by Mark Dery
51 John Ciardi, letter to Donald Allen, in Homage to Frank O’Hara, ed. Bill Berkson and Joe LeSueur, rev. ed. (Bolinas, CA: Big Sky Books, 1988), 19.
52 Cifelli, John Ciardi, 145.
53 Quoted in Gooch, City Poet, 120.
54 Edward Gorey, “The Colours of Disillusion,” October 27, 1947, 1–10, Edward Gorey Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
55 Ibid.
56 Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” 114–15, 116.
57 Edward Gorey, “A Wet Sunday, Vendée, Whatever Year Scott’s Novel Was Translated,” April 14, 1949, n.p., Edward Gorey Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
58 Gooch, City Poet, 117.
59 Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying,” in The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde, ed. Richard Ellmann (New York: Vintage, 1970), 294.
60 Gooch, City Poet, 131.
61 Phil Thomas, “Gorey Writes First, Draws Later,” Gettysburg Times, January 9, 1984, 7.
62 Gooch, City Poet, 118.
63 Ibid.
64 Elizabeth Hollander, “The End of the Line: Rory Dagweed Succumbs,” Goodbye, n.d., n.p., https://web.archive.org/web/20010217224104/http://www.goodbyemag.com//mar00/gorey.html/.
65 Edward Gorey interviewed by Faith Elliott, November 30, 1976, in Gorey’s apartment at 36 East 38th Street, New York City. Unpublished. Audio provided to author.
66 W. E. Farbstein, “Debunking Expedition,” Collier’s Weekly, n.p., n.d., magazine clipping included in Helen Gorey, letter to Edward Gorey, n.d., Edward Gorey Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
67 Gooch, City Poet, 133.
68 Ibid., 115.
69 Ifan Kyrle Fletcher, “Ifan Kyrle Fletcher,” in Ronald Firbank: Memoirs and Critiques, ed. Mervyn Horder (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1977), 25.
70 Unedited footage of ABC reporter Margaret Osmer interviewing Gorey in 1978 about his fur coats. Digital copy of videotape provided to the author by Christopher Seufert.
71 Gooch, City Poet, 121.
72 Ibid., 135.
73 Ivy Compton-Burnett, A Heritage and Its History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 10.
74 Gooch, City Poet, 136.
75 Ibid., 133.
76 Ibid., 132.
77 Ibid., 133.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid., 116.
81 Larry Osgood, e-mail message to the author, January 6, 2013.
82 Larry Osgood, e-mail message to the author, November 21, 2012.
83 Osgood, interview with the author.
84 Edward Gorey, letter to Consuelo Joerns, December 30, 1948, 1, Edward Gorey Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
85 Ibid., 2.
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid.
88 Student’s Status, August 1, 1949, 2, in Edward Gorey student records, Harvard University.
89 “I’ve never been one for a messy clinch” (untitled poem), n.p., Edward Gorey Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
90 Gorey, letter to Brandt, January 30, 1951, 3.
91 Solod, “Edward Gorey,” 102.
92 Ibid., 97.
93 Ibid., 102.
94 Ibid., 103.
95 Ibid., 105.
96 Ibid.
97 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” 149.
98 John Ashbery, e-mail message to the author, March 2, 2011. Ashbery requested that the following credit/permission line be appended to this endnote: “Quotations/excerpts from unpublished correspondence with John Ashbery used in this volume are copyright © 2011 by John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc. for the author.”
99 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” 148.
100 Dyer, “Poison Penman,” 119.
101 Franklyn B. Modell, letter to Edward Gorey, April 27, 1950, 1, Edward Gorey Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
102 David Remnick, “The New Yorker in the Forties,” New Yorker, April 28, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-new-yorker-in-the-forties.
103 Filstrup, “An Interview with Edward St. John Gorey,” 85.
104 Dyer, “Poison Penman,” 115.
105 Alexander Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, rev. ed. (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2011), 37.
