>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. ^E00:00:04 ^B00:00:22 >>Mark Dimunation: So welcome back to Rare Book and Special Collections Division everyone. We're very excited about today's talk. Glen Emil is a collector and a donor to the Library of Congress the collection that you're hearing about today. The Edward Gorey Collection now resides in this division. It was a wonderful gift that came in last year and it also came with Glen who now resides in our division on a regular basis. He's not only an expert collector that brought in 800 pieces of Goreyana but is also a compiler of the Goreyography his online bibliography of Gorey pieces so he brings a great deal of expertise. He's a great chap. He's become a real friend of the division, actually a colleague already at this point. We're really thrilled to have him here and he's going to talk about something that we have all grown to love. If you didn't love Gorey before you'll love him after this. So please welcome Glen. ^M00:01:24 [ Applause ] ^M00:01:31 >> Glen Emil: Thank you Mark. Well, he already introduced me so I can just tell you that I started collecting Gorey when I was about 18 years old so had a good time. The challenge was actually being 18 not having a lot of income at the time trying to find Gorey on the cheap without the Internet, so fortunately it wasn't too difficult. I think there may be one or two spots that we need to fill in and you can call it a 100% collection. Of course, there are 800 pieces but Gorey only published about 100 and some odd of his own original books. He's done maybe two to three hundred illustrations for other publications and periodicals. I'll go over that. But I just want to say thank you. Thank you for coming. This is really hard for me and I really do like this place. This is what my, I want my library to look like this. That's why I like it. You let me hang out here and this is why. Anyway, let's go ahead and dive in. I have a small presentation. It's broken into two parts. For those who don't know Gorey's bibliography, some of the major details about his career I'll provide that. I apologize. I understand after speaking to Mark that I'm not a professional presenter so I don't know how to do this very well. But I have text and I have images so for those who really, really dislike watching I'm saying I have on the right hand of the screen there will be images of the entire collection of books passing through and to keep it interesting I have a prize [laughter]. Like I say there's about 106 books that can you be attributed to him directly but I've omitted presenting the albums, the "Amphigorey" series and that leaves four more books that aren't presented so if there are any collectors out there who actually can name three of those four books that are missing from this screen presentation then I have an Edward Gorey pen from, made by the Edward Gorey House up in Cape Cod. It's a very nice one. It's almost like [inaudible] so. It's three books. Name the three books that don't show outside of "Amphigorey." >> Let's make this clear. Three books that are in the "Amphigorey" series but they're not going to be in your presentation? >> Glen Emil: That's right. I'm sorry, three books out of the entire collection that aren't shown outside of the "Amphigorey" volumes themselves. There are four of them. I didn't photograph them. So there are four individual books of his that he wrote that won't be shown. So if you can think of those I think you have the collection, right? So before we get started Mark brought up a good point. I think it would be interesting to know that along with part of Gorey's charm is that he's a very mysterious man. He's as mysterious as the books that he's written and so there's a lot of talk, a lot of hearsay generated. So I'm going to try to expose one or two of these if this will let me. It is said that Edward Gorey -- ^E00:05:30 ^B00:05:39 >> Glen Emil: Ah. It is. This is what's mysterious about it. It's the words. It's not the pictures. Ah, anyway, I was saying that did it come up? No signal. Okay. So as I was saying, Edward Gorey there's a lot of legends, a lot of myths about Edward Gorey. One of them might be that he was actually a child of a refugee from the turn of the century, Russian, a Russian czar, left his children in England and got stuck on a boat and came here. Another one is that he might have English -- he might be English and ran to America and plied his trade here or that he also has a very famous mother who's a -- who happens to be either a songstress or a dancer or [inaudible] serious actress. Let's see. Let's see if we can find. ^M00:06:47 [ Video playing ] ^M00:08:34 >> Glen Emil: In the mirror was an obviously very popular although not many people know her name it was Edward Gorey's mother for 11 years maybe, eight to 11 years. It's not entirely clear but he was, she and his father were divorced when he was 11 and then he -- his father remarried and when he was 27 years old his parents reunited again. So for a brief period Edward Gorey did have a very interesting mother. Anyway, so I explained about the story. I'm going to just basically -- indulge me while I read the text portion. The right