![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I read Amphigorey over the course of a month, wondering the whole time if I was planning to write 15 individual book reviews or to treat it like a short story collection and write one. I pace my short story reading, interweaving another work, so that stories stand alone in my mind—but even then, short story collections are—well, collections; they're generally curated to function as a whole. Amphigorey is just a reprint of Gorey's early books (minus two—I wonder why?), which were published as books; while many short stories are also published individually before being collected, this collection doesn't feel curated except for the fact of early career of single author.
...so obviously I had to review this collection as individual books, and RIP my Goodreads followers because it turns out that even 1-3 sentence reviews are a lot when there's 15 of them.
I'll take a break before reading more Gorey in order to avoid burnout, and frankly I don't love the collated Amphigorey experience—the pacing of panels is lost when there's multiple per page, and texts this short need to rely on their intended pacing. Nonetheless it was wildly successful—so consistently enjoyable. Nothing was on par with making The Gashlycrumb Tinies the first Gorey I've read in full, because that piece is fantastic and now his style is more familiar and, as result, less remarkable. But, like reading Maurice Sendak in bulk, there's value in more. Gorey's style has a distinctive aesthetic, but his short works allow for both variation and reinvention—some works are strange experiments, some revisit earlier experiments, and the cumulative effort is fascinating.
As usual, my most favorites/the most remarkable are outside the cut.
Title: The Unstrung Harp, or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1953)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 318,180
Text Number: 1104
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: Book about writing are generally indulgent and tedious, but this is charming. And indulgent, of course, but also self-aware, with a satirical ennui and an unexpectedly affecting melancholy. It's more substantial than most Gorey—more text, in particular—despite an abrupt ending, and perhaps this is why it succeeds: angst about every step of the creative process; angst, in a Prufrock sort of way, about life entire.
( The Listing Attic )
Title: The Doubtful Guest
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1957)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 318,335
Text Number: 1106
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: This succeeds on the strength of things that would make any other work a failure: a near-total lack of progression and a refusal to provide explanation or resolution puts the entire focus on adapting to an inexplicable houseguest, dwelling on every eccentricity and inconvenience. It's up to the reader to interpret metaphor or social critique; the text is more concerned with unconventional rhymes and a droll humor. Absurd! and delightful.
Title: The Object-Lesson
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1958)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 318,365
Text Number: 1107
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: If The Mysteries of Harris Burdick were an absurdist class-commentary, it might be this: small scenes within a conspicuously absent larger narrative, distinctly Gorey in sensibility, engaging and foolish and coy. I don't have a lot to say about it, but I like it—untold stories delight me, they're evocative and shimmer with potential.
( The Bug Book )
( The Fatal Lozenge )
Title: The Hapless Child
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1961)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 318,485
Text Number: 1109
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: Most Gorey is very Gorey but this is especially Gorey, with an exaggerated gothic sensibility and a speculative element looming in the background—it's morbid, playful, a distillation of his strengths. I love the cognitive dissonance of a speculative element within such a familiar tragic narrative and the art is particularly strong, with dense, dark crosshatching and clever background details.
Title: The Curious Sofa
Author: Edward Gorey writing as Ogdred Weary
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1961)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 318,550
Text Number: 1110
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: My review notes read "wtf Gorey (reprise)," as if playful excess and experimentation were at all unusual for him—but the adult content does make this feel different. It's parodical, queer, and coyly offstage, a smorgasbord of innuendo. But the ending! the injection of the macabre is, again, entirely in Gorey's wheelhouse, but it's wildly, flawlessly disorientating in context.
Title: The Willowdale Handcar
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1962)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 318,615
Text Number: 1111
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: This is the perfect counterpoint to the unfinished stories of The Object-Lesson: throwaway snippets from within a larger mystery narrative that the PoV characters only tangentially involved in. Where The Object-Lesson is all about the delight of stories in potentia, this is a less satisfying exploration of the story fragmented and denied. And not unsatisfying in a bad way—it's an interesting and arguably more complicated effort which speaks to narrative construction and tropes like the Zeppo.
( The Insect God )
Title: The West Wing
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1963)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 318,675
Text Number: 1113
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: The wordless panels allow the art (especially the detailed crosshatching) to speak for itself, and invite the reader to caption each one, to linger, to consider, to search every apparently-innocuous empty room for signs of strangeness—a sense of wonder which the well-placed obvious oddities keep alive. It's perfectly balanced and affects a subdued, haunted atmosphere (still with Gorey's persistent playfulness). I love that Gorey's short books allow the freedom—and are the just the right length—for this sort of experimentation in form.
