Customer Reviews

Amphigorey

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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.

The singular career of Edward Gorey is quite impossible to adequately characterize, in part because his work articulates the tension between exaggerated opposites at every step. The style of his work and the simplicity of his verse superficially resemble books for children, but the intense macabre of his stories and their relentless existential interrogations bely our every tendency to treat him lightly. Likewise, though there is an unmistakeable cartoonish-quality to his illustation, close examination reveals an astonishing precision, care, and attention to detail.

I think this explains in part the curious power and profundity that his images convey. Like myth, his stories present and in some way mediate the deep paradoxes of our experience. His stories are short, much as the poems of the Modernist poets are short. It is not that Gorey has little to say; rather, he speaks so well that precious few words are required.

Complementing Gorey's stylistic precision and excellence, the images that surface from his best tales are unmistakeably illuminating in the curious way that parable is illuminating. Something is communicated, but it is difficult to say exactly what it is.

Gorey is a singular emmisary of the Dream Works, wholely and unmistakeably himself in each stroke of the pen. These compendia are great treasures.

You have not fully lived until you have read Amphigorey!
With it's delightful pieces of artwork and sometimes unintellgible use of verse Edward Gorey's first fifteen books come together in what I would call a brilliant spectacle of cloaked and sometimes deceased spectres.
With stories such as The Hapless Child a story my fifty year old father described as sad and twistedly morbid (needless to say he never asked to look at the book again) and The Curious Sofa a story that hints pornographic ideals but does not detail or embellish them will revoulting sex scenes...the story's lines just merely plant naughty thoughts in your head and your brain travels on from there, it is a classic book, a book I've cherished for years and would love to see referred to as a classic work of art rather than mere fiction and humor!

Amazing. Simply amazing. Everyone should own this book. Actually, a great many people would probably hate this book. Buy this book only if you think that dead baby jokes are funny. I've said it once, and I'll say it again: Edward Gorey is a frickin genius.

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!

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.

I first found this book in a library when I was in the throws of teenage angst and at the time it appealed to my morbid state of mind. Now I have a slightly less tragic appreciation of Edward Gorey. I love his dark illustrations and equally dark content. The tragic ends of children in The Gashlycrumb Tinies brings to mind all those children I look at and think, you little brat!!!

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.

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.

My highest possible recommendation. Before Tim Burton or the current popularity of gothic themed humor comics there was Edward Gorey. Both his illustrated stories and the animated introduction to PBS's Mystery have always enchanted me.

An ABC of dead children may seem dreadful but Edward Gorey adds charm to his spooky, terrible and freakish stories. Each 19th Century looking gothic fairy tale tickles the fancy of the dark little Wednesday Adams inside you. You'll squirm, you'll giggle, and you will want to read it again every quiet rainy day.