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Born To Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey
01.10.2019
08:15 am
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Cultural critic Mark Dery, whose erudite essays have appeared in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, Washington Post, Village Voice and his own collections, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink and Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century, returns with his remarkable biography of the comically sinister author and illustrator Edward Gorey. This delightful combination of biographer and subject has been praised in the New York Times, the New Yorker, at NPR Vogue and other prestige outlets. We’re pleased to present a short excerpt from Born To Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey (Little, Brown) at Dangerous Minds.

In the following excerpt from my just-published biography, Born To Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey (Little, Brown), I explore Gorey’s role, alongside Seuss and Sendak, in the postwar revolution in children’s books, a gleeful insurrection that killed off those insufferable, simpering Goody-Goodies, Dick and Jane, for good. In so doing, Gorey and other writer-illustrators reshaped American notions of kids lit and even childhood itself, making way for a more honest acceptance of the facts of life: divorce, death, racial tensions, queer desire. As well, the new wave slyly satirized not only the mainstream culture of the ‘50s and ‘60s but the conventions of children’s literature itself, many of which dated back to the cautionary tales and nursery-rhyme sermonizing of the Victorian era, when the children’s book as we know it was born. Whether Gorey’s work really was kiddie fare or arsenical treats for adults ironically disguised as picture books is still up for debate. Regardless, his influence is stronger than ever, identifiable at a glance in the YA novels of Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events) and Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children), the twee-goth movies of Tim Burton, and somber memoirs of “the miseries of childhood,” as Gorey put it, such as Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home.

— Mark Dery

Nineteen-sixty saw the publication of Edward Gorey’s sixth book, The Fatal Lozenge, by the New York publisher Ivan Obolensky. Subtitled An Alphabet, The Fatal Lozenge was his first foray into the ABC genre. He would go on to perform variations on the abecedarium theme in six books, one of which, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, would become his best-known title. [They are, in chronological order, The Fatal Lozenge, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Utter Zoo, The Chinese Obelisks, The Glorious Nosebleed, and The Eclectic Abecedarium.]

The alphabet book is one of the oldest forms of children’s literature. Rhyming couplets, illustrated by woodcuts, aided memorization. Early examples wedded ABCs and Calvinist catechism. The New England Primer, ubiquitous in late-seventeenth-century America, is typical of the genre:

A In Adam’s Fall We sinnèd all.
B Heaven to find; The Bible Mind.
C Christ crucify’d For sinners dy’d.
D The Deluge drown’d The Earth around.

Gorey’s interest in the alphabet book was undoubtedly a byproduct of his interest in Edward Lear, well known for loopy abecedaria like “Nonsense Alphabet” (1845) (“P was a pig, / Who was not very big; / But his tail was too curly, / And that made him surly”). His library reveals a longstanding fascination with the form, with a predictable focus on the nineteenth century. On Gorey’s bookshelves, we find A Moral Alphabet (1899) by Hilaire Belloc, A Comic Alphabet (1836) by George Cruikshank, a Dover facsimile of The Adventures of A, Apple Pie, Who Was Cut to Pieces and Eaten by Twenty Six Young Ladies and Gentlemen with Whom All Little People Ought to Be Acquainted (circa 1835), and of course Lear in abundance. 

At the same time, he couldn’t have been oblivious, as an illustrator working in commercial book publishing, to the waves Dr. Seuss was making in kid lit. Alphabet books were playing an important part in reshaping American ideas about childhood. Consider Seuss’s On Beyond Zebra! (1955), whose boy narrator dreams up a new alphabet for kids who think outside the Little Golden box (“In the places I go there are things that I see / That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z”). Or Maurice Sendak’s Alligators All Around (1962), in which “shockingly spoiled” reptilian protagonists throw tantrums and juggle jelly beans with abandon. These and other unconventional abecedaria celebrate Romper Room radicals who flout the rules. Seen in their cultural and historical context, they look like premonitions of the hippie era, with its worship of nonconformity and its elevation of the child to a cultural icon, not to mention its stoner humor and acid-soaked song lyrics.

Though he seemed barely to notice the counterculture of the ’60s, beyond the Beatles, Gorey was in his own quietly perverse way more iconoclastic than Seuss or Sendak. In The Fatal Lozenge, as in The Listing Attic, his earlier book of macabre limericks, his combination of a children’s genre (in this case, the ABC book) with dark subject matter and black comedy is both mordantly funny and unsettling, especially when he crosses the line, as he occasionally does, into the “sick humor” of contemporaries such as the cartoonist Gahan Wilson. When an interviewer mentioned to Sendak that the grisly drawing of an infant skewered on the point of a Zouave’s sword in The Fatal Lozenge was the moment when Gorey went “down the road of no return as far as publishers were concerned,” Sendak quipped, “That’s why he was so loved. There’s never enough dead babies for us.”
 