( The Wuggly Ump )
( The Sinking Spell )
( The Remembered Visit )
...so obviously I had to review this collection as individual books, and RIP my Goodreads followers because it turns out that even 1-3 sentence reviews are a lot when there's 15 of them.
I'll take a break before reading more Gorey in order to avoid burnout, and frankly I don't love the collated Amphigorey experience—the pacing of panels is lost when there's multiple per page, and texts this short need to rely on their intended pacing. Nonetheless it was wildly successful—so consistently enjoyable. Nothing was on par with making The Gashlycrumb Tinies the first Gorey I've read in full, because that piece is fantastic and now his style is more familiar and, as result, less remarkable. But, like reading Maurice Sendak in bulk, there's value in more. Gorey's style has a distinctive aesthetic, but his short works allow for both variation and reinvention—some works are strange experiments, some revisit earlier experiments, and the cumulative effort is fascinating.
As usual, my most favorites/the most remarkable are outside the cut.
Title: The Unstrung Harp, or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1953)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 318,180
Text Number: 1104
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: Book about writing are generally indulgent and tedious, but this is charming. And indulgent, of course, but also self-aware, with a satirical ennui and an unexpectedly affecting melancholy. It's more substantial than most Gorey—more text, in particular—despite an abrupt ending, and perhaps this is why it succeeds: angst about every step of the creative process; angst, in a Prufrock sort of way, about life entire.
( The Listing Attic )
Title: The Doubtful Guest
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1957)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 318,335
Text Number: 1106
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: This succeeds on the strength of things that would make any other work a failure: a near-total lack of progression and a refusal to provide explanation or resolution puts the entire focus on adapting to an inexplicable houseguest, dwelling on every eccentricity and inconvenience. It's up to the reader to interpret metaphor or social critique; the text is more concerned with unconventional rhymes and a droll humor. Absurd! and delightful.
Title: The Object-Lesson
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1958)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 318,365
Text Number: 1107
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: If The Mysteries of Harris Burdick were an absurdist class-commentary, it might be this: small scenes within a conspicuously absent larger narrative, distinctly Gorey in sensibility, engaging and foolish and coy. I don't have a lot to say about it, but I like it—untold stories delight me, they're evocative and shimmer with potential.
( The Bug Book )
( The Fatal Lozenge )
Title: The Hapless Child
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1961)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 318,485
Text Number: 1109
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: Most Gorey is very Gorey but this is especially Gorey, with an exaggerated gothic sensibility and a speculative element looming in the background—it's morbid, playful, a distillation of his strengths. I love the cognitive dissonance of a speculative element within such a familiar tragic narrative and the art is particularly strong, with dense, dark crosshatching and clever background details.
Title: The Curious Sofa
Author: Edward Gorey writing as Ogdred Weary
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1961)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 318,550
Text Number: 1110
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: My review notes read "wtf Gorey (reprise)," as if playful excess and experimentation were at all unusual for him—but the adult content does make this feel different. It's parodical, queer, and coyly offstage, a smorgasbord of innuendo. But the ending! the injection of the macabre is, again, entirely in Gorey's wheelhouse, but it's wildly, flawlessly disorientating in context.
Title: The Willowdale Handcar
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1962)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 318,615
Text Number: 1111
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: This is the perfect counterpoint to the unfinished stories of The Object-Lesson: throwaway snippets from within a larger mystery narrative that the PoV characters only tangentially involved in. Where The Object-Lesson is all about the delight of stories in potentia, this is a less satisfying exploration of the story fragmented and denied. And not unsatisfying in a bad way—it's an interesting and arguably more complicated effort which speaks to narrative construction and tropes like the Zeppo.
( The Insect God )
Title: The West Wing
Author: Edward Gorey
Published: Berkley Publishing Group, 1980 (1963)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 318,675
Text Number: 1113
Read Because: reading the author, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library (in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books)
Review: The wordless panels allow the art (especially the detailed crosshatching) to speak for itself, and invite the reader to caption each one, to linger, to consider, to search every apparently-innocuous empty room for signs of strangeness—a sense of wonder which the well-placed obvious oddities keep alive. It's perfectly balanced and affects a subdued, haunted atmosphere (still with Gorey's persistent playfulness). I love that Gorey's short books allow the freedom—and are the just the right length—for this sort of experimentation in form.
( The Wuggly Ump )
( The Sinking Spell )
( The Remembered Visit )
