In memoriam

Edward Gorey, 1925-2000

by Nick A. Zaino III

Edward Gorey -- artist, writer, and graphic designer -- died Sunday in Hyannis at 75. He left behind a family of Gashlycrumb Tinies, Doubtful Guests, Haunted Tea Cosies, Unstrung Harps, and Wuggly Umps.

Gorey's gothic cross-hatching appeared everywhere from TV (the introduction to PBS's Mystery! series) to books (including titles by T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf), and his Tony Award-winning costume designs helped make Dracula a Broadway hit in 1978. The work for which most people know him -- The Gashlycrumb Tinies, in which the ghastly, tragic death of a child is pictured for every letter of the alphabet, accompanied by rhyming couplets -- showed off his dark but hysterically funny sense of humor.

Gorey's death comes at a time when all his work, not just the Tinies, is enjoying something of a resurgence. A new reprint of The Unstrung Harp (first published in 1953) or The Doubtful Guest (1957) seems to pop up in the stores every few months. Harcourt Brace published two new Gorey books in the past two years, and the New Yorker recently ran a Gorey short about daylight-saving time. A Harcourt representative confirmed that Gorey was preparing a new book at the time of his death, but the status of that project is unknown.

Last April, fans gathered at the Art Institute of Boston's exhibit "Edward Gorey: Drawings, Prints, Books & Ephemera," hoping to get a glimpse of the man himself at a reception held in his honor. When he didn't show up after a couple of hours, I asked one of the Institute employees whether he was going to make an appearance. "He's probably already here," she said. She explained he didn't like crowds and might have been lurking somewhere in disguise. Suddenly, the exhibit itself seemed like one of Gorey's books -- mysterious, macabre, and inexplicably hilarious. Each pair of people standing in front of one of his works -- chatting excitedly about what Gorey might look like in person, wondering whether he would be cheery or as creepy as some of his characters -- could have been a Gorey illustration. In a book called The Anticipating Guests, perhaps.

For all his darkness, Gorey always had a light touch.