106 Solod, “Edward Gorey,” 96.
107 Ibid., 105.
108 Marjorie Perloff, Frank O’Hara: Poet Among Painters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 21.
109 Gooch, City Poet, 140.
110 Dyer, “Poison Penman,” 115.
111 Frank O’Hara, “For Edward Gorey,” in Early Writing, ed. Donald Allen (Bolinas, CA: Grey Fox Press, 1977), 65.
112 Gooch, City Poet, 123–24.
Chapter 4. Sacred Monsters: Cambridge, 1950–53
1 Clifford Ross and Karen Wilkin, The World of Edward Gorey (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 33.
2 Joseph P. Kahn, “It Was a Dark and Gorey Night,” Boston Globe, December 17, 1998, C4.
3 Steven Heller, “Edward Gorey’s Cover Story,” in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, ed. Karen Wilkin (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 232.
4 D. Keith Mano, “Edward Gorey Inhabits an Odd World of Tiny Drawings, Fussy Cats, and ‘Doomed Enterprises,’” People 10, no. 1 (July 3, 1978), https://people.com/archive/edward-gorey-inhabits-an-odd-world-of-tiny-drawings-fussy-cats-and-doomed-enterprises-vol-10-no-1/.
5 Edward Gorey, letter to Bill Brandt, January 30, 1951, 2, William E. Brandt Papers, Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman. All quotations from Gorey letters to Brandt are from letters found in the Brandt Papers.
6 Alexander Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2000), 12.
7 Gorey, letter to Brandt, January 30, 1951, 2.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Nicholas Wroe, “Young at Heart,” The Guardian, October 24, 2003, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/25/featuresreviews.guardianreview15.
11 Alison Lurie, “Of Curious, Beastly & Doubtful Days: Alison Lurie on Edward ‘Ted’ Gorey,” transcript of remarks delivered at the Edward Gorey House’s Seventh Annual Auction and Goreyfest, October 4, 2008, http://www.goreyography.com/north/north.htm.
12 Alison Lurie, interview with the author.
13 Lurie, “Of Curious, Beastly & Doubtful Days.”
14 Lurie, interview with the author.
15 Lurie, “Of Curious, Beastly & Doubtful Days.”
16 Ibid.
17 Lurie, interview with the author.
18 Ibid.
19 Lurie, “Of Curious, Beastly & Doubtful Days.”
20 Gorey, letter to Brandt, January 30, 1951, 1.
21 Ibid.
22 Harvard Advocate 133, no. 6 (Commencement Issue, 1950), and Harvard Advocate 133, no. 7 (Registration Issue, 1950), respectively.
23 John Updike, foreword to Elephant House: or, The Home of Edward Gorey, by Kevin McDermott (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications, 2003), n.p.
24 Gorey, letter to Brandt, January 30, 1951, 3.
25 Ibid.
26 Edward M. Cifelli, The Selected Letters of John Ciardi (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991), 71.
27 Merrill Moore, letter to Helen Gorey, April 21, 1953, 2, Merrill Moore Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. All quotations from Moore’s correspondence with Helen Gorey, Edward Leo Gorey, and Edward Gorey are taken from this collection.
28 Moore, telegram to Edward Gorey, December 2, 1951.
29 T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), 154.
30 Alison Lurie, “A Memoir,” in V. R. Lang: Poems & Plays; With a Memoir by Alison Lurie, by V. R. Lang and Alison Lurie (New York: Random House, 1975), 13.
31 Nora Sayre, “The Po
ets’ Theatre: A Memoir of the Fifties,” Grand Street 3, no. 3 (Spring 1984), 98.
32 Ibid., 92.
33 Ibid., 98.
34 Lurie, “A Memoir,” 14.
35 Oscar Wilde, The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde, ed. Alvin Redman (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1959), 64.
36 Brad Gooch, City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 147.
37 Lurie, “A Memoir,” 60.
38 Gooch, City Poet, 148.
39 Oscar Wilde’s Wit & Wisdom: A Book of Quotations (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998), 1.
40 Lurie, “A Memoir,” 71.
41 Lurie, “Of Curious, Beastly & Doubtful Days.”
42 Sayre, “The Poets’ Theatre,” 95.
43 Ibid.
44 Edward Gorey, Amabel, or The Partition of Poland, written in February–May 1952, n.p., typewritten copy of unpublished play, Felicia Lamport Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
45 Sarah A. Dolgonos, “Behind the Macabre: In Memoriam of Edward Gorey,” Harvard Crimson, June 5, 2000, 2, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2000/6/5/behind-the-macabre-ponce-asked-what/?page=2.
