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The Gorey Salon

One interesting benefit of having a roommate who’s a Harvard graduate is the periodic appearance of Harvard Magazine, a journal of alumni's unsurprisingly rather stellar achievements. In the current issue a fascinating piece by Susan Lumenello explores Edward Gorey’s years on campus in the lates 40s and early 50s. Gorey arrived at university “sporting a full-length sheepskin lined coat, sneakers and thick rings on his fingers. His hair was combed forward, Roman style”, leading one to conclude that the raccoon coat wearing man who appeared in many of Gorey’s morbidly chic books was something of an avatar.  Gorey and the poet Frank O’Hara were best chums at college, throwing salon-like parties where they listened to Marlene Dietrich and “lounged on rented garden furniture", entertaining classmates like Allison Lurie and John Ashberry. “All of us were obsessed,” Gorey later recalled. “Obsessed by what? Ourselves, I expect.” Gorgeous.

Lumenello also reveals that Gorey had 75 manuscripts written and ready to illustrate when he passed away—if someone doesn’t manage to publish these it would be a real shame. Gorey’s witty drawings of ghastly and glamorous characters are so familiar that one’s imagination could fill in the blanks there.

Googling for images of Gorey’s work to show my Harvard grad roomie, who was unfamiliar with his work (Harvard’s clearly gone downhill in recent years), I came across the ingenious website for Mystery!, using Gorey’s illustrations for their credit sequence for some incredibly cool Shockwave games.

McEwan's Trees

On my signed copy of Ian McEwan’s ‘Saturday’ he worked his signature into the branches of the trees on the title page. Very fitting for a writer whose stories snake around themselves, thoughts redoubling again and again, shifting and twisting and finally arriving at the unexpected--but unconsciously known--root of the dilemma. I started reading the book after McEwan signed it for me at the Key West Literary Seminar, but I was too scattered as I prepared for my trip to London and couldn’t focus, putting it aside. Then, in London, I saw these trees everywhere, and his signature floated over them in my vision, phantom-like. I’m back in freezing cold NYC right now, and am preparing to curl up with the book and go in.

By the way that was a complete lie, about McEwan signing my book. Even though I had complete and unfettered access to him, I was so intimidated by the man who wrote Atonement that I could barely speak to him, let alone ask him to sign my yearbook. I was probably too intimate with the other authors I was taking care of. Margaret Atwood? Oh yes, we shared stories about visiting Cuba. Michael Cunningham? Mutual friends in New York, darling! Wally Lamb? I said I'd try and hook his son up with work in New York. Chatty, chatty, chatty.

But McEwan? I clammed right up, starstruck and speechless. It was like meeting James Fucking Joyce, for me. I bought my copy in the bookstore, safely pre-signed.

Good Things

Soul Shower is one of my favorite sites-this blogger from the Soulful Midwest writes about classic R & B with passion and mad knowledge and as though it’s as relevant now as it was in 1974, which for some of us is quite true. He also provides downloads of cuts so choice you will not believe your ears, often taken from rich buttery vinyl. Let the analog love soothe your soul.

Wired reports on the book Pleasurable Kingdom which asserts that animals experience the same hedonistic urges, bacchanalian catharsis and-I’m assuming-morning after regret as humans. Anyone who’s ever seen this classic footage of animals getting plastered knows that much like big pimpin' celebs they’re just like us.

Laura Kightlinger’s merciless new show The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman is spot-on in its portrayal of the madness that is life struggling to Make It in Los Angeles. It’s jogged my memories of living there, bumming rides from friends, hustling to break into The Biz and completely losing my mind, all while somehow still managing to have a hell of a lot of fun. Kightlinger is appalled and amused by the pretensions of L.A. in equal parts which is really the way to go when dealing with what Joni Mitchell called the City of the Fallen Angels. I’m putting this up there as a worthy successor to the dark, cracked worlds of both The Comeback and Arrested Development. Minor Accomplishments airs Friday at 11 p.m. on IFC and again on Sundays at the same time.