side will show eventually the books in Gorey's collection. "In 1925 Edward Gorey is born 22nd in Chicago, Illinois. He has no the siblings. He develops a taste for reading and drawing and pursues creative activities in the theater, writing in his formative years. By the time Gorey is five years old he has read 'Dracula', 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' by nine. Supposedly 'Dracula' terrifies him. In 1943 he studies at the Chicago Art Institute for one semester. That's his formal training. In 1946 Edward enrolls at Harvard University majoring in French literature. While there he becomes involved with poets, theater and Cambridge eventually befriending John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Alison Lurie and Buddy Lang. Gorey starts shopping at the Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan in 1946 and he meets Francis Steloff who later agrees to help sell his books. He also starts -- in 1952 Jason Epstein, a friend of his takes over at Doubleday Anchor Paperbacks which used to be just kind of low quality paperback books and asks Gorey to leave the art department. Gorey accepts and for the next seven years he polished his craft book illustration, layout, typography and the book series was very successful." Now there's about 60 of these book covers and they have a very distinctive, very beautiful touch to them. Some collectors just collect those books and they're hard to find some of them because a lot of them are just trashed, thrown away after they're-- "In 1953 he publishes his first book, 'The Unstrung Heart' and moves from the Boston area to Manhattan and over time Gorey publishes at least two books a year until his death creating his stories first and then illustrating them. Gorey produces camera ready artwork and typography and except for the stage work he doesn't reduce or enlarge his drawings. 1957 impressed by the ballet under George Balanchine's guidance Gorey embarks upon a dedicated resolve to attend every performance of [inaudible]. Apparently, it was true and by 1982 he had quenched his thirst for the most ephemeral art but he as openly said that this is probably the strongest influence on his style. In 1959 he starts work as editor and art director at Looking Glass Library another Epstein venture at Random House until that closes three years later. Gorey finds this job to be the most satisfying because he actually got to choose some of the stories as well illustrate some of the cover work. In 1962 unable to find a publisher for the 'Beastly Baby' Gorey self-publishes it under the Fantod Press name. The Fantod Press eventually publishes 28 of his works many of which attract mainstream publishers. Besides 'The Beastly Baby' other Gorey classics from Fantod Press includes the 'Chinese Obelisks', 'The Deranged Cousins', 'The Disrespectful Summons', 'The Evil Garden' which I love very much, 'The Lost Lions', 'The Osbick Bird' and 'The Pious Infant' and 'The Untitled Book.' Gorey publishes the 'The Vinegar Works' in 1963 a three volume set including his famous, 'The Gashlycrumb Tinies' with A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. His favorite job at the Looking Glass Library folds so he takes a designer position at Bobbs-Merrill. He finds this assignment difficult so buoyed by his modest success so far Gorey decides to launch his free-lance program. In 1965 Gorey's first solo art exhibit opens at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland across the bridge from San Francisco. Although he does not attend this exhibit he ships over 190 of his own original artworks. Gorey also begins teaching classes on advanced children's book illustration at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and this lasts for one semester." No comment. [laughter] "In 1967 Andreas Brown, a young antiquarian book appraiser and bibliographer from California buys the Gotham Book Mart from Frances Steloff. Already a fan of Gorey's work, he begins actively to promote Gorey's art and literature and this includes yearly art exhibits at Gotham's Art Gallery while managing Gorey's publications and building a small but growing clientele of collectors thirsty for Gorey's limited editions and by this time Gorey has published 24 books. Mr. Brown is still involved in the Gorey community. He's on the -- as many of Gorey's -- were issued with fewer than 500 copies each Brown suggested that he assemble them in a [inaudible] collection and that became 'Amphigorey' in 1972. It wins notable book of the year awards from the New York Times and American Institute of Graphic Arts and it has been in print ever since. Many believe that this is more or less what launched his book career." >> You said Andreas Brown. >> Glen Emil. That was Andreas Brown, yeah. In the -- quite a few years ago. "Gorey designs in 1977, he designs a sets and costumes for Broadway's revival of 'Dracula' starring Frank Langella at the Martin Beck Theatre. The show is a huge hit with over 900 performances and as Gorey owns a piece of the show it allows him to buy a cozy home near his family in Cape Cod [inaudible]. Gorey also wins a Tony Award for his costume design, not stage design but costume design and he doesn't