by Alison Lurie
Another book of Edward Gorey’s that I was perhaps somewhat involved with was The Curious Sofa, a pornographic work, which was published in 1961. When I worked in the Rare Book Room at the Boston Public Library, there was a locked stack full of old-fashioned, not always very hard-core erotica, and when nobody in authority was around, it was possible for me and/or a visitor like Ted to look at these books. I think that they were perhaps one source of The Curious Sofa, which isn’t pornographic at all, but makes fun of the genre. At the time there was still a lot of complaint in the press about so-called dirty writing, which Ted regarded as rather silly. Here are the captions of the first two pages of his parody, both with perfectly respectable illustrations:
Alice was eating grapes in the park, when Herbert, an extremely well-endowed young man, introduced himself to her.
He invited her to go for a ride in a taxi-cab, on the floor of which they did something Alice had never done before.
The Curious Sofa continues like this throughout, continually suggestive but never in the slightest way explicit. Some people thought that its heroine was based on me, because she has a similar name and rather resembles me as I was then. (I’ve still got the same haircut.) Even a few of our friends assumed that I was Alice, and I had to work hard to convince them that I hadn’t had any of the experiences that she seems perhaps to have had.
Nobody I know of has ever complained that The Curious Sofa should be banned. But a few readers have claimed that many of Edward Gorey’s books are too frightening for children; that kids shouldn’t be allowed to see them. People even say that Ted hated children. None of this is true. In spite of the remarkable amount of infanticide in his work, he was very nice to my three sons, and they liked him and loved his books. I have a wonderful photograph of Ted playing with my youngest son, both of them equally intent on the castle they are building. After The Beastly Baby was finally published, I wrote him a postcard, thanking him for sending me a copy. It reads:
The boys love it. Yesterday they were running around, pointing their toy guns at each other saying “I’m the beastly baby and I’m shooting up the bric-a-brac.” So I want you to know that there is one family in the world in which your books are just as much a beloved part of childhood as Beatrix Potter.
Moreover, in spite of what some critics think of as the possible sinister or anxiety-producing effect of Edward Gorey’s books on children, all mine turned out just fine.
In Ted’s books, it must be admitted, there is often a kind of gray darkness, in which death is met with indifference; it is just what happens. Not so in real life. When Gorey died, the website maintained by his fans (goreography.com) recorded scores of messages of shock, grief, and passionate admiration from correspondents all over the world, aged thirteen to eighty. Many described their surprise and joy when they first saw Gorey’s work, and declared that they had found friends and lovers through a mutual enthusiasm for his work; others said that they had rejected acquaintances who didn’t like it.
The loss of Edward Gorey is the loss not only of a brilliant and original writer and artist, but a gifted stage and costume designer. He has also taken with him many other greatly talented imaginary people, including Ogdred Weary, author of The Curious Sofa, E. G. Deadworry, author of The Awdrey-Gore Legacy, Mrs. Regera Dowdy, author of The Pious Infant and translator of Eduard Blutig’s The Evil Garden. (Evidently these writers, and many others, are pseudonyms—and in some cases anagrams—of “Edward Gorey”; though if we accept this, we must also accept the astounding fact that Mr. Gorey produced over a hundred books.) But we must not despair. Often the characters in Gorey’s work who die or disappear leave only a void behind: empty cross-hatched streets and withered formal gardens and rooms with peculiar wallpaper. We are luckier; we have his books.
James Merrill
It is rare for those born with great talent and great wealth neither ostentatiously to display either one, nor to coast on these golden flying carpets of advantage. James Merrill did neither. He lived modestly, and all his life he almost invisibly shared his fortune with less fortunate artists and writers, most notably through the Ingram Merrill Foundation—the name of which reunited his long-divorced and estranged parents, Helen Ingram and the Wall Street tycoon Charles Merrill. There were also many individual gifts, one of which underwrote the publication of my first book, a memoir of a friend.
It wasn’t only financial support that Jimmy Merrill and his partner David Jackson gave: they were also amazingly generous with their time, attention, and affection. For many years, whenever I thought I had finished a manuscript, I showed it to them, and many of my books were saved by their tactful comments from a fate worse than publication.