46 Richard Dyer, “The Poison Penman,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 116.
47 Theroux, Strange Case, 10.
48 Moore, letter to Edward Gorey, October 22, 1951, 2.
49 Edward Gorey, letter to Alison Lurie, June 22, 1952, 2, Alison Lurie Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. All quotations from Gorey’s correspondence with Lurie are taken from the Lurie Papers at Cornell.
50 Theroux, Strange Case, 12.
51 Society Notebook, Chicago Daily Tribune, October 22, 1952, B1.
52 Edward Leo Gorey, letter to Merrill Moore, April 24, 1953, 1.
53 Judith Cass, Recorded at Random, Chicago Daily Tribune, December 17, 1952, B7.
54 Gorey, letter to Lurie, June 22, 1952, 1.
55 Ibid., 2.
56 Jason Epstein, interview with the author at Epstein’s home in Manhattan, March 29, 2011.
57 Carol Stevens, “An American Original,” Print, January–February 1988, 51.
58 Heller, “Edward Gorey’s Cover Story,” 232.
59 Clifford Ross, “Interview with Edward Gorey,” in The World of Edward Gorey, 33, 36.
Chapter 5. “Like a Captive Balloon, Motionless Between Sky and Earth”: New York, 1953
1 Edward Gorey, audiotape of an interview with Ed Pinsent, the edited version of which appeared in Speak magazine in fall 1997 as “A Gorey Encounter” and was subsequently republished in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, ed. Karen Wilkin (New York: Harcourt, 2001). Pinsent provided me with a digital copy of the interview tape.
2 Edward Gorey, letter to Merrill Moore dated “Tuesday night” (in 1953, most likely March), 1, Merrill Moore Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
3 Robert Dahlin, “Conversations with Writers: Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 28.
4 Carol Stevens, “An American Original,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 130.
5 Steven Heller, “Edward Gorey’s Cover Story,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 234.
6 Ibid., 233.
7 Jane Merrill Filstrup, “An Interview with Edward St. John Gorey at the Gotham Book Mart,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 76.
8 Clifford Ross, “Interview with Edward Gorey,” in The World of Edward Gorey, by Clifford Ross and Karen Wilkin (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 28.
9 Heller, “Edward Gorey’s Cover Story,” 235.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 236.
12 Steven Heller, Edward Gorey: His Book Cover Art & Design (Portland, OR: Pomegranate, 2015), 17.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Stephen Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 154.
16 Edward Gorey, letter to Peter Neumeyer, October 2, 1968, in Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer, ed. Peter F. Neumeyer (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications, 2011), 19.
17 Andreas Brown dismisses the idea that Warhol and Gorey ever crossed paths at Doubleday—or anywhere else, for that matter. “They never, ever communicated or had any association that I know of,” he said. See “Warhol & Collecting Books,” Andreas Brown interviewed by Kathryn Price, curator of collections at the Williams College Museum of Art, August 6, 2015, archived on the Williams College YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL6TBUl8MGM.
Yet a 1977 profile asserts that Gorey rubbed elbows with Warhol at Doubleday in the early ’50s and that “years later, he was surprised by Warhol, who recognized him on the street in New York, greeting him as a celebrity of equal rank in bohemian circles.” (See Craig Little, “Gorey,” Packet, October 30, 1977, 19. They had, at least, shared a marquee: Warhol appeared in the November 1952 issue of Harper’s that featured Gorey’s debut on the cover of a national magazine; Warhol’s pen-and-ink drawing, done in the jittery, blotted-line style popularized by Ben Shahn, accompanies Shirley Jackson’s short story “Journey with a Lady.”
18 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” 155.
19 Louis Menand, “Pulp’s Big Moment: How Emily Brontë Met Mickey Spillane,” New Yorker, January 5, 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/pulps-big-moment.
20 Jason Epstein, Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 66–67.
21 “Edward Gorey,” Print, January–February 1958, 44.
22 Menand, “Pulp’s Big Moment.”
23 Heller, “Edward Gorey’s Cover Story,” 235.
24 Gorey “became very well known” for his James covers, he said, the irony of which was not lost on the man who claimed to hate James “more than anyone else in the world except for Picasso.” “But your covers for James are fairly astute interpretations,” Heller protested. “Well,” said Gorey, “everybody thought, ‘Oh, how sensitive you are to Henry James,’ and I thought, ‘Oh sure, kids.’ If it’s because I hate him so much, that’s probably true.” See Heller, “Edward Gorey’s Cover Story,” 236.