like that at all. Gorey purchases his dream house, a sea captain's home built in 1821 in Yarmouth Port. In 1980 Gorey is asked design opening and closing credits for the 'PBS Mystery' series. He works with Canadian broadcasting animator Derek Lamb and he also creates the hand-drawn, two-dimensional stage sets prompting Vincent Price to call it Gorey's Mansion. From 1980 to his death Gorey publishes forty more books, creates over 20 small stage plays and renders several hundred drawings for other books, periodicals and so on and so on." These are great. There's got to be at least four to five different iterations of this animation and originally Gorey said his plan would have taken somewhere along like 30 minutes of animation. They cut it down to just under two minutes. "In 1980 Andreas Brown estimates that Gorey had produced well over 10,000 drawings over his lifetime. In 1983 Gorey leaves Manhattan, moves to Cape Cod permanently. Gorey tells people that this is precipitated by the recent death of Balanchine but Gorey lives happily on the Cape with a handful of cats until his death and Andreas Brown is currently the co-trustee of the Edward Gorey Trust. They handle all the original art work and intellectual property rights and so the archive he says are just dozens of boxes just illustrations that Gorey never used. He would just draw, so the estimate of ten thousand illustrations is conservative." No this probably goes back before published work but -- "On April 13, 2000 Gorey suffers a massive heart attack in his home while his friend Rick Jones repairs a toaster in the kitchen. He's rushed to the Hyannis Hospital but two days later he dies from complications. Gorey was 75 and was survived by two cousins and a nephew. Gorey chooses to be cremated. Half of his ashes were set adrift off a beach on Cape Cod Bay by his friends and family." ^E00:17:53 ^B00:18:03 >> Glen Emil: There's more. "In 2002 Gorey's home opens to the public as the Edward Gorey House, a museum dedicated to preserving his legacy. His original artwork is like I mention is archived by the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust. His personal library of 25 thousand books is housed at San Diego Library State University in California. Most of Gorey's effects were distributed amongst his friends and according to his will Gorey wanted his artwork to continue in perpetuity to benefit animal welfare. Before he died, Gorey and Rick Jones were discussing funerals and Gorey said 'just throw me in the yard.' So 11 years later his friend honored his request. Gorey's last remaining ashes were scattered along with his last four cats around his property in Yarmouth Park, Yarmouth Port." This is one of his plays that was performed at the scattering of the ashes. ^M00:19:03 [ Video playing in background ] ^M00:23:14 I was at that performance and afterwards Rick Jones told me that they hadn't planned on putting the picture of Gorey up at the very end. This was just a restaging, supposedly just a restaging of several of his plays. So, thank you for sitting through the tough part. That was just a lot of information. But yeah, the scattering of the ashes was a very interesting show. It showed that Gorey's work was just as strong on the play side, the whole entire community of players, puppet players and so on, the puppets being those little white head figures of paper mache. Gorey had made about 100 of those little things about an inch or so. So they didn't have much detail but the second part of the presentation is just more or less this objective, my opinion about what makes Gorey so interesting. One of the things that Gorey used to tell people whenever people asked him what does any of it mean and even the person who used to ask this question was Andreas Brown himself and Gorey would almost always invariably say, "What you see is what you get." And I think that answer more or less just managed to push off a lot of people but I think when you think about what Gorey was talking about, what you see is what you get, what you understand, you can take this as what you understand is what you can read into it. He loved it when people read into his work only because it showed how engaged people were. He didn't divulge meanings pretty much of any of his works. He would say, "Read into it. I'm happy to take whatever you feel like, whatever translation you come up with." But there are some things that he really enjoyed. What you're seeing here is some of the, some old footage of films of Louis Feuillade. This one happens to be from "Fantomas." When Gorey was in Harvard they used to watch and also in New York they would look for performances. This is 100 years old. Most of this was, this particular one was done in 1914. It was a series of what's called -- the French hated it. It wasn't supposedly the high art of filmmaking so they had, I forgot the name they gave it but it wasn't a complimentary one but Gorey truly found something in it and I think in a way you can actually see some of his style being used here. I mean this is truly different than a lot of silent film movies especially the setting, the stage. An analyst, a critic for film had a wonderful interpretation about the Feuillade