On the Dark(er) Side of the Perpetually Dark Edward Gorey
FROM WITTGENSTEIN TO THE GOLDEN GIRLS, A MAN OF VARIED INTERESTS
“A is for AMY who fell down the stairs. B is for BASIL assaulted by bears.” These were the first sentences I read by Edward Gorey, whose last name seemed too delightfully perfect to be real, like Lemony Snicket. I was in a bookshop in London, holding a novelty copy of The Gashlycrumb Tinies, an abecedarian in which each letter reveals the grisly and somehow perversely delightful death of an unfortunate child. Clara wastes away; Desmond, perhaps mercifully, is tossed from a sleigh; Olive, infinitely unlucky, is run through with an awl. It was like reading bedtime stories for semi-adults, and it was too glorious not to purchase. It was the kind of cute-brutal book that ironically seemed like it might cheer the right kind of wrong person up on a bad day, not unlike Tim Burton’s Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy.