25 Thomas Garvey, “Edward Gorey and the Glass Closet: A Moral Fable,” Hub Review, March 19, 2011, http://hubreview.blogspot.com/2011/03/imaginary-frontispiece-with-author-in.html. All Thomas Garvey quotations are taken from this page.
26 Douglass Shand-Tucci, The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 34.
27 Edward Gorey, letter to Alison Lurie dated “Monday, lunch” (December 1953), 3, Alison Lurie Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. All quotations from Gorey’s correspondence with Lurie are taken from the Lurie Papers at Cornell.
28 Brad Gooch, City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 194.
29 Gorey, letter to Lurie dated “Friday evening” (September 10, 1953), 2.
30 Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Berkeley and Toronto: Crossing Press, 1982), 221.
31 Kevin Cook, Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime That Changed America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 47.
32 Frank O’Hara, Selected Poems, ed. Mark Ford (New York: Borzoi / Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 61.
33 Gorey, letter to Lurie dated “Saturday evening” (August 1953), 1.
34 Gorey, letter to Lurie dated “Wednesday noon” (September 30, 1953), 1.
35 Gorey, letter to Lurie dated “Thursday noon” (November 6, 1953), 2.
36 Gorey, letter to Lurie dated “Monday lunch” (December 1953), 1.
37 Ibid., 2.
38 Gorey, letter to Lurie dated “Saturday afternoon, shortly after five” (March 1953), 2.
39 Tobi Tobias, “Balletgorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 14.
40 Haskel Frankel, “Edward Gorey: Professionally Preoccupied with Death,” Herald Tribune, August 25, 1963, 8.
&n
bsp; 41 Marilyn Stasio, “A Gorey Story,” Oui, April 1979, 85.
42 Filstrup, “An Interview with Edward St. John Gorey,” 20.
43 Stasio, “A Gorey Story,” 130.
44 Gorey, letter to Lurie dated “Saturday afternoon, shortly after five,” 2.
45 Alden Mudge, “Edward Gorey: Take a Walk on the Dark Side of the Season,” BookPage, November 1998, https://bookpage.com/interviews/7968-edward-gorey#.WiA-YEtrz66.
46 The San Remo Café, a bar at 189 Bleecker Street that closed in 1967, was a popular watering hole for writers, painters, musicians, and other bohemian scenemakers. William S. Burroughs drank there. Gore Vidal put the moves on Jack Kerouac there, then took him back to the Chelsea Hotel for a roll in the hay. Leonard Bernstein, Delmore Schwartz, Miles Davis, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, and, as it happens, Frank O’Hara were often seen there. It drew a mixed crowd but struck the actor Judith Malina as having a “gay and intellectual” vibe. See Stephen Petrus and Ronald D. Cohen, Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 154.
Though Gorey told Lurie he hadn’t set foot in the place since he “came to rest” in Manhattan, there’s evidence to suggest he went there at least once with Frank O’Hara and Joan Mitchell. Did he ever rub elbows with boldfaced names such as Ginsberg, Burroughs, Baldwin, or Bernstein? Fascinating to imagine.
Chapter 6. Hobbies Odd—Ballet, the Gotham Book Mart, Silent Film, Feuillade, 1953
1 Richard Dyer, “The Poison Penman,” in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, ed. Karen Wilkin (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 118.
2 Quoted in Andreas Brown, “2012 Hall of Fame Inductee: Edward Gorey,” Society of Illustrators website, https://www.societyillustrators.org/edward-gorey.
3 Edward Gorey, letter to Alison Lurie, January 7, 1957, 1, Alison Lurie Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. All quotations from Gorey’s correspondence with Lurie are taken from the Lurie Papers at Cornell.
4 Kevin Kelly, “Edward Gorey: An Artist in ‘the Nonsense Tradition,’” Boston Globe, August 16, 1992, B28.
5 Antioch Jensen, “Edward Gorey Glory,” Maine Antique Digest, March 2011, 32C.
6 Edward Gorey, “Edward Gorey: Proust Questionnaire,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 187.