films. These were films that were not of course, popular because they were -- the narration proved to be somewhat deceptive. Feuillade enjoyed leading a narration that wasn't necessarily showing on the screen so that oftentimes the audience would have to come up with their own conclusion at the end because it wasn't a straightforward narration and I think Gorey really picked up on that style of not knowing who's telling the story and what is going to happen at the end. It's not a very linear kind of unless you watch it over and over again you're not going to know what's going to happen next. This is the original music that came with these. It's very interesting. It's very surreal and the colors were also intentional. Another favorite of Gorey's was the "The Tale of Genji" by Murasaki Shikibu and her thousand year-old novel Gorey read and found, read several times and just he never became exhausted from some of the details. It's known that " The Tale of Genji" uses what's known as [foreign language spoken] which is basically the transient moment that's captured. It can be captured by a simple expression of oh, or ah and so [foreign word] can also be seen as the magic moments, the breathing moment that will pass eventually and I think Gorey really latched on to that as well. He was a very sensitive man. He was never married. As a matter of fact, he's come out in a couple of introduce and said that he was asexual as his preference but we do know that he has had quite a few very, very close relationships with other people, soulmate kind of relationships. One of the more remarkable ones was with Peter Neumeyer. He had done three books with Peter Neumeyer and the exchange of ideas and so on that the two men shared is truly, truly remarkable and Gorey and Peter Neumeyer who had a family, was raising a family on the East Coast while teaching was interesting enough to come up, Peter Neumeyer had saved his letters that he and Gorey used to go over all these details about coming up with these books and they talked about art, literature and so on and that's just absolutely fascinating. The book that just came out about five years ago is called "Floating Worlds" is still available but it if you do want to find the kind of thread that Gorey loves to dwell on a lot of it's there. >> That was "The Leathers?" >> Glen Emil: "The Letters" the correspondence between Peter Neumeyer and Edward Gorey. Edward Gorey also had several other friends who he had very, very close relationships as well but the letters obviously are unique to Peter Neumeyer. And ballet, of course everyone knows that Edward Gorey loved George Balanchine's work at the New York City Ballet. And a lot of that flamboyance and freedom of the characters shows up in his work not just the moments of ballet, the books written of ballet directly but he has several characters that truly can say reflect their artistic freedom of ballet, and transient moments that ballet brings to the stage and brings to light. Then Gorey loved savoring some of those and tries convey some of that in his work, spent many hours talking to Andreas Brown and other collectors and people who love Gorey and the list of influences are huge. They're enormous, very well-read, loved several artists enough to say that he wishes he could draw like let's say like Edward R. [Inaudible] or the drawing techniques but his work is very unique in the sense that he tries to convey more than just literature. He's a storyteller. I think he uses whatever medium and whatever style that actually helps produce the most interesting story. ^E00:31:32 ^B00:31:51 If you look at the stage settings you can almost see some of Gorey's attention to detail, framed and the wallpaper, the fabric designs, the furniture it's just -- and I love how he's picked up on that. He's not just imitating it. He's in a lot of his work he shows some of the details that helps isolate the story. ^E00:32:27 ^B00:32:42 So I think these are some of the things that I've come up with. I'm sure everyone, people have ideas as well about what makes Gorey click for them and click for other people. He's, Gorey is interesting that a lot of people will readily admit that they don't understand Gorey and I find that wonderful that they would just come out and say, "I don't understand any of this at all." Supposedly he and Alison Lurie, one of his early friends from Harvard would spend, have spent hundreds of hours watching some of these in the vaults, not in the vaults but in the festivals that would show up every once in a while in Boston, somebody would uncover some of these old things. [inaudible] Yes he did, he did. >> So you're pretty sure that Gorey had watched these? >> Glen Emil: Oh, without doubt, without doubt he'd seen these. His favorite Feuillade films were "Barrabas." I haven't seen "Barrabas" but I understand it's available now so I think it's worth taking a look at. But he also loved the "Fantomas" series and it's a very, very long series. It's a wonderful series, so thank you. Thank you so much. That's my presentation. ^M00:34:32 [ Applause ] ^M00:34:38 Does anybody have any questions and does anybody have an idea about which books were missing? Yes. >> I have no