Month: April 2016

“The Listing Attic” is one of my favorite sections from Amphigorey. It’s another example of Gorey putting a dark spin on usually non-dark forms of writing (e.g., children’s books, panoramic postcards). In this case, he plays around with limericks, which are usually humorous, lighthearted, and sometimes nonsensical. Weirdly, Ithink Gorey doesn’t necessarily abandon these qualities in his works — he just has a different take on them. I feel like I uncomfortably laugh at his limericks because the humor is unexpected and points out absurd, often frustrating situations in life. My thought process when I see some of his works in “The Listing Attic” and other sections is: “Oh my gosh, this should not be happening, but it is, and it just goes to show you how ridiculous life — or people — can be sometimes. I should try not being so serious all the time, because bad stuff is going to happen either way, and it’s pretty tiring to be serious over stuff you might not have control over.” (Although, this is not to say that we should just laugh at everything, I still think there is a time and place for everything, Gorey’s works included. For example, I wouldn’t show these to someone who is grieving a death). Here are two examples that prompted these thoughts / made me chuckle uncomfortably:

I’m also curious about Gorey’s process behind “The Listing Attic,” as it seems like one of the few sections that reads more like a collection rather than a story. Did he want these limericks in a particular sequence, or were they ordered chronologically?

I wish I knew what the French limericks said as well, or why he decided to use French specifically for those images — I wonder what kind of added a cultural context or meaning the language offered. Although, maybe using French wasn’t so conscious of a decision.

The origins of the title are also interesting to think about. Perhaps “listing” is a reference to how it seems like he is listing all these different situations dealing with people who are forgotten, shunned, punished, etc. And given that, maybe “attic” goes well in the title because attics are usually hidden away or forgotten about when people visit a home.

What I found most interesting about Amphigorey was the fact that each story or image was done in a way that fell very much in line with the look of a children’s book.  The images were a little on the darker side, but still could easily pass for a black and white children’s picture book.  However, once you read the words in accompaniment with these darker images, that’s when the readers understand that these texts are not at all intended for children.  Edward Gorey’s juxtaposition between creating images that are often deemed child-like or child-oriented in terms of style and streamlined simplicity, and attaching them to twisted stories and unsettling phrases creates this great contrast between what exact constitutes adult and children’s literature.  Gorey’s work has the appearance of children’s literature, but the words would be deemed too advanced or dark in nature fr children to actually read.  However, his work also doesn’t have the “look” of an adult novel.  The fact that Edward Gorey’s works in Amphigorey both straddle the line between what is considered fit for adults or children and also crosses over into those two disticnct areas to draw from them and incorporate both sides into his completed creations is what makes his work so simultaneously striking and endearing.

While going over Edward Gorey’s stories on Wednesday,” The Gashlycrumb Tinies” really stood out to me. I even found myself chuckling at some parts of the rhyme. The story resembled a nursery rhyme but I can not seem to place which one. If any of you remember or find out which make sure to comment down below. It was kind of surprising since I do not like any sort of violence towards young children. According to Professor Serrano, Gorey does not directly say murder, instead he uses euphemisms to imply murder. This is shown throughout most of his stories except for Kate in ” The Gashlycrumb Tinies.” Everyone else is in the process of dying or implied dead.

Another thing I found interesting was that the story made me remember Harry Potter. I will blame the association between these two pieces on Gorey. He used a few children’s names that can associated with Harry Potter. These names inlcude: Neville, George, James, Susan, and Victor. It may be just me looking more into it but I cant help but point out the names. Maybe these names were just common during the time? The name really stood out to me. What do think?

Edward Gorey’s Amphigorey intrigued me, but also unsettled me. I very much like the art style of the pages, but I’m not sure how much I like his unsettling mix of mirth and murder.  “The Curious Sofa” in particular made me uncomfortable!  The first part of the story is ambiguous, yet the reader quickly jumps to the conclusion that the characters are partaking in some type of sexual acts. The ending, however, is much more ambiguous, yet leaves the reader with a terrifying sense that something awful is about to occur. It’s shocking, and it forces the reader to reevaluate everything they thought they knew occurred in the preceding pages. Personally, I didn’t enjoy this story, but I recognize the clever trap Gorey has set up.

