Devilishly Gorey

I haven't posted in a couple days which feels really weird. Work has been crazy these last two days and I haven't been feeling great. Yeah I know, want a little cheese to go with that whine? Needless to say I'm feeling better and thing should be a little more back to normal tomorrow. My job tends to be feast or famine and this week is beyond feast. Which wipes my brain and doesn't allow for thoughts beyond just home, food, sleep. Even this won't be my best post, but hey, at least it's something.

I could say that my mood has been a bit dark. But that could just be the the Gorey stuff I've been reading. Not horror novels, although they can be fun. Instead I've been reading a lot of Edward Gorey. Even if you don't know the name you know his style. Gorey is known for cross-hatched artwork that combines old fashioned images with a wonderfully morbid sense of humor. Gorey's characters often die in unusual ways. His stories are like little comic strips that only run a couple of pages. His most famous book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, is an alphabet book where each child dies in a strange or unusual way. (A is for Agnes Who Fell Down the Stairs). His cartoons are not for everyone but there is definitely a sense of humor about them. I was shocked to learn that Gorey died just nine years ago. Looking at his illustration work I would have assumed that he had written at the turn of the century.


I've been picking up his books from the library and have been enjoying the brief stories and dark images. Over the weekend I read Gashlycrumb Tinies, Amphigorey Too, and Amphigorey Also. Not sure why this is appealing to me suddenly although Cabinet of Wonders did mention him recently. But I was raised on Gorey along with Chas Addams (creator of the Addams Family), Gahan Wilson, and Gary Larson. We had all kinds of reading material but I tended to gravitate towards some of the more unusual ones. There is a darkness to these cartoonists and a humor that make them perfect for me. I tend to have a bit of a morbid sense of humor. Comes from having a doctor for a father. And Gorey is just too devilishly fun to pass up.