Customer Reviews

Amphigorey: Fifteen Books

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I was introduced to this book by a friend of mine whose sense of humor is almost as twisted as that of Gorey himself. He delighted in sharing with me "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" (in which small children meet their doom in alphabetical order) and "The Curious Sofa: a pornographic tale" (in which Gorey lays sexual innuendo so thick that it becomes absurd and absolutely hilarious). After wresting the book from the aforementioned friend's hands, I read the rest of it. To my delight I found morbid limericks and quatrains, stories apparently composed of random sentences, and tales of tales of mishap and tragedy--each accompanied by illustrations in Gorey's macabre style. I would recommend this collection to anyone who has outgrown Dr. Seuss but still wants to look at the pictures.

An incautions young lady named Venn
Was seen with the wrong sort of men
She vanished one day
But the following May
Her legs were retreived from a Fen

Edward Gorey was a master of the macabre. Seemingly inappropriate, always bizarre, Mr. Gorey walked the taboo tightrope in his stories and illustrations. Here are fifteen such delightfully atrocious tales, compiled for the convenience of his very demented fans (including yours truly).

First is "The Unstrung Harp" about a befuddled and (in appearance) paranoid writer who trudges through his maddening existence, as so many a writer inevitably will. The casual reader might find this tale odd, but anyone who has ever taken to writing seriously will feel nothing but empathy. Has one of the greatest ending lines of any story I've ever read.

Next is "The Listing Attic", a series of devilish ryhmes with correlating illustrations. Many of these are horrible in design yet strangely you'll find yourself laughing at the unfortunate mishaps that fall upon the characters.

Now, on to "The Doubtful Guest" about a mysterious penguin-like creature that arrives at a residence only to act in a seemingly irrational way, doing things for inexplicable reasons. Personally I think this is nothing more than a metaphor for the unexpected in life and how it's more irrational for people to waste time trying to make sense out of these things. But that's just me.

"The Object Lesson" is just plain confusing, as if Mr. Gorey was just penning random thoughts and then illustrating them. Definitely weird.

"The Bug Book" is pretty childish in design and, to me, not particuarly noteworthy.

"The Fatal Lozenge" is another series of ryhmes, although the level of morbidity and violence is pretty much maxed out. Reading these you won't find yourself able to laugh, only maybe able to produce a nervous twitter as you ponder how very real these situations could be.

"The Hapless Child" is nothing short of a masterpiece, evoking every emotion from love to terror this tragedy should have a place in American high school curriculum, but alas public education systems in this nation would rather not deal with horrible reality.

"The Curious Sofa" is an attack on preconceived notions of sexual morality, being pornographic only in suggestion the point is that if someone who considered him/herself to be in the right in his/her sexual ideals he/she wouldn't understand the innuendo of the words and illustrations. A very interesting piece.

"The Willowdale Handcar" is a story I didn't like.

"The Gashlycrumb Tinies" has to be my favorite Edward Gorey piece, a sinister telling of the Alphabet with a small child meeting its demise for each letter, kind of an anti-Alligators All Around. I have a separate review posted for this story as it is deserving of the title of literature.

"The Insect God" is another disturbing work involving intelligent, and apparently religious, giant sized bugs.

"The West Wing" is a series of illustrations that force the reader to create his/her own captions for what is depicted.

"The Wuggly Ump" is a silly song about a very hungry monster.

"The Sinking Spell" is another tale of an unexpected visitor, a creature on an indecipherable journey.

Last, is "The Remembered Visit" about a woman who can't forget the odd travels of her youth or her meeting of a once famous man.

That's it, the coffee table book to beat all coffee table books, the ultimate conversation piece. But, then again, everything Edward Gorey did was worthy of conversation.

When I first picked up this book, I had no idea what to expect. I was even more bewildered when I opened it up and looked at the drawings. I thought to myself, what in the world is this? Then I started reading.