idea about the books that are missing [inaudible] but I'm curious. Have you ever met him? >> Glen Emil: Well, I wanted to meet him. I lived in San Francisco when I was doing most of my collecting so it was the choice of either going out and visiting Edward Gorey meant a book or two or three, actually ten. I also wanted to give Gorey his space because by that time I was collecting in 1978 started and by 1990 I think most people understood that Gorey was constantly approached by his fans who would just come up and just to stand with him and that would be it but and I didn't want to be so intrusive, so I decided just to be happy with his output and just kind of imagine the rest. After he passed away I became as a collector and after putting my collection online and it's more or less a portal that allows people to explore Gorey growth a little bit not just from one side but from plays and from books and from around the world Gorey, there's Gorey collectors from around the world who have sites as well. They have interesting things that they've put up so I create links as well as a bibliography of his main works. I'm sorry, you had, there was a -- yes. >> What made you decide to donate your collection to the Library? >> Glen Emil: Well, I wanted to find a much better home. My collection after dragging it from California to here the humidity, the weather and so on I just, I could watch it withering away, the edges of the pages. The pages were turning colors and I just, it was breaking my heart and I just wanted it to actually be preserved in one piece because it's a remarkable amount of energy to put together and so I think it came up somebody had knew somebody who visited the Edward Gorey House. I'm a member of the board of the Edward Gorey House so I get some information of some of the travelers and the head of your poetry department had come to the Gorey House a few years ago and that came up and we, a few thoughts came around and I thought you know this would be a perfect place for Edward Gorey to be. >> Have you kept back anything? [laughter] >> Glen Emil: Should I tell him? [laughter] >> Any particular treasure? >> Glen Emil: Actually there is one and it's got a very Goreysque kind of almost ending. He has, Gorey loved to make these little stuffed dolls which you'll look at these things a little bit. Just last week one of the treasures I decided to keep it was a Figbash doll, very, very long arms. I guess there's nothing like it here, anyway it was filled with rice. So you can imagine what rice sounds like to a mouse and unfortunately I thought it was a very unsafe place and just a couple of weeks ago I opened it up and lo and behold mice had been munching on Figbash's. But I have to say it really doesn't bother me because at this point I think the bulk of the collection is safe now from mice. It was kind of Goreyesque, apparently Gorey loved animals and I can see why. If we had a very valuable piece here and nature comes along decides to do natural things to it. It didn't bother me. It should bother me but it doesn't. Yes. >> Can you tell us something about poster here, the green covers, books? >> Glen Emil: Ah, well, these two -- are you talking about the second, the first one? Oh, this one here. >> Yeah. >> Glen Emil. This would be a what they call a bus size advertisement for "Mystery", the TV series. So he did the animation and he would create these large advertisements posters to be used in public spaces like bus stops and so on. So this is probably the largest. I mean Gorey draws to scale so this is his work. This is a good one actually to look at the details. When you get a chance I'll let you look around because I'm sure you're really here for the books. There's a lot of fascinating, mostly natural/super natural little hints running all over these, the artwork itself. This is an excellent example. This is the second poster is from the same series but it just takes, it looks like the animation. So this one was yes, I think he tries to capture some of the stories that were being told in this series. I don't know which ones were Agatha Christie's or but he was an enormous fan of Agatha Christie as everyone knows. Possibly we have people like to call Edward Gorey's work macabre. If you think about no one calls Agatha Christie macabre so. >> But he didn't do any of her covers did he? >> Glen Emil: For Agatha Christie? You know that's interesting, no not that I know of. Some of his favorite works he would have loved to become involved in but he didn't. I think he was waiting for someone to ask. That's more or less what happened. Most of Gorey's artwork was produced by somebody who just would come up and say okay, we think you can do this and he'd say okay. He was very amiable to doing whatever. I get this first hand from Andreas Brown. Andreas and I are good friends and he's told me a lot about Gorey. I hope somebody actually walks up to Andreas and follows him around and tape records him. He knows the story that's not in print about Edward Gorey. Maybe I can drag him down here one day. >> I'm going to stop the questions there if we can. ^M00:41:20 [ Applause ] ^M00:41:25 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^M00:41:33