Born to Be Posthumous

From The Gashlycrumb Tinies to The Doubtful Guest, Edward Gorey's wickedly funny and deliciously sinister little books have influenced our culture in innumerable ways, from the works of Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman to Lemony Snicket. Some even call him the Grandfather of Goth.

But who was this man, who lived with over twenty thousand books and six cats, who roomed with Frank O'Hara at Harvard, and was known--in the late 1940s, no less--to traipse around in full-length fur coats, clanking bracelets, and an Edwardian beard? An eccentric, a gregarious recluse, 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, Hilaire Belloc, Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker, Gilbert & Sullivan, and others. At the same time, he was a deeply complicated and conflicted individual, a man whose art reflected his obsessions with the disquieting and the darkly hilarious.

Based on newly uncovered correspondence and interviews with personalities as diverse as John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, and Anna Sui, Born to be Posthumous draws back the curtain on the eccentric genius and mysterious life of Edward Gorey.

De la The Gashlycrumb Tinies la The Doubtful Guest, cartile mici amuzante si delicioase sinistre ale lui Edward Gorey ne-au influentat cultura in nenumarate moduri, de la lucrarile lui Tim Burton si Neil Gaiman la Lemony Snicket. Unii il numesc chiar Bunicul lui Goth, dar cine era acest barbat, care traia cu peste douazeci de mii de carti si sase pisici, care statea cu Frank O'Hara la Harvard si era cunoscut - la sfarsitul anilor 1940, nu mai putin ... sa treaca in haine de blana de lungime intreaga, bratari care zanganesc si barba eduardiana?