Edward Gorey and the Power of the Ineffable

“Everyday life is very discomfiting,” the American writer and illustrator Edward Gorey told The National Observer in 1976. “I guess I’m trying to convey that discomfiting texture in my books.” But Gorey’s art did not merely aim to discompose audiences with its macabre Victorian-Edwardian overlays and casual depictions of darkly comic cruelty. It also sought to unsettle by resisting definitive explanations or solutions. In a later interview, Gorey clarified—in a manner of speaking—the dominant philosophical theme of his work: the power of the ineffable, the value of what is left unsaid. “Explaining something makes it go away ... Ideally, if anything were good, it would be indescribable,” grumbled Gorey, who died in 2000 at age 75. “Disdain explanation,” he similarly wrote in a meandering postcard to Andreas Brown, a fan and publisher of Gorey’s books.

The author is, of course, better known for his period Gothic aesthetic and funereal humor than for his skepticism of clarity. Gorey’s influence is evident throughout British and American pop culture, notably in works by Tim Burton—including the stop-motion films and —and by Neil Gaiman, particularly the 2002 novella and its 2009 movie adaptation. by Gorey still routinely draw crowds today, did decades ago.