provincial house on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Gorey continued to draw and write throughout his years in New York. In 1977, he designed the set and costumes for the Broadway musical Dracula; in 1978, he won the Tony award for Costume design, but declined to accept the award. Gorey refused to go to Hollywood, and did not even attend the opening night.

But Michael Romanos, an admirer of Gorey's work, recalls the mastery of Gorey's scenery.

"When the curtain opened, before any people had come on stage, the set got a standing ovation," Romanos recounts.

And Romanos, who was living in Boston at the time, knew of Gorey's move to Cape Cod. He attempted to search out the artist; he began with the telephone book.

"I knew where he lived, and I was prepared to search for him under all his different [anagramed] names," says Romanos. "But I opened the phonebook, and there he was under his real name."

Despite Romanos' unexpected calling, Gorey was very receptive to his fan's aspiration to meet in person. The two talked about art, about photography versus drawing--Romanos even took a few photographs of his adored artist (pictured above).

In the following years, Romanos visited Gorey twice more.

"My overwhelming impression of him was that he was a very gracious and pleasant person," recalls Romanos. "He was a little put off by all the attention that he received, but he was very open to me, a young artist just starting out."

To the Great Beyond

For the last 20 years of his life, Gorey remained in his cottage in Yarmouth Port. He originally shared the house with some of his aunts, but later lived alone, except for the company of his cats and other furry friends.

Gorey never married, and had told some interviewers that he had never even been emotionally involved.

In 1994, when Gorey conducted an interview with The New York Times shortly after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, he talked about the approaching last years of his life.

"I thought, 'Oh gee, why haven't I burst into total screaming hysterics?'"

His answer: "I'm the opposite of hypochondriacal. I'm not entirely enamored of the idea of living forever."

Animal House

When Gorey died, he left his entire estate to a charitable trust fund for animal shelters. Once legal proceedings are complete, profits from Gorey's estate and virtually all of his possessions will be distributed to shelters across the nation.

The executors of the trust fund include lawyer Andrew Boose, and two of Gorey's close friends: Andreas L. Brown, owner of Gotham Book Mart, the New York City bookstore and art gallery that currently houses all of Gorey's archives, and friend Clifford Ross.

Ross became familiar with Gorey's work through a critical analysis; he completed his senior thesis at Yale on Edward Gorey. Though he met Gorey for the first time when he was 18 years old, it was only later in life that he established the close friendship that would last until Gorey's death.

Ross, together with Karen Wilkin, published The World of Edward Gorey in 1996 to honor the work of the "sophisticated, fine artist."

But Ross' attraction to Gorey, as a personality aside from his work, was his interesting perspective on culture and life.

"I so thoroughly enjoyed talking to him about any facet of culture," says Ross.

"We would talk about things that either one or us loved or hated."

Behind the Drawing

But not about Gorey's artwork. If Gorey's artwork seemed ambiguous, it was ambiguous for a reason; he refused to explain it.

So if a reporter were to ask Gorey why he illustrated stories of children dying, as one reporter once did, he would retort with a ridiculously absurd explanation.

"It's obviously much more poignant to do things to children," Gorey told that one reporter who inquired.

"The meaning of the work had to become evident through the work itself," Ross says. "[Gorey] was simply uninterested in explaining his work to anyone, especially himself, or perhaps, most importantly himself."

Take for example a bizarre drawing with a candle that seems to exist in thin air, Ross elaborates.

"The floating candle would stand for itself. And you would have to react to the floating candle yourself," he says.

And for Ross, his admiration of Gorey was based on the purity of his work.

"[Gorey] didn't court the favor of the art world or the world of culture," Ross conjures. "He just went on doing his work. Of all the things that drew me to him, the most impressive was the honesty of the endeavor. He just did his work and the world be damned."

More Than a Fisherman

Gorey first established a relationship with Brown and Gotham Book Mart in 1968; he came by the bookstore, as a customer, and attempted to sell some of his books printed under Fantod Press.

Gotham began displaying and selling his works, and has, since the first year, held an exhibit of Gorey's art at least once a year.

When Gorey moved from New York City, and did not care for the burden of relocating all of his work, he left it in the hands of Gotham Book Mart.

Brown admits he had gotten pretty close to Gorey over the past few decades.

"When you work with a man and display his work for over 30 years, you get to know him and his artwork pretty well," says Brown.

And Brown finds Gorey's work profound.

"I'm of the theory that [Gorey] was up to much more that he would admit to," Brown says. "He would say that his work was just what you saw, and nothing more, but I think it's similar to Hemingway's claim that The Old Man and the Sea was just about an old fisherman and nothing else."

"Gorey, as scholarly as he was, had a lot of hidden implications in his work.

He was addressing basic philosophic issues about life and living, and was making strong convictions with his art," he continues. "His art is not just frivolous, light-hearted humor, but serious statements. There's more than meets the eye."

After a pause, Brown adds, "Scholars in the coming years will keep digging and keep discovering."