Especially when the subject matter involves children:
Reposted from 2016 for Halloween 2021. Reposted from 2021 to celebrate Gorey's one-hundredth birthday.
22 February 2025
Today is Edward Gorey's one-hundredth birthday
During my blogcation, I had the opportunity to reread several books by Edward Gorey. I've amended and updated my post on The Gashlycrumb Tinies, but as I discovered while reading his books, some of the humor was frankly a bit unsettling -
Especially when the subject matter involves children:
Especially when the subject matter involves children:
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One of my favorite books is Gorey's "The Recently Deflowered Girl" -- talk about unsettling humor!
ReplyDeleteGorey writes, and draws, so far behind acceptable, it sees it from the other side. I love his stuff, but it's not for the faint hearted.
ReplyDeleteDark humor... it is dark but it is humor nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's poetry! Memorize one that you can recite when someone asks you what is your favorite poem.
Delete"Postprandial", the time after a meal. Had too look it up; will have to find a time to use it. :-)
ReplyDelete"When in doubt, twirl!"
ReplyDeleteI think the word you are looking for is misogynistic
ReplyDeleteMisanthropy (clearly evident in Gorey) is too often reduced to misogyny. Ideologically driven conformation bias at work.
DeleteLook at me agreeing with Crowboy. I feel dirty.
DeleteIt's probably little remembered now but in the 50s when Gorey started, there was already some quite graphic horror in fiction, film and comics (the comic code was introduced in 1954). Hardly surprising when a generation of young men came home from war. We (the cosy West) look back now and think the past was a tidy, effete thing. It was not, and there was clearly an appetite for horror of all kinds.
ReplyDeleteEdward Gorey's rhymes are barrack humour, understood by those who need to.
He served during WW2. In Utah. The horrors he must have known.
It's reminiscent of Struwwelpeter. As children we were fascinated and horrified by the English translation of Struwwelpeter. The tailor who cut off the thumbs of children who sucked their thumbs, the boy who drown because he didn't watch where he was going. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/original-struwwelpeter-illustrations-childrens-moral-lesson-book
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reminder, Ellen. I had forgotten about Struwwelpeter. I should have reposted old one -
Deletehttps://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2010/03/cautionary-tale-of-pauline-and-matches.html
Gorey is the fulfillment of the promise of Lear.
ReplyDelete