How To Draw Edward Gorey Characters

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April 17, 2000

Edward Gorey, Artist and Writer Who Turned the Macabre Into a Career, Dies at 75

By MEL GUSSOW

Edward Gorey, the artist and writer who was a k master of the comic macabre and delighted generations of readers with his spidery drawings and stories of hapless children, swooning maidens, throbblefooted specters, threatening topiary and weird, mysterious events on eerie Victorian landscapes, died on Saturday at Greatcoat Cod Infirmary in Hyannis, Mass. He was 75 and lived in Yarmouth Port, Mass.

He had suffered a heart attack on Wednesday, said Elizabeth Morton, a cousin.

Edmund Wilson, the first of many critics to extol Mr. Gorey'south work, described his world as "poisonous and poetic." It was that and much more than: witty, woeful, stray and delirious to the point of obsession. He was one of the most aptly named figures in American art and literature. In creating a big body of small work, he fabricated an indelible imprint on noir fiction and on the psyche of his admirers.

Mr. Gorey, who wrote more than 100 books and illustrated more than 60 by other authors (from Edward Lear to Samuel Beckett), as well had a career in the theater, with revues based on his stories and as a scenic designer. "Dracula," in the Gorey version, was a Broadway hit in 1977.

In person Mr. Gorey was as instantly identifiable as his work. Toweringly alpine, he had a white beard and frothy pilus, an earring in each lobe and rings on most of his fingers. When he lived in New York, he frequently wore a raccoon glaze, although later in life he became sheepish near wearing fur.

He looked foreboding, similar a buccaneer between piracies or a figure out of i of his books, and his self-portrait lurks on the fringe of many of his stories. Only in contrast to the work, the man was genial and gentle, and sometimes childish in his language, peppering his conversation with words like "jeepers" and "zingy."

"In that location was this false idea that he was a brooding, melancholic homo," said Andreas Brown, a friend of Mr. Gorey's and the owner of the Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan. "He was non a recluse. He was jovial and effervescent, and he loved to express joy."

The books could be baroque in the extreme. His alphabet books chronicle the mishaps of unfortunates deceived past fate. "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" begins with "A is for Amy who savage down the stairs" (a ghostly child plummeting headlong to her doom) and ends with "Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin." The stories of peril are frightful, but with a strong sense of mockery.

Though sometimes mistakenly categorized as an author of children's books, Mr. Gorey appealed to all ages, at least everyone with a sense of taste for the fanciful. Only a few of his books, including "The Wuggly Ump" and "The Bug Book," were intended specifically for young readers.

In both his art and his writing Mr. Gorey was inimitable. Developing crosshatched line-drawing into an fine art class, he used pen and ink to create a world of barren moors, abandoned railway stations and storm-struck formal gardens. A stroller in one of those gardens could suddenly exist brained by a piece of falling masonry, as in the Gorey blithe film that for years has acted equally a prelude to the "Mystery" series on public tv set.

In Goreyland the moon is a skull, and no dominicus shines. A tiny green face peers through the concealed window of a blackness motor auto. Frightful beasts are perched on a crag, and upstairs in the listing attic. Death is by drowning, dismemberment or beingness dropped by the Devil into a flaming pit. The Abominable Infant is a bulbous blob carried away past an hawkeye and exploding in midair.

Mr. Gorey could be sportive every bit well as horrific, every bit in "The Broken Spoke," which, in his words, "combines, with breathtaking cleverness, 2 objects of consuming involvement: postcards and bicycles." Although sometimes confused with the cartoonist Charles Addams, with whom he shared an interest in the ghoulish, Mr. Gorey mostly told cautionary tales that offered moral instruction along with tearful laughter.

Equally an creative person he was close to Daumier and, with his aura of surrealism, to Magritte, as in "The Betrayed Confidence," a series of pernicious postcards, closing with wordless pictures: a dangling rope, an empty frying pan, an unmarked grave. Every bit an writer he bore the marking of S. J. Perelman, inventing an atlas that found room for place names like Nether Postlude, Backwater Hall in Mortshire (between Westward Elbow and Penetralia) and the Cycle Cemetery near Dirty Cruet, Blots. He also played word games with his name, anagrammatizing it in space ways, as Edward Gorey became Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde and D. Awdrey-Gore.

A passionate lover of the ballet, Mr. Gorey for years ritualistically attended all performances of dances by George Balanchine at the New York Metropolis Ballet. Oft he dreamed upwards stories about ballets and operas and occasionally designed sets, costumes and drop defunction. For many years he lived in a cluttered apartment in Manhattan, and at the stop of the ballet flavour he would go out for his abode on Cape Cod. Afterward Balanchine's death in 1983, stripped of his principal cultural outlet, Mr. Gorey began thinking seriously virtually leaving New York permanently.

In 1986 he moved to Cape Cod, get-go to Barnstable, and so to Yarmouth Port, eventually living lone in a 200-twelvemonth-sometime house that may or may non have been haunted. In 1994 he mentioned to a visitor the strange disappearance of all the finials from his lamps along with his collection of tiny teddy bears. The house was in disarray, with esoteric objects (a toilet with a tabletop) and with no sign of Mr. Gorey'southward work. At that place was, notwithstanding, a definitive Gorey touch: poison ivy creeped inside through cracks in the wall.

A speed reader of writers from Agatha Christie to Jane Austen, he packed his dwelling house with books, many of them Victorian, and tempered his scholarliness with subcultural pursuits, watching lather operas and checking out horror movies from a nearby video stores.

