Introducing the Notorious Ogdred Weary
Taking a deeper look at two of Edward Gorey’s works
Even during his lifetime, Edward Gorey counted himself among the Surrealists. Surrealism was an artic movement, enveloping both the literary and visual art medium worlds, that focused on the possibilities contained within the subconscious. For Gorey, he was primarily intrigued with the possibility of creating other worlds. Referring to a philosophy put forth by Raymond Queneau, one of the founders of the Surrealist movement, Gorey said that he liked the idea that “the world is not what it seems — but it isn’t anything else either”.
In a 1978 interview with Jane Merrill Filstrup, in which Gorey described one of the foundational theories of his work, Gore stated, “What appeals to me most is an idea expressed by [Paul] Éluard. He has a line about there being another world, but it’s in this one.” Gorey manifests these probing surrealist ideals in his works by creating independent universes within his works, where the impossible is possible and resolution is rarely reached.
Two of Gorey’s works that best show his ability to create complex and twisted universes are The Doubtful Guest (1957) and The Curious Sofa (1961). Written and published just a few years apart, these works are both distinctly different in style and theme, but are impressive examples of Gorey’s ability to create a complete world related just enough to our own so that they convey a message, but different enough to inspire an ominous sense of tension in the reader.
In The Doubtful Guest, the Granddaddy of Goth quickly demonstrates how his title was earned. From cover to cover, Gorey has scratched away at every page, infusing the world of The Doubtful Guest with not only details of lighting and texture, but also with the feeling unease. With nowhere for the eye to truly rest paired with the rhythmic story that sends the reader on a visual quest for details in every illustration the reader is almost energized by the work, kept on the edge of their seat as they worry for the prim and unsuspecting family while this unpredictable creature makes itself at home.
After knowing a little bit about Edward Gorey, several details in the illustrations in The Doubtful Guest are inescapable. Paramount among the intricate patterns and shading in the illustrations are the personal elements that adorn two of the main characters in the story. Firstly: The Guest. As much as Gorey was known for his flamboyant clothing style, his shoe wear of choice was almost always a pair of white chucks, or canvas sneakers. These sneakers are essential to The Guest, as they set him far apart from the family, who are dressed in finely tailored crisp late 19th and early 20th century attire. Not only does The Guest look different from them in his shape, build, and attitudes, but he is from a different time altogether.
Another character worth noting in The Doubtful Guest is the father character. Tall, bearded, and adorned in either furs or thick dressing gowns, this archetypal character makes repeated appearances in Gorey’s works. This man is often hidden in shadow and looms in stature over the rest of the group, casting his own shadow across his family. He appears the most engaged with the events transpiring around him as well. His eyes, though dark, are always focused on the scene before him. This sets the father figure apart from the rest of his family, who seem to gaze out at nothingness, or otherwise seem too tired to fight the situation beyond feeling mildly irritated. He is also the figure that all the other family members in The Doubtful Guest turn to for guidance when the sneaker-clad guest becomes a little too strange to handle.
Both The Guest and the farther figure appear to represent two halves of Gorey’s whole. The larger-than-life figure and the maker of his own world, the individual who decides which of his invented characters make it to the end of the story or how they meet their demise, juxtaposed by the small figure who is a slave to his own oddity. A misfit who is condemned to be “the other”, though he never really tries to conform.
Perhaps The Doubtful Guest was an unintentional personal analysis, a way for Gorey to analyze how he fits into a “normal”, conformed society. Gorey did not write for his audience. In an interview with Jane Merrill Filstrup, Gorey even admits that he has no idea what the audience wants from him. He wrote for himself. Gorey acknowledges that The Doubtful Guest was written with a young audience in mind, but the finished product does somehow seem more personal that he intended.
Children’s books are where many lean morals and life lessons that inform how they one should interact with the world. Maybe in writing for an audience of children, Gorey’s own child-like voice came through and expressed that he felt like an outsider squatting in the insider’s world. Gorey felt that he was the abnormal that upset the normal world revolving around him. But just as The Guest makes himself comfortable in his posh setting, Gorey is at home with who he is and is authentic to himself. He never tries to conform. He simply goes about his own business.
After The Doubtful Guest, Gorey seems to have given up aiming his voice at an audience and began writing and illustrating for his own pleasure. Publishers were unwilling to commit to Gorey’s cult classics, so Gorey proceeded to write whatever he felt like writing. One such work was a parody of Story of O by Anne Desclos, which Gorey titled The Curious Sofa: A Pornographic Work. He even utilized a penname, like Desclos did. Gorey rearranged the letters of Edward Gorey and signed The Curious Sofa under the name Ogdred Weary.