In the same way, Jimmy did not use his literary gifts to trumpet their own brilliance. On first reading, his work often seemed unassuming even casual; only gradually did its wit, invention, and serious engagement with both the world around him and the poetic tradition appear. Even in his autobiography and in the dramatic Sandover poems, he gave “JM” no special privileges, but turned his cool, amused, sometimes frighteningly penetrating gaze on himself as well as on the world around him. His attitude towards “real life” and world news was the same. Everything, even the most obscure news item or the slightest flicker of a match or a joke, might be serious—yet nothing was solemn.
In the last chapter of his memoir of his early years, A Different Person, James Merrill speaks of his love affair with certain words. The affectionate, detailed consideration he brings to the subject would not surprise anyone who knew how intensely aware he was of language, even in the most casual and banal circumstances. Sometimes when I was with him, I would hear a cliché hop out of my mouth, like the toads and snakes that afflict the bad sister in the fairy tale. Most of the time he would just slightly wince, but now and then he would scrutinize the cliché with a herpetologist’s care and detachment.
For instance, when I described my ten-year-old son’s state of mind by saying that he was “As mad as a wet hen,” Jimmy’s response was “Yes. I wonder, would the juvenile equivalent be ‘as mad as a wet chicken’? Or perhaps one could use the masculine form, ‘as mad as a wet cock.’”
Almost every time I spoke to Jimmy, or read something he had written—whether it was a poem or a postcard—I was reminded that it is the job not only of a writer, but also of every living person, to take language both lightly and seriously, as he did—often at the same time; he must be one of the few writers who could successfully use words like “asymmetries,” “X-raywise,” and “oops!” in the same poem. In his work the flattest clichés are transformed into glowing images, and worn-out puns and similes expand and come alive. And almost always, behind the flash and shimmer of his language, there are deeper meanings.
In the black light of his death, many of his lines reverberate even more. At one point he published a wonderful travel essay, “Japan: Prose of Departure,” a travelogue that flows effortlessly into and out of a series of haiku and thoughts about a dying friend in New York. In the poem “Japan,” he remarks that the New York clinic where his friend is dying is “vast and complex as an ocean liner.” He goes on to speak of the passengers, “all in the same boat … each of them visibly
At sea. Yes, yes, these
old folks grown unpresuming,
almost Japanese,
had embarked too soon
—Bon voyage! Write—upon their
final honeymoon.
Later he describes a visit to a Noh theater, where an actor plays the parts successively of a maiden pearl-diver, her mother’s ghost, and a dancing dragon. The performer is
a middle-aged man—
but time, gender, self are laws
waived by his gold fan.
A pearl-diver, a benevolent ghost, and a dancing dragon; that sounds about right. Bon voyage! I miss you all terribly.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
The Good Bad Boy: Pin
occhio
Today many people think they know all about Pinocchio. They believe that he is a wooden marionette who becomes a human boy; that he was swallowed by a huge fish; and that whenever he told lies his nose grew longer. (As a result of this last occurrence, for over a hundred years politicians have been caricatured with a lengthened nose when they prevaricate in public—especially Richard Nixon, who already had a kind of Pinocchio nose.)
These people are right, but often only in a very limited way. They know Pinocchio only from the sentimentalized and simplified Disney cartoon, or the condensed versions of his story that are thought more suitable for children. The original novel by Carlo Collodi, which today survives mainly in scholarly editions, is much longer, far more complex and interesting, and also much darker. The critic Glauco Cambon has called it one of the three most influential works in Italian literature (the others, he claims, are Dante’s Divine Comedy and Manzoni’s The Betrothed). For him, and those who know the real version, The Adventures of Pinocchio is not an amusing, light-hearted fantasy, but a serious fable about art and life. It is a story about growing up—and it is also, in essential ways, a story about growing up poor and Italian.
