Edward Gorey, Amphigorey Also

Congdon & Weed, 1983.

Okay, we're back. I know. I know -- for months, this looked like another blog orbiting the Planet Dead. But I always knew it was just a hiatus as I moved domiciles, including 300 boxes of books, ten of which were Allan's. Plenty of his books to plow through in the coming years.

As usual, the current title was plucked at random from one of those boxes. Unusually for Allan and this book, it is mint. Between the Covers has an equivalent copy for $250. There's also a copy that is just about fine for $85.

I interviewed Gorey at the beginning of my career, perhaps for this book. That was nearly three decades ago. Sheeesh. We went to lunch, but I don't remember if I ever wrote it up. I was so young and knew so little. Towards the end of my bookish career I did a long column item about him based on an interview at his Cape Cod house that made it into his book of selected interviews. I later paid him a social visit at his house, where he signed some of the Anchor paperbacks he had done the covers for. Those were his finest work although the set for Dracula, which I saw on Broadway, was pretty close.

Yet for all of that I have ambivalent feelings about his work. It is best in small doses, and anthologies like this one destroy the effect by repetition. Which is why, lovely as it is, I'll try to sell it. Allan's price: $75, which was eminently reasonable then.

Comments

[Joe Marchione]

Welcome back (x2)

Gorey's one of those authors where Allan's superior scout-sense could shine. In addition to the books 'by' Gorey, you had his contributions as illustrator for other books, dust jacket art, design, even typography. Allan would take great joy in finding a book with some not-immediately-obvious Gorey connection and leave it on the top of the new arrivals or to-be-cataloged stack, waiting for somebody to pick it up. The 'perfect' response from the unsuspecting browser would be a somewhat puzzled look whereupon Allan would jump up, grab the book, find the appropriate page with the definitive 'Gorey' look or credit and say something like "see it?" That could read like he was 'showing off' and yeah, I guess it was... a little bit. But mostly it was joy for him, Allan in his element. Even better, Gorey *always* sold.

At the end of last year, when Abandoned Planet was closing, I picked up a early book by Roger Angell, "The Stone Arbor," from 1960. It has what I would characterize as a fairly understated Gorey design on the front panel of the jacket. Rough shape so not worth much and long since sold (for $12.50 as I recall). But I remember the fun, the personal sense of 'Nice catch, Joe' that I felt when I saw the book and recognized the Gorey style. It was, no doubt, one of the Allan books that Scott bought towards the end of the messy disposition of Allan's store stock... And when it makes its way back into the wild, may it fall into the hands of a kindred scout-spirit who will smile, tuck it in their stack and say to themselves 'nice catch.'

[Joe Marchione]

This one has been whispering at me to revise and extend since I wrote it. The (perhaps too subtly) implied fishing metaphor (catch and release) reminds me of one of the few times Allan expressed undisguised disdain toward me. I arrived fashionably early for the final day of one of the big Friends of the SF Library sales down at Fort Mason when I saw Allan. Once we had each firmly established our places in line, we took to a bit of walking to kill some time. With 2+ hours until opening, we traipsed east, up and over the bluff, to the circular pier extending northward in a spiral from Van Ness Avenue. Beautiful views of the wharf and Russian Hill in the background. Alcatraz. The East Bay. The not too thick autumn fog long burned off. A stunning morning.

There were plenty of fisherman out on the pier. Allan enjoyed fishing and mentioned it to me. I said it was not my style. With far more venom than he meant, I heard him tear into me... "Of course you don't like fishing. You have to be able to relax to enjoy fishing." To this day, I kind of double-take when I replay it in my mind. I knew he felt I worked too hard but I had no idea he could express this opinion with such force. I tried to explain that one of my favorite ways to relax was to hike near water, even just sit and be near-hypnotized by its sound and movement but he would have none of it. Rather than engage in a useless battle over relaxation styles, we changed the topic and moved on. Still, I wondered then (and still wonder now) just where that came from and exactly what I should have understood by it.

Remember the Gorey dust jacket that got me started on this thread?
Here it is:
http://valhallafinebooks.com/images/pix48/SA54550.jpg
and in much larger size here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~kwatson925/auction/L54550.jpg

I don't know. The illustration and the story just seem to go together in my mind.