Edward Gorey's work is at times subtle or broad, ironic or slaptstick, and always brilliant. How dare this man call himself a children's book author! His books are for everyone, not just tots. Startlingly funny and morbid, the books in this volume (and his other collections) will make the reader laugh and snicker until they are sick. The dark humor of "the Gashlycrumb Tinies", the burlesque of "the Curious Sofa", the absurdity of "the Doubtful Guest", the dry wit of "the Unstrung Harp", every story is different. Every story is a gem. Gorey's books are a must-have for absolutely everybody.

If for no other reason than cost-efficiency, you ought to buy this collection of the late Edward Gorey's books; it doesn't cost very much more than the individual hard-cover original editions of the fifteen books collected here.

Most people will recognise Gorey as the designer of the credits for the long-running PBS series "Mystery!", if nothing else; but he is so much more.

If i were forced to guess, based strictly on the contents of the fifteen volumes collected here, i would have had to say that Edward Gorey was obviously an elderly and somewhat dotty Englishman. As a matter of fact, he was neither elderly nor English -- but that's the type of material he excelled at; that somewhat macabre but utterly devastating straight-faced black humour that seems to a Mere Colonial such as myself as Utterly British.

One could, for instance, question whether the untimely demise of twenty-six children -- in alphabetical order, with lovingly-rendered illustrations of their antepenultimate moments -- was a fit subject for humour. Whether or not it is becomes a moot question almost as soon as one begins reading "The Gashleycrumb Tinies" -- "'A' is for ANNA, who fell down the stairs. 'B' is for BASIL, assaulted by Bears..." Sick or not, if you can read all twenty-six pages of this little monograph and not laugh, there is something wrong with you.

Possibly the best thing in the book -- though it's *all* excellent -- is "The Unstrung Harp, or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel", which has been described by an acquaintance who works as an editor at a major New York publisher as one of the more accurate portrayals of the process he has ever read. {Horrifyingly so, i inferred from his comments.}

Rather gentler and more restrained and cultured than the work of Gahan Wilson, a bit less anarchic than "The Far Side", this is still a wonderful antidote to all of society's little hypocrisies and refusals to face the reality of the gleeful darkness that every one of us has (generally fairly well hidden) somewhere in our soul.

This book is GORGEOUS. I first discovered it while hanging about at a Christmas party at the house of a pair of my uncle's co-workers. I didn't know any of the guests, so I looked around the house and discovered the host's collection of antique books, Amphigorey among them. When the lord of the household found me sitting in his rocking chair and reading, he graciously invited me to borrow the volume, which I did. How grateful I am!

Edward Gorey is the Renee Magritte of literature. I have always loved bizarre, vague, puzzling works, and Amphigorey is delightfully, bitterly twisted. The characters are so spectral. On each page I see... not nightmares, but dark dreams surfacing. This wild, enchanting book ranks alongside William J. Meyer's comic book saga, White Bread, as one of my favorite "what the hell is going on" works of literature.

Within the borrowed volume I read, I discovered an artifact that may be of immense value. It was a printed invitation decorated by a copy of Edward Gorey's drawing of the Gashlycrumb Tinies and their Grim Reaper nanny. In Gorey's handwriting, the invitation gave the names of two gentlemen and continued "...and the Gashlycrumb Tinies demand your presence at their home at 8:00 pm on ALL HALLOWS EVEN [that's not a typo], 1975." The invitation announced a costume contest and gave an address and phone number. Ah, to have attended Mr. Gorey's celebration! He is surely the master of Halloween.

This is a classic volume of dark humour. But that's not all it is. Edward Gorey has created not just quirky limericks, not just hilarious stories of macabre, and not just pages of delicous nonsense. He has created his own _universe_. The Amphigorey universe is filled with a mood that Gorey has perfected. The dark niceties fit together to create this mood like a puzzle--everything from his Neo-Victorian cross-hatchwork, Edwardian character names, even the font. Amphigorey is an hilarious gothic masterpiece.