Carlo Collodi, whose real name was Carlo Lorenzi, was born in Florence in 1826, the first of ten children of household servants. When he did well in the local school, his parents’ employer paid for his further education in the hope that he would become a priest. This did not happen. Instead, after graduation Lorenzi went to work for a bookseller, and eventually became a liberal journalist, skeptical of both education and the church. In Pinocchio, school is something that all boys dread, and religion is hardly mentioned.
Originally Pinocchio was published as a serial in the newspaper Il gionale per i bambini (The paper for children). It appeared in eight parts between July and October of 1881, and then in eleven more installments from February 1882 to January 1883. The form of the story was that of a picaresque novel, in which, perhaps because of the pressures of time, some of the chapters are more original and/or better integrated into the story than others. Several of these episodes—for example those in which Pinocchio meets a giant serpent, is caught in a trap and made to serve as a watchdog, rides on the back of a pigeon, and is mistaken for a fish by a monstrous green-haired fisherman—are often left out of the condensed English-language versions.
The Disney film omits even more of the story, and changes it drastically. Geppetto, Pinocchio’s foster father, appears to be a prosperous toy maker, and the town where he lives looks Swiss or Bavarian: his workshop is full of music boxes and cuckoo clocks. In the original story, however, Geppetto is a desperately poor Italian woodcarver. When the film begins, Pinocchio is merely a wooden toy; he comes to life only when a fairy grants Geppetto’s wish for a child. In the book, Pinocchio is alive from the start. Though he is only a nameless stick of firewood in the shop of the carpenter Master Anthony, he can already speak and move. When Master Anthony strikes the stick with his axe, it cries out “Ouch! You hurt me!” The carpenter is terrified, and offers the piece of wood to his friend Geppetto, who wants to make a marionette. It continues to act up, mocking Geppetto and striking Master Anthony, provoking two fistfights between the old friends.
When Geppetto gets home, he begins to carve the marionette. But as soon as Pinocchio’s mouth is finished he laughs at Geppetto and sticks out his tongue, and once he has arms, he snatches Geppetto’s wig off his head. When his legs and feet are finished, he runs away.
From the start, Collodi’s Pinocchio is not only more self-conscious but far less simple than the cute little toy boy of the cartoon. He is not only naïve, but impulsive, rude, selfish, and violent. In theological terms, he begins life in a state of original sin; while from a psychologist’s point of view, he represents the amoral, self-centered small child, all uncensored id.
Unable to control his own impulses, Pinocchio provokes external control. As he runs down the street, pursued by Geppetto, he is stopped by a policeman, who returns him to his foster father. Immediately, in a maneuver that will be familiar to many parents of small children, Pinocchio flings himself on the ground and declares that he won’t walk anymore. A crowd gathers and (like some modern experts on child development) begins to blame Geppetto for Pinocchio’s delinquency. Eventually they convince the policeman to put Geppetto in prison. In Collodi’s world, the law is always stupid and often corrupt. It is usually the victim of a crime, rather than the perpetrator, who is punished. (Later in the story, when Pinocchio goes to court to complain that he has been robbed, the judge, who is a gorilla, sends him rather than the robbers to jail. He is released only when he falsely admits that he is a criminal.)
Once he is free again, Pinocchio returns home, where he meets what many readers have recognized as his conscience, or external superego, in the form of a Talking Cricket. The Cricket scolds Pinocchio for running away, and warns him about the dangers of idleness: if he quits school, he will grow up to be a perfect jackass. But Pinocchio refuses to listen. The only trade in the world that will suit him, he says, is that of “eating, drinking, sleeping, having fun, and living the life of a vagabond from morning to night.” When the Cricket remarks that “everyone who follows that trade is bound to end up in the poorhouse or in prison,” Pinocchio becomes angry and throws a wooden mallet at the Cricket, killing it. It will appear in the story again, however, first as a mysterious black-clad doctor and finally as a ghost.
Pinocchio’s external conscience also appears in the Disney cartoon, but there it has been turned into a comic figure, and rechristened “Jiminy Cricket” (the phrase is, very aptly, an old-fashioned American euphemism for “Jesus Christ”). Jiminy Cricket wears the top hat and tails of a vaudeville performer, he sings and dances, and most of the time his admonitions are amusing but ineffective. Pinocchio only half listens to him, but does him no harm.