The last name seems to be a wink at how Gorey felt about the prevalence of sexual culture in the 20th century: weary.
Unlike so many of Gorey’s other works, The Curious Sofa is appropriately set in an Edwardian/1920s world. Unlike the setting of The Doubtful Guest, Gorey draws very little setting details in The Curious Sofa. Rather than illustrating elaborately decorated parlors and drawing rooms with intricate wallpaper patters, it is the costumes on the characters in The Curious Sofa that stand out, not the setting. All characters wear heavy eyeliner, which was most likely a conscious nod to the pre-code era silent movies that Gorey was so fond of. This detail helps to emphasize the coquettish emotions of the characters throughout the story. Here the story’s emphasis is not on a moral, as was the case in The Doubtful Guest. Instead the emphasis in on the lustful nature of the characters and the tensions that arise between them.
Although this book was intended to be a parody of Story of O (and of pornography in general) the main character, Alice, is important to follow as she falls deeper and deeper into her lusty new group of friends. As her story evolves, Alice goes through a visual transformation representing her journey as she naively becomes more entangled in her posh little world.
Alice begins the story as a slightly unkept but respectable looking young lady in a white dress to having her dress torn off her body during her first escapade in the back of a car. From here, Alice is nude, but is later adorned in a voluminous robe (ironically decorated with the same pattern that can be seen on the wallpaper in The Doubtful Guest). Next Alice wears a black lacey dress and her hair is groomed so it lays smooth and is pinned with a crown-like comb, which is most likely a token from her new benefactress. She then transitions into a little sparkly dress, a little cocktail dress, and finally, for her final form, she wears a very 1920s-style evening gown.
Through all of her encounters, Alice becomes more visually complicated. Her clothes are obviously more expensive, more complicated, and symbolic of how she has given herself over to this new lifestyle. Throughout all of her transformations, Alice remains naively motivated by a bunch of grapes.
Although Gorey was known to disagree with the teachings of Christianity, it would seem that through the course of this book, Alice is motivated by a forbidden fruit. The grapes are dangled before her and given to her as a reward for services rendered. It is only at the end of the book, with the presentation of the title sofa, that Alice discards her grapes and appears to wake up from the docile state she has maintained throughout the book.
A friend of Gorey’s once noted that, although he presents himself as avant-garde, in reality Gorey is altogether more moral than most. It is not surprising, then, that Gorey seems to take a generally negative view of sexual exploits. As the old saying goes, and as Alice’s journey seems to go: it’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.
In each of these works, Gorey demonstrates some of the trademark surrealist themes that permeate his style. Both stories take place when a pristine world of Gorey’s making is uprooted by that which is different. For the family in The Doubtful Guest, it is a strange figure in chucks that challenges this tidy upper-class group to figure out how to and carry on a normal life while this guest presents them with something new in the form of his strange daily customs. For poor unfortunate Alice (or very fortunate, depending on the reading) in The Curious Sofa, her casual snacking is uprooted and Alice is, both literally and figuratively, exposed to a new way of being. Once the reader and Alice have adapted to her new surroundings, those are also disrupted by the introduction of the title object. A disruption from which Alice has yet to recover…
What is, perhaps, the most beautiful quality of Edward Gorey’s written works is the dissatisfaction that they leave readers, coupled with the imagination that they encourage. Despite the careful attention that Gorey pays to visual details, his stories are riddled with loose ends and conclude in cliff hangers.
This was not an oversight on the part of the author. Gorey felt that by comprising histories of minimal text and simplistic drawings, he was leaving room to allow his and the reader’s wit to blossom. In this way, although the book has run out of pages, the reader’s imagination has permission to run wild and draw their own conclusions, which might change with every reading. Gorey was also meticulous in his illustrations. In an interview on the Dick Cavett Show in 1970, Gorey said that a drawing wasn’t worth doing unless you find something creeping in that you didn’t originally intend to include.
In his unique and child-like combination of text and image, Gorey embodied what appealed to him most about the Surrealist movement. He was able to create a world of his own invention, like this world but not of this world. Through the tedious process drawing and redrawing, he infused his invented worlds with enough detail to make them complete. He accompanied these drawings with very little text that offered just enough to inform the reader of which direction the story might head. Gorey presented his readers with a final product that he had fun creating, incomplete with just enough image and text to inspire the reader’s subconscious to explore the possibilities of what this world might hold.
Ogdred Weary, or Edward Gorey, wrote for himself. But in the process he inspired his readers to finish his writing for themselves.
This short analysis is part two of a three-part essay series, all published on Medium and authored by Maura Wilson.
