Born to be posthumous : the eccentric life and mysterious genius of Edward Gorey / Mark Dery.
"The definitive biography of Edward Gorey, the eccentric master of macabre nonsense. From The Gashlycrumb Tinies to The Doubtful Guest, Edward Gorey's wickedly funny, deliciously sinister little books have influenced our culture in countless ways, from Tim Burton's movies to Anna Sui's fashion to Neil Gaiman's Coraline to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Some call him the Grandfather of Goth (which would've given him the fantods). Just who was this man, who lived with six cats, owned more than 20,000 books, roomed with the poet Frank O'Hara at Harvard, and liked to traipse around in floor-length fur coats, clanking bracelets, and an Edwardian beard? An eccentric, a solitary, an enigmatic auteur of whimsically morbid masterpieces, yes -- but who was the real Edward Gorey behind the Oscar Wildean pose? He published over a hundred books and illustrated works by Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Edward Lear, John Updike, Charles Dickens, Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker, and John Bellairs (most notably The House with a Clock in Its Walls), among others. At the same time, he was a deeply complicated and secretive man, a reclusive master whose art reflected his obsessions with the disquieting, the darkly amusing, and... other things. Based on newly uncovered correspondence and interviews with Goreyphiles as diverse as John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, Edmund White, and Anna Sui, Born to Be Posthumous draws back the curtain on this mysterious genius and his eccentric life." --From publisher's description.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780316188548
- ISBN: 0316188549
- Physical Description: viii, 503 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2018.
- Copyright: ©2018
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 423-426) and index. |
Formatted Contents Note: | A good mystery -- A suspiciously normal childhood: Chicago, 1925-44 -- Mauve sunsets: Dugway, 1944-46 -- "Terribly intellectual and avant-garde and all that jazz": Harvard, 1946-50 -- Sacred monsters: Cambridge, 1950-53 -- "Like a captive balloon, motionless between sky and earth": New York, 1953 -- Hobbies odd: ballet, the Gotham Book Mart, silent film, feuillade: 1953 -- Épater le bourgeois: 1954-58 -- "Working perversely to please himself": 1959-63 -- Nursery crimes: the Gashlycrumb Tinies and other outrages: 1963 -- Worshipping in Balanchine's temple: 1964-67 -- Mail bonding: collaborations: 1967-72 -- Dracula: 1973-78 -- Mystery!: 1979-85 -- Strawberry Lane forever: Cape Cod, 1985-2000 -- Flapping ankles, crazed teacups, and other entertainments -- "Awake in the dark of night thinking Gorey thoughts" -- The curtain falls. |
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Genre: | Biographies. Biographies. |
Show Only Available Copies
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Homer Public Library | B GOREY (Text) | 000149882 | Biography | Available | - |
Born to Be Posthumous : The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey
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Author Notes
Born to Be Posthumous : The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey
Mark Dery is a cultural critic. He coined the term "Afrofuturism," popularized the concept of "culture jamming," taught at Yale and NYU, and has published widely on pop culture, the media, and on the mythologies (and pathologies) of American life. His books include Flame Wars , a seminal anthology of writings on digital culture; Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the end of the century , The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink , and the essay collection, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams . Like Gorey, his mission in life "is to make everybody as uneasy as possible."