Disney’s Pinocchio is portrayed as about five or six years old, and throughout the story he remains innocent and simple, like the ideal child of romantic literature. He is without rudeness or malice: what gets him into trouble is curiosity and boredom. Collodi’s hero is clearly several years older, and full of aggressive and rebellious impulses which are only tamed at the end of the story. Here he recalls a classic character in American children’s fiction of the late nineteenth century, the Good Bad Boy.
This figure made his first important appearance in Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s Story of a Bad Boy (1869). Aldrich was born and largely grew up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; he became a popular journalist, poet, and novelist, and later the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. His hero, Tom Bailey, who was based on his own childhood self, is “bad” only in contrast to the almost unbelievably pious, obedient, and self-sacrificing little boys and girls who were the protagonists of so many contemporary “moral tales” for children. Tom Bailey has a sense of enterprise and fun. He and his friends occasionally skip school, but they do not become juvenile delinquents. They stage elaborate snowball fights and beat up a local bully. The worst thing they do is to burn an old stagecoach and fire some cannon balls left over from the Civil War. Aldrich’s book became very popular, and many imitations followed, including James Otis’s Toby Tyler (1881), George Wilbur’s Peck’s Bad Boy and his Pa (1883), and eventually Booth Tarkington’s Penrod (1914). But though Toby Tyler runs away from home to join the circus, and the other protagonists are occasionally disobedient or naughty, they are essentially good boys.
The most famous descendant of Aldrich’s Tom Bailey, however, is seriously delinquent. This is the eponymous hero of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, first published in 1876. Tom’s boyhood home, Hannibal, Missouri, is closely based on Twain’s own hometown of St. Petersburg, and his well-behaved brother and worried mother reappear as Sid and Aunt Polly. Tom is not just adventurous and occasionally naughty. He lies, steals, smokes, skips school, causes an uproar in church, runs away from home, and associates with dubious companions. He loves freedom and pleasure and craves adve
nture. He is impulsive, thoughtless, and mischievous. At the same time Tom is basically good at heart. He learns from his mistakes, and at the end of the book he is forgiven and reconciled with his family and society. The same thing, of course, happens in Twain’s later masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn (1884).
Whether or not Collodi read Tom Sawyer, there are similarities between the two stories. But Pinocchio’s world is much bleaker than Tom’s. Tom’s Aunt Polly is by no means rich, but she owns a house with a fenced garden. Pinocchio’s foster father, the carpenter Geppetto, is old and seriously poor and must worry constantly about where his next meal is coming from. He lives in a small room under the front steps of a building, with one tiny window, and all he has for furniture is “an old chair, a rickety old bed, and a tumble-down table. A fireplace full of burning logs was painted on the wall opposite the door. Over the fireplace there was painted a pot full of something which kept boiling happily away and sending up clouds of what looked like real steam.”
In Geppetto’s room, warmth and hot food are mocking two-dimensional illusions.
The St. Petersburg of Mark Twain’s childhood was a sometimes violent frontier town. As a boy, Twain saw a man stabbed to death, just as Tom Sawyer does. But Pinocchio’s world is even more dangerous; it is full of people who want to exploit and rob and even kill the hero. When Tom and Huck run away from home, they meet both good and bad characters. Pinocchio encounters only hostile humans, and for him even the animal kingdom is dangerous. Though he is helped by a bird and a fish, his most important opponents are animals, two of whom also have parallels in Twain’s work. These are the Fox and the Cat, shabby but pretentious con men very reminiscent of the King and the Duke in Huckleberry Finn (1884). (Since Pinocchio was not translated into English until 1892, it seems likely that this is just an instance of types familiar since Aesop’s Fables reappearing in fiction.) The King and the Duke spend most of their energy on robbing and defrauding strangers, and they do not commit murder. The Fox and the Cat, however, plot to kill Pinocchio for his gold pieces and almost succeed. In both books the con men come to a bad end, but only Huck Finn feels pity for them. When Huck sees the King and the Duke tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, he remarks:
