Edward Gorey the American Genius eccentric. His books are obscure, often morbid and funny at the same time. His stories range from the silly to the surreal to the macabre. An Epileptic bicycle ride, a series of pictures of useful urns, a horrid life and death of a hapless child. They’re often told in rhyme giving even the most grizzly happening a strangely childlike innocence. Edward Gorey wrote and drew his characters with meticulous fine point care. He did bland face humans and other odder things; Human figures with prunes for heads or stranger indistinctly drawn characters with still stranger names.
Sometimes it’s what’s not pictured, a monster always hovering outside the frame about to descend. Like the vague dread that descends on us as we read. So if we’re uneasy, why are we laughing? Edward Gorey in spooky spidery words and pictures is this hour on the connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Edward Gorey