A covey of cats shared his life and, in Gorey way, had complimentary run of the piece of furniture. The number varied from five to six. If a stray showed up at his door, he would immediately welcome it in. (After his death a friend moved into the business firm to take care of the cats.) Mr. Gorey remembered the time that the cats were on a couch and suddenly "anybody turned," optics opening wide, equally if someone, or something, unseen had entered the room.

Although the Gorey-similar figure in his stories seemed icily removed, the real Mr. Gorey was a friendly neighbour on Cape Cod, holding court daily at Jack's Outback, a cafeteria-style coffee shop. He would take his personal mug from a rack reserved for regulars and join in the local gossip. He was close to his cousins, some of whom lived nearby, but there are no immediate survivors.

In 1994 he was told he had prostate cancer and diabetes, and he met his illnesses with his customary cheerful demeanor. "Why haven't I burst into total screaming hysterics?" he asked, and added, "I'm not entirely enamored of the idea of living forever."

Edward St. John Gorey, known to his friends as Ted, was born in Chicago on Feb. 25, 1925, the son of a Hearst announcer. "I like to think of myself as a pale, pathetic, solitary child," he said. "But it was not truthful." He taught himself to read at three 1/two, and by 5, he had read "Dracula" and "Alice in Wonderland," two books that were to accept a profound issue on his life.

The protagonists, one evil incarnate (only he can't aid it), the other all innocence and curiosity (she gets what she deserves), were to haunt his dreams and boss his fine art. By 8, he had graduated to reading Victor Hugo. He taught himself to depict and afterward took courses at the Art Found of Chicago.

Drafted into the Army at 18, he sat out the Second Globe War as a company clerk and in 1946 entered Harvard, where he majored in French literature and roomed with the poet Frank O'Hara. He and O'Hara joined the Poets Theater in Cambridge, Mr. Gorey as a designer, director and playwright.

After graduation he remained in Boston, illustrating book jackets. Then he went to New York and worked in the art section at Doubleday, staying tardily in the office to create his ain books. "I didn't envision a career in annihilation," he said, unless, perhaps, it was running a bookstore. Unable to find a publisher, he invented his ain imprint, Fantod Press, and sold his books directly to stores. His first volume, "The Unstrung Harp," was published in 1953.

"The Doubtful Guest" (1958) quickly became a Gorey classic. In it a strange, claw-nosed creature, wearing a long scarf and tennis shoes, shows up uninvited at a dreary mansion and soon becomes a permanent member of the family, peering up flues in the fireplace, tearing up books and sleepwalking through the business firm. And after 17 years he showed "no intention of going abroad." "The Due west Wing" (1963) is one of Mr. Gorey's wordless masterworks. It is the house that is the key graphic symbol, with its dark passageways, doors leading to other doors, a rug that looks like a turbulent sea and shadows floating in space.

A turning point in Mr. Gorey'south career was his meeting with Andreas Brownish. When Mr. Brown bought the Gotham Book Mart, it became the primal immigration house for Mr. Gorey, presenting exhibitions of his work in the store's gallery and eventually turning him into an international glory. The Gotham sold not bad quantities of his books and also collectibles: greeting cards, T-shirts (one reads, "So many books, so little time"), calendars and stuffed toys. With the publication of his offset anthology, "Amphigorey" (in 1972), followed past two sequels, his audience widened.

Mr. Gorey worked slowly and precisely and because of his amiability frequently overcommitted himself to projects. All of a sudden he would exist struck with an idea, and that would draw him to his studio. In Yarmouth Port he worked in a cubicle most the size of a Gorey book. Pinned above his drawing table were postcards of paintings past Goya and Matisse (his favorite creative person) and of an Indian sculpture of a tiger devouring a missionary.

He said he was inspired past "practically annihilation visual or verbal" and always tried to keep himself open to new experiences and new images. When he saw the French silent movie "L'Enfant de Paris," he was and then excited that he began making notes in the dark, and and then went dwelling house and wrote "The Hapless Child." "The Willowdale Handcar" and other cliffhangers derive from movies by D. Westward. Griffith. The moors murder instance in England led to "The Loathsome Couple."

For "The Raging Tide: or, The Black Doll's Imbroglio," he drew an impish inkblot named Figbash (inspired past Max Ernst), and then years later on produced a Figbash alphabet volume. In his books, he acted as his ain scenic and costume designer and typographer. He believed in hand lettering, even cartoon the Library of Congress number in his books.

In addition to "Dracula," Mr. Gorey'due south piece of work has been the subject area of many theatrical revues, including "Gorey Stories," "Amphigorey" and "Tinned Lettuce." In recent years a series of revues were done on Cape Cod for limited audiences, with the author supervising as director.

Ane friend regularly supplied him with dreams. Mr. Gorey always insisted that he never used his own, which were "grandiose architectural dreams" and occasionally horror movies. Late in life he was troubled past insomnia, awake in the dark of night thinking Gorey thoughts.

Last year he published a new Christmas story, "The Headless Bosom," subtitled "A Melancholy Meditation on the Simulated Millennium." In a variation on a previous book, "The Haunted Tea-Cosy," Edmund Gravel (the Recluse of Lower Spigot) and the Bahumbug (a pear-shaped insect with half-dozen limbs) embarked on a disaster-prone journey through the hamlet of Godly Wot. Afterward phantasmal adventures, the author concludes:

They saw it was about to come:

The finish of the millennium,

And then find themselves perforce to exist

Into some other century.

One time when he was asked why he wrote so much nigh murder and other forms of violence, Mr. Gorey answered: "Well, I don't know. I approximate I'm interested in real life."