The Time Is Double-Jointed

February 19, 2024 5:31 AM

"Gorey’s approach to the representation of time is obviously variegated. His works are commonly set within a hybrid Victorian/Edwardian period and often elicit further confusion by containing comically anachronistic details. As indicated, in the examples such as The Broken Spoke, The Object-Lesson, and The Water Flowers, Gorey employs manipulations with temporal boundaries within the framework of nonsense, such as simultaneity, digression, and repetition, which lead to a suggestion of timelessness and infinity." [SLPDF]

Novaković, Nikola. "'A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millennium': Time, nonsense, and humour in the works of Edward Gorey." Tabula: časopis Filozofskog fakulteta, Sveučilište Jurja Dobrile u Puli 19 (2022): 89-110.

posted by cupcakeninja (12 comments total)

Thank you for this! I have to read it carefully later.

As a kid, I had a Gorey pop-up book, and I read a Gorey book belonging to someone else in the family. I was drawn to it from that time because the pictures did indeed seem to belong to some other world -- otherworld -- both dreadful and fascinating. It shared that quality in my mind with B. Kliban, of all people, and I sometimes got them confused at first.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:08 AM on February 19 [3 favorites]

Hmm. I've seen individual pieces from Kliban, but never looked at a collection -- have to remedy that. Thank you, Countess Elena!
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:15 AM on February 19

I love Kliban's work and his books are some of the few I've kept through the purges, but there are a whole lot of stereotypes in there. Perhaps no one is more mocked by this than bland white people (Kilban's own), but there are still some jarring religious and racial caricatures that would not be accepted today. Approach with caution.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:44 AM on February 19 [3 favorites]

Don't have the reference near to hand, but Gorey said in an interview that the two biggest misconceptions people have about him were that he's English and that he's dead. I gotta imagine he said it proudly.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 8:58 AM on February 19 [5 favorites]

I remember that quote so well that I frequently forget that he is in fact now dead, and has been for a while. I think it was on the back cover or in the author blurb of at least one book.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:27 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]

It was from Edward Gorey and John Bellairs simultaneously that ten-year-old me picked up the lifelong suspicion that author's names might be anagrams that concealed their sinister motives.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 9:51 AM on February 19 [5 favorites]

Gorey said in an interview that the two biggest misconceptions people have about him were that he's English and that he's dead.

No question. I think the first Gorey I can recall seeing was a poster of The Gashlycrumb Tinies* in my girlfriend’s room in… the late eighties? I saw more of his work over the next few years and I’d always assumed he was an Englishman working in maybe the Edwardian era. No idea until much later that he was American and when I first saw his work, he was not a whole lot older than I am now.

*To this day, some of his abecedariums see private usage for me when I am creating folders to hold a lot of assorted items arranged by first letter. I don’t want to use something as dull as, for example, “M folder” and “N folder” so they will be named “swept out to sea” and “died of ennui.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:29 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]

P.N.T.M: "the two biggest misconceptions people have about him were that he's English and that he's dead"
I was in a bookshop on Saturday with my librarian daughter and we paused at the Irish interest section where Gorey's Dracula happened to be shelved.
Me: "What, is Edward Gorey Irish?"
Dau: "Nooo, but Bram Stoker is."
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:49 AM on February 19

I think the Gorey book in which time feels most strikingly broken for me is *L'Heure Bleue*, featuring two identical snootbeasts wandering around through the usual series of disconnected locations and narrative fragments.
posted by egypturnash at 12:38 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]

Don't have the reference near to hand, but Gorey said in an interview that the two biggest misconceptions people have about him were that he's English and that he's dead. I gotta imagine he said it proudly.

As I remember it, he said something like ,"People always assume I'm either English or dead, but I've never even visited either place."
posted by The Manwich Horror at 3:15 PM on February 19

snootbeasts

Perfect name for those guys.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 3:43 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]

I am not going to disagree with the textual analysis, which seems to show a lot of really exciting examples.

But I think that to talk about the mix of eras in his style as supporting evidence risks falling into what some filmmakers call "The '57 Chevy Problem": If you set a film in 1957, it's tempting to break out all the decorative automobile models from that year. But in 1957 (particularly early in the year), most of the cars on the road would be a year or two old (even if people did replace cars more frequently then).

I always saw Gorey's style as "Jazz Age, so the middle-aged folks are Edwardian and the old people are Victorian."
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 6:24 AM on February 20 [4 favorites]