At age 9, I fell 2.1m (7’) from a cinderblock wall and right into an oil puddle on a cratered asphalt road. My large 1972 hardback copy of Edward Gorey’s infamous “Amphigorey” (a 15-story anthology) lost its spine in the process.
I’d stolen the book from the North Las Vegas Library (US), months before. Well, “stolen” is a bit of a ruse: I claimed the book as “lost” but paid total replacement fees to Northtown.
Plus a stiff penalty. Ouch.
Anyway, while sitting in the oil (likely from the engine block of an old Chevrolet Nova) I noticed a gash on my left forearm. Bleeding, but not bad. Mostly I was enraged that my super-beloved Amphigorey had lost its spine, with the cover flopped harshly on asphalt like a poorly baked egg.
Memories of exposure to Edward Gorey began 1973. As an adult looking back, NLV Library’s inventory history reveals a seriously gifted master curator (not sure whom) that stocked the 70s place with tons of excellent, outré, and mega-cool…from world class novels, Saul Steinberg dossiers, sophisticated manuals, complete New Yorker cartoon tomes, and way out sci-fi, fantasy, and horror fiction, some of it starkly European, some of it borderline adult, a lot of it wild, somewhat rare, culturally significant.
Like Edward Gorey.
When I think of Gorey in 2025 the first note is “virtually unique visual execution”. Gorey’s darkly comic goth style is and was often imitated, of course, usually to great effect.
Edward Gorey Fell In the Oil / 2.
It beautifully rakes the neurons of anyone, any age, who dares wading Gorey’s bizarre haunted lab castles or wondrous lands.
For me, starting age 8 with Gorey opened panoramic new doors in terms of language, methodology, and stuff defying normal perception. A little of it I of course didn’t truly understand (like the French language randoms). Gorey also added mysterious Easter Eggs to things here and there, along with his humor turning like a submarine driveshaft, strongly spinning symbolic ideas along with stuff that’s plain silly (see The Doubtful Guest for that one).
And yet all of Gorey’s delivery is advanced and multi-layered, at times intentionally disturbing or even revolting (Insect God, anyone?). So when I look back on the 47°C summers of Vegas (117°F) the deep penetrating reflection of Gorey’s surreal bits like Willowdale Handcar or The Fatal Lozenge, with ominous imagery of nighted embankments prowled by lightning and criminals, or the ethereal Throbblefoot Spectre playing with string…just incredible. Mind-boggling. Towering.
Anyway, after returning home from the cinderblock wall at age 9, I used a swatch of white duct tape for Amphigorey’s spine. The book was kept in my life, all the way til 2021. Can’t remember whom I loaned it to at the time, but I never saw it again.
As Gorey’s Black Doll might say (if it had a mouth), “C’est la vie.”