Overall, I found Amphigorey to be one of the most interesting and humorous works we’ve looked at all semester. I really like his intricate drawing style, the setup of the little illustrations with short bits of text, and the space between each scene.

I also like the dark sense of humor… to a point. Gorey’s distaste for children is made abundantly clear in a lot of the stories, particularly “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” and “The Bug Book”. “The Bug Book” is relatively harmless and inoffensive, but “Gashlycrumb Tinies”, which is about children dying in many different, gruesome ways, has probably upset a lot of people. I still find these humorous, because they are so over the top.

The story that really bothered me was “The Curious Sofa”. While reading the story, I found it odd and a little disconcerting that the story was so blatantly about sex while the illustration and presentation were so similar to children’s books. I know that it was supposed to be weird and unsettling, but the end was so creepy that it put me over the edge, and I found that there was no pay-off to the creepiness. I can’t stop thinking about the last line: “When Alice saw what was about to happen, she began to scream uncontrollably…” I think this is probably exactly the reaction Gorey wanted from his readers. I feel as though I’m missing the joke! Does anyone else feel the same about this story/care to explain the humor to me?

Gorey might not have been a fan of children, but his stylistic choices in terms of what he represents versus what he implies are prompts for imagination that draw on the reader’s childlike abilities to deny the need for logical connectivity. In The Sinking Spell, The West Wing, and The Curious Sofa, Gorey uses the rigid formality of the panels to create fertile inventive spaces. Though the stories are not exactly graphic novels, the “gutter” or blank spaces that fall outside of and typically divide the panels, features prominently in Gorey’s work. (Maybe this space could be called the para-image, a zone between image and non-image). For example, our only prompt to think of The Curious Sofa as pornography is the title itself; all the depictions of sex we would expect are completely absent. So too does Gorey hide the object of our interest in The Sinking Spell perpetually beyond the border of the image. These stories are all built on absence and calculated omissions instead of representations. In the absence of sight, we apply our imagination to what is essentially a sparsely-populated template.

Gorey’s artwork is certainly elaborate in its highly-textured inkings, but within the panels, nothing much ever seems to happen, giving them a quality of emptiness. The Curious Sofa is perhaps the best example, but in The West Wing as well, part of the eerieness comes from a singular point of disruption in an otherwise empty space. The thread of connectivity wears thin in all of the stories except perhaps The Sinking Spell, so our understanding of the stories comes not from logical order but from its abandonment; we accept the nonsense as nonsense and instead begin to construct our own subjective relationships between the images. This might also be why so much of Gorey’s work depends on rhymes and other formulaic structures, down to his use of anagrams: by providing us with a recognizable structure- children’s book rhymes, the alphabet, series of images- and unrecognizable connections, Edward Gorey is prompting us towards an acceptance of meaninglessness that is ultimately a freeing and imaginative act.

 

*Just as an aside, for those who might be looking for a little more humor in all Gorey’s grimness: the amazing comic artist Kate Beaton has done some excellent re-imaginings of book covers done by Gorey and expanded them into comic strips. It’s kind of a cool transference from the book to Gorey’s interpretation to Beaton’s.
Here are some links!:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I have found Amphigorey to be a very interesting read. I think that the humor in Amphigorey shares a lot in common with the works of Goya. The humor is very dark and often provides a message or commentary. Where Amphigorey differs from Goya is in the subtlety of the humor. The humor in Amphigorey hits you across the face, whereas the humor in many of Goya’s works is a lot more subtle. I found many of the prints in Los Caprichos to be funny, but I needed to look at the image for a bit before I found the humorous components. In Amphigorey, on the other hand, I see the humor immediately.