 
The literary theorist George R. Bodmer places Gorey’s ironic, sardonic ABCs in the context of a postwar pushback, among children’s authors such as Seuss and Sendak, “against the limits of imagination, or the limits the outside world would impose on imagination . . .” In his essay “The Post-Modern Alphabet: Extending the Limits of the Contemporary Alphabet Book, from Seuss to Gorey,” Bodmer calls Gorey’s “anti-alphabets” a “sarcastic rebellion against a view of childhood that is sunny, idyllic, and instructive.” Gorey’s mock-moralistic tone satirizes received wisdom about the benignity of parents and other authority figures: a magnate waiting for his limousine “ponders further child-enslavement / And other projects still more mean”; two little children quail in terror at the sight of their towering, bearded uncle, for they “know that at his leisure / He plans to have them come to harm.” Yet Gorey also punctures the myth that children are little angels: a baby, “lying meek and quiet” on a bearskin rug, “Has dreams about rampage and riot / And will grow up to be a thug.” (The rug’s enormous, snarling head, with its bared fangs, is an omen of mayhem to come.)

Talking about The Fatal Lozenge in 1977, Gorey said, “This was a very early book and at that date I was not above trying to shock everyone a bit.” In that sense, his sixth book is so similar to his second that it might as well be called Son of Listing Attic. A good part of the book consists of the usual droll riffing on stock characters and situations borrowed from gothic novels, penny dreadfuls, Conan Doyle, and Dickens.

But just as clearly, there’s more going on in The Fatal Lozenge than enfant terrible-ism (“trying to shock everyone a bit”) or the larger trends identified by Bodmer: the bohemian backlash against the suffocating normalcy of the Eisenhower era and the growing resistance, led by Drs. Spock and Seuss, to outdated, repressive ideas about childhood and parenting. The recurrence of themes closer to home—the beastliness of babies, the depravity of the clergy (a nun is “fearfully bedevilled”), the furtiveness and shamefulness of homosexual desire, here associated with child molestation and even more monstrous perversions (“The Proctor buys a pupil ices, / And hopes the boy will not resist / When he attempts to practice vices / Few people even know exist”)—makes us feel, at times, as if we’re eavesdropping on a psychotherapy session. That these disconcerting images come to us in the reassuring wrappings of a children’s book makes The Fatal Lozenge even more disquieting.

It’s precisely that insinuating knowingness that Sendak loved about Gorey’s little books. “They all had what appealed to me so much—aside from the graphics and the writing—[which] was the wicked sexual ambiguity that ran through all of it.” Even Gorey’s artlessly brilliant covers for Anchor Books, Doubleday’s tasteful paperback line, exhibited an arch wit, Sendal thought. “I remember a jacket he did for…a novel by Melville, Redburn. And the jacket summed up completely the kind of confused homosexuality of that novel….So erotic and yet so simple. You can look at it any way you like. . . . [H]e buried a lot of information about himself in the art.”
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.10.2019
08:15 am
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Henry Rollins reads Dr. Seuss
06.17.2016
02:43 pm
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Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! has become the traditional graduation gift of our generation. It’s June, and people are graduating, so Funny or Die decided to enlist everyone’s favorite hardcore hunk, Henry Rollins, to sit a spell and read from the beloved volume.

Henry’s more of a literary figure than you might realize—he’s been publishing books for years on his 2.13.61 imprint—personally, I’d like to see a Dr. Seuss treatment of Pissing in the Gene Pool.......
 

Nice kid. Can we get an Einstürzende Neubauten homunculus on there?
 
Fortunately, it turns out that this isn’t just Rollins “reading” Seuss, it’s Rollins “reading and deconstructing” Seuss, which means that the video consists less of Theodore Geisel’s winsome versifying and much more of Rollins’ fervent crabbing about the silly-ass text.

And we’re all for that! Click and enjoy.
 
Henry Rollins Reads Dr. Seuss

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Nick Cave meets Dr. Seuss

Posted by Martin Schneider
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06.17.2016
02:43 pm
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Nick Cave meets Dr. Seuss
05.06.2015
12:42 pm
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Dr. Seuss and Nick Cave? Two great tastes that taste great together? Sure. Why not?

Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand,” a single from his 1994 album Let Love in is one of his best-loved tunes and long an in-concert staple of his live shows. It can be heard opening and closing series one of Peaky Blinders, the soundtrack to all three of the Scream movies, The X-Files and many other things (including, curiously, a Snoop Dogg documentary.). The “red right hand” referred to in the lyrics is an allusion to a stanza in Milton’s Paradise Lost (not the first time Cave has drawn inspiration from Milton’s epic verse):

“What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, / Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage, / And plunge us in the flames; or from above / Should intermitted vengeance arm again / His red right hand to plague us?” (Book II, 170-174)

And now the song’s sinister narrative has been Seussified by Deviant Art user DrFaustusAU... Cave’s lyrical wordplay is suitably Seussian, and it works brilliantly:
 

Take a little walk to the edge of town. Go across the tracks…
 

Where the viaduct looms, like a bird of doom, as it shifts and cracks…
 

Where secrets lie in the border fires, in the humming wires. Hey man, you know you’re never coming back…
 
More after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.06.2015
12:42 pm
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Dr. Seuss and the 50 word ‘dare’ that inspired ‘Green Eggs and Ham’
01.08.2015
11:04 am
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In terms of sales, Green Eggs and Ham, published in 1960, was the most successful book that Dr. Seuss ever published—it checks as the #4 best-selling children’s book of all time. Famously, the book was limited to a set of fifty words, Dr. Theodore Geisel (Seuss’ real name) having taken up a challenge thrown down by Random House publisher Bennett Cerf after The Cat in the Hat had used 225 words. The fifty words are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, and you.
 

 
Recently the University of California has started a series of videos called “Fig. 1” intended to present the new research coming out of the University of California system. So far the videos have covered climate change, mountain biking, gold, and cancer.

One of the videos offers a fascinating look at the Dr. Seuss Collection, including drafts of the book Green Eggs and Ham. My favorite bit is the instruction to later colorists “White inside the hambone, always.” The video’s only shortcoming is that, at 84 seconds, it’s far too short! Can we have a version that lasts maybe 15 minutes? 
 

 
via BOOOOOOOM
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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01.08.2015
11:04 am
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Furry furniture that looks like taxidermied Dr. Seuss creatures
11.06.2014
10:19 am
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Golden Corral and Beast Guests, 2014
 
Texas twins Nikolai and Simon Haas desperately wanted to see the Ralph Bakshi flop, Cool World as kids, but their parents wouldn’t let them. Mom and dad were right. Not only was the the film a little seedy for 8-year-olds, it was a half animated, half live-action mess, high on concept and low on plot. The movie came out in 1992, four years after Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but it lacked that film’s imagination (and writing) and the animation felt cheap and gimmicky. The Hass Brothers haven’t seen the movie to this day, but their fantasy idea of it serves as the inspiration for their new show, “The Haas Brothers: Cool World,” at R & Company in New York.

The furniture and furnishings they created in the name of Bakshi’s box office bomb are actually far less louche than their inexplicable source material. I’d argue the work is downright Seussian—comic and surreal, but with the added element of a playful sexuality (including an actual “Sex Room Entrance”). The ceramics could be the work of Whoville artisans, and the furniture resembles the animals from If I Ran the Zoo. The use of leather and fur (real), alongside horns and feet (metal), leave the viewer with the distinct impression that a few Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dills were harmed in the making of that chaise lounge.
 

Mini Beasts, 2014
 

Beast Bench, 2013
 

Accretion Vases and Zoidberg Lamp Series, 2014
 

Beast Club Chairs, 2014
 

Beast Setee, 2013
 

California Raisin, 2014

Candelabras, Accretion Vases, Hematite Vases, 2014
 

Anna Nicole, 2014
 
“Hairy Belafonte” and more after the jump…

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Posted by Amber Frost
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11.06.2014
10:19 am
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Neil Gaiman, Jesse Jackson and ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic read ‘Green Eggs and Ham’


 
Author Neil Gaiman, known for the Sandman comic book series, the teleplay and novel Neverwhere, and the book and film Coraline, among many other wonderful works, has made an amusing video of himself reading aloud from Dr. SeussGreen Eggs and Ham. There’s probably a rich lode in the notion of Gaiman/Seuss mashups, but this was done for charity:

I promised WORLDBUILDERS that if they made it to $500,000 raised I would read Green Eggs and Ham ob video. They did, so I did. I hope you enjoy it.

