Books: Ascending Peculiarity
Topping the best holiday gifts I've received from the other queer sheep in my dad's family is a pack of Edward Gorey books I got this Jewmas. One of these was a lesser-known (and until recently out of print) but canonically thin hardback illustrated Gorey work by the title of The Other Statue, exactly as nonsensically macabre as anything else Gorey ever published, and therefore fantastic and quite suitable to both myself and the gift-giver. The other, however, was a collection of interviews with the artist himself.
Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey is a rambling series of tales by and about the man behind the painstakingly detailed oddball illustrations and their accompanying morbidly surrealist text. The stories never quite overlap, never quite repeat themselves, and this makes sense as one is told right off that Gorey considered himself at least as much costume and character as genuine person, and never one to bother with the whole boring truth at once. By the second chapter, focusing on his years-long nightly-attendance devotion to the New York City Ballet under Balanchine, I found myself embarrassed to not have already known much about the eccentric fellow in his giant fur coats and piles of rings and houseful of cats and astounding work ethic. He rambles about the publishing industry, about self-taught art, about queerness (Gorey was, in his own words, asexual, and seemingly glad of it for the lack of temptation to behave stupidly over anyone) and inherent awkwardness and the masks one creates by outlandishly exaggerating bits of one's self-presentation that are true. And, like nearly every other vaguely contemporary artist I respect, he keeps wondering how he managed to have fans.
The whole work is a delightful collection of layers, and I can already think of quite a few folks who need to borrow it. Mark Cat does not yet know that he is the first.
Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey is a rambling series of tales by and about the man behind the painstakingly detailed oddball illustrations and their accompanying morbidly surrealist text. The stories never quite overlap, never quite repeat themselves, and this makes sense as one is told right off that Gorey considered himself at least as much costume and character as genuine person, and never one to bother with the whole boring truth at once. By the second chapter, focusing on his years-long nightly-attendance devotion to the New York City Ballet under Balanchine, I found myself embarrassed to not have already known much about the eccentric fellow in his giant fur coats and piles of rings and houseful of cats and astounding work ethic. He rambles about the publishing industry, about self-taught art, about queerness (Gorey was, in his own words, asexual, and seemingly glad of it for the lack of temptation to behave stupidly over anyone) and inherent awkwardness and the masks one creates by outlandishly exaggerating bits of one's self-presentation that are true. And, like nearly every other vaguely contemporary artist I respect, he keeps wondering how he managed to have fans.
The whole work is a delightful collection of layers, and I can already think of quite a few folks who need to borrow it. Mark Cat does not yet know that he is the first.