The primary reason for this discrepancy is the presence of text in Amphigorey. In fact, the funniest parts of the narrative are in the text itself, and the images add additional humor after the fact. For example, The Curious Sofa is somewhat humorous (in a dark sense), but the images make it even funnier. I think I would find the narrative funny if I read it without the accompanying images, but the images add an extra element. This is the most apparent, in my opinion, on one of the first pages of The Curious Sofa where the newly acquainted Alice and Herbert make love in a taxi. The idea of “making love” on the floor of a taxi is funny on its own, but when you look closely at the image and notice the suggestive face of the cab driver – the humor is enhanced.

Another humorous part of Amphigorey that is embedded in the text is (unsurprisingly) the amphigory – the meaningless babble in some of the stories. I found The Object Lesson to be absolutely hilarious because of the utter nonsense. There is no logical connection between the lines of the story, and the use of proper Victorian language in a nonsensical way adds an additional layer of humor. The Gashlycrumb Tinies is probably some of the darkest humor I have ever seen in my life. In fact, I think the only reason I laughed at this particular story was that it was so dark that I actually could not believe that somebody would write such a story. Each of the stories in Amphigorey is an amalgam of funny pictures and funny text, and the result is simultaneously dark and humorous.

I was intrigued to learn in class that Gorey was not particularly fond of children, but I cannot say I was surprised. This distaste is abundantly clear in “The Gashlycrumb Tinies”, which depict the imminent deaths of small children to the tune of a whimsical nursery rhyme. The Tinies echo several facets of traditional children’s literature – the rhyme is one such feature, alongside the alphabetical structure and the illustration style.

Another book which channels elements of conventional children’s literature is “The Bug Book”, a short graphic novel that tells the story of a community of fun-loving bugs who violently and abruptly dispose of a mean, disruptive intruder. The “Book” reads like a child’s book – full of color, merriment, and innocence – until the climax, which is decidedly macabre.

What Gorey does in these two collections, and indeed, what I believe he intended to do in creating them, is pervert children’s literature. He purposefully crafts stories that are thematically or cosmetically comparable to children’s stories, only to flip the script and introduce his signature morbidity into an otherwise light-hearted piece. His disdain for youth is manifest here; Gorey lets us know, in no uncertain terms, how he feels about children’s literature.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really understand why Edward Gorey’s works are considered inappropriate for children. Sure they’re dark and macabre, but the world isn’t a nice place to be and there’s no reason to fool kids into believing it is.

When I first read “The Bug Book” and “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” I read them as cautionary tales that teach important lessons. “The Bug Book” teaches children not to be “that person” -the party pooper, the downer, the one who “shout[s] personal remarks”- and to at least fake being pleasant, else they be rejected from social circles and eventually disposed of, while “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” warns children to be wary of dangerous things, such as stairs and bears, that could end up killing them.

But maybe my views are a product of my childhood experiences. Gorey’s short stories remind me of the rhymes my grandfather used to sing me to sleep with. One of my favorites was 小燕子 (Little Swallow), which went something like this:

… Looking back, I guess this was a little dark for a small child’s lullaby.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Edward Gorey’s Amphigorey. It’s such a dark and strange collection, and every narrative we’ve read has left me with many conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I’m impressed by the apparent ease with which Gorey uses innuendo to surprise the reader and incorporate dark plot twists in his narratives. The Curious Sofa and The Bug Book, specifically caught me off guard with their extremely dark endings and meanings—as I believe they are meant to. In this sense, Gorey is a dark-humored genius in visual textuality, even if he would not have defined his humor as “dark.” On the other hand, many of his narratives struck me as simply horrible. The Gashlycrumb Tinies is a ghastly and perverse satire of alphabet books. I’d never imagined that someone could come up with a way for children to die that corresponds to each letter of the alphabet. Some of the dark satire of these narrative does seem to have a purpose; for example, The Bug Book is a commentary on xenophobia, and The Curious Sofa comments on Victorian notions of sexuality; however, I don’t necessarily see the “point” of narratives like The Gashlycrumb Tinies, except to entertain people with a very dark sense of humor. In any case, reading Ambphigorey was a reading experience unlike any other I’ve had.