 

 
It’s fun, but it doesn’t touch Jesse Jackson’s infamous read of the book on Saturday Night Live in 1991:
 

 
Another winning contender in the Green Eggs and Ham-off is “Weird Al” Yankovic, whose response to a fan letter asking him to read the book on TV is hilarious:
 

 
I will not include Ted Cruz in this roundup. This is Dr. Seuss, we need to keep this dignified and respectful, please.

Via Metafilter

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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02.01.2014
12:40 pm
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Wacky images from ‘The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T’
03.07.2012
04:11 pm
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I had a good chuckle while visiting the site Zontar of Venus who recently posted various old posters and stills from the musical fantasy film The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. The movie was released in 1953 and was the only feature film written by Dr. Seuss.

To be honest, I tried watching it again a few years ago and couldn’t make it past the first 30 minutes. I remembered it being much more fantastical when I was a kid, I guess.

More images and posters over at Zontar of Venus.
 
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Via Nerdcore

Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.07.2012
04:11 pm
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Prat in the (Cowboy) Hat: What if Rick Perry wrote Dr. Seuss’ books?
12.14.2011
01:41 pm
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If he did, I’m pretty certain they would read like this. You can see more Rick Perry Seussifications at BuzzFeed.
 
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One more after the jump…

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Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.14.2011
01:41 pm
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Dr. Seuss, radical environmentalist: ‘I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees’
08.15.2011
07:42 pm
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The Lorax, the classic pro-environmentalist and rather strongly anti-capitalist Dr. Seuss book from 1971 had a big influence on me when I was a kid. That is to say, that it really bothered and upset me.

The book has a simple and powerful lesson at its core: “We’re killing the planet for often frivolous reasons. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Someone has to stand up for the trees. Someone like you.” The finger is pointed right at Seuss’s young readers. He means YOU, that’s right, you there reading this—YES YOU—and there is no escaping this fact.

The animated version that came out the following year spooked me ever more, although I loved it. When The Lorax (or any Seuss cartoon) was on TV, this was like a holiday to me. I don’t think its influence on my generations and the ones that came after can be overestimated. It’s one of the most subversive and powerful things ever written for grade school children. Both the book and the cartoon are veritable counter-culture classics. You simply cannot unlearn the message of The Lorax. It’s like Who Moved My Cheese?, but written by Karl Marx in verse. For me, it’s THE Dr. Seuss book, a stone classic.

In the story, a boy visits a sad old man known as “The Once-ler” who lives in a ruined wasteland in a remote area of town “where the Grickle grass grows.” We never actually see the Once-ler, who lurks in the shadows, only his hands You could argue that he represents not one specific person, but voracious capitalism itself. He tells the boy about his days as a wealthy man, running a factory to make a fad item of clothing (a “Thneed”!) woven from the colorful, woolly Truffula trees. The Truffula trees are not only beautiful, they support a vibrant and exotic ecosystem of happy and content forest-dwelling animals.

A Wilford Brimley-esque creature called “The Lorax” protests the destruction of Truffula tree forest, but is continuously rebuffed by the Once-ler and the red tape of “the system.” After the Once-ler has chopped down the very last Truffula tree he FINALLY gets what the Lorax was trying to tell him, but by then it is too late. The Lorax lifts himself up by the seat of his pants and disappears. The animals are all gone. What is left looks like a lunar landscape. The haunted old man, full of regret over his life, explains to the boy how greed will destroy us all UNLESS we—ALL of us—stand up to the corporations raping and pillaginging the Earth. He gives the boy the very last Trufulla seed and tells him to nurture it and to regrow the Trufulla tree forest so that the Lorax and his friends might one day return.

The near apocalyptic lesson of The Lorax was as haunting to my six-year-old mind as the Christian “end of the world” books like Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth were to me a few years later. But whereas goofy Hal Lindsay’s projections of his own psyche’s pathology onto “Bible prophecies” were ultimately easy to dismiss as I got older and smarter, the message of The Lorax I’ve still never shaken, nor would I want to. It should be required viewing for all school age children, although this being America, these days screening The Lorax for public school students could probably get a teacher fired. (There have been attempts to ban the book in northern California logging towns).

I was glad to see that Chris Renaud (the story artist for the Horton Hears a Who! feature) is working on a new film version of The Lorax so that its message will be heard by another generation. Danny DeVito is playing the Lorax. Perfect casting. The film is set to come out in spring of 2012. Until then, watch the original and oh-so-subversive animated original, below:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.15.2011
07:42 pm
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Horton Hears a Doctor Who!
12.10.2010
12:22 am
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The Seussification of Doctor Who.

(via TDW)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.10.2010
12:22 am
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