You can not be a Goriphile without this book. This book has 15 short stories in it. But they are not just stories. They were the begining of a whole world. A whole era. The Edward Gorian Era! The most notable stories are The Unstrung Harp, The Listing Attic and The Remebered Visit.

The artwork in Amphigorey is absolutely amazing. The style is reminiscent of a very old cartoon. Every single frame of each story is so detailed, and the lines are so intricate and precise, it's as if Gorey spent days on each drawing.

The stories which are illustrated by these drawings are very creepy. Many of the stories are incredibly pointless. Some of them end awfully, others don't really end at all. Some aren't stories, but rather collections of poems with a title. At times, things get quite disgusting. For example, in one set of alphabetical poems entitled "The Fatal Lozenge," the last poem goes like this:

The ZOUAVE used to war and battle
Would sooner take a life than not:
It scarcely has begun to prattle
When he impales a hapless tot.

This is accompanied by an illustration of a baby pinned through its abdomen with a sword and blood dripping down. But no matter what, everything in this collection is interesting and unique. This book is at no time dull or boring. Plus, it makes a great conversation piece. I love showing people my Amphigorey book! Most people have never heard of Edward Gorey and are entirely surprised that such a bizarre book even exists.

In any case, if you don't already have it, you should definitely get this book! It's such a great thing to have around the house, you'll never regret owning it!

AMPHIGOREY was the first collection of Edward Gorey's books, rescuing from oblivion various small-press offerings that had fallen out of print. Edward Gorey's craft was tieing pen-and-ink scenes of Edwardian English with droll captions that altogether communicated a very individual sense of humour.

With these first fifteen works, ranging from THE UNSTRUNG HARP (1953) to THE REMEMBERED VISIT (1965), Gorey was still finding his footing. The text of THE UNSTRUNG HARP shows him already a master of weird humour, but his drawings were still in a state of flux, and the very dark and thickly-lined pictures of most books here contrast with the sparse textures of THE CURIOUS SOFA and THE SINKING SPELL. It isn't until the very last book that one sees at last the perfect balance that I find to be Gorey's best.

The subjects of the books vary. THE UNSTRUNG HARP is an amusing tale of a novelist trying to stay motivated while writing and to avoid disgust at his creation. THE CURIOUS SOFA is Gorey's infamous pornographic novel, an obliquely-worded text that would be unthreatening to any child who came upon it, but which for adults is one of the filthiest things ever penned. THE DOUBTFUL GUEST is Gorey's popular tale of a monster/creature from outer space/bird species inviting itself into a manor. The most popular theme, however, is that of children meeting a grim end. In THE HAPLESS CHILD, a poor orphan suffers all her life and then is hit by a car, in THE INSECT GOD the daughter of a wealthy family is abducted by giant bugs, and in THE FATAL LOZENGE and THE LISTING ADDICT innocents are done in by various madmen. And of course we have Gorey's THE GASHLYCRUMB TINIES, an alphabet book where twenty-six children die horribly ("A for for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears..."). It's curious indeed that Gorey manages to make this theme hilarious, though his macabre humour isn't for everyone.

For me, Gorey reached his height with his work after the books of this collection. Nonetheless, none of the material here is anything less than entertaining. If you're a Gorey fan, I'd certainly recommend buying the Amphigorey collections. While some books, such as THE GASHLYCRUMB TINIES, THE CURIOUS SOFA, and the DOUBTFUL GUEST have remained in print separately, there's a rich array of lesser-known books here that are sure to please.

Edward Gorey is a talented artist whose gothic style goes hand in hand with his simple, yet delightfully written prose. I first read this book in High School and searched for it years later when I saw Gorey's artwork at the beginning of PBS' "Mystery." This book is a literary treasure. Some stories are amusing. Some are tear-jerkers. Some are downright horrifying. All are wonderfully illustrated and delightfully entertaining.