If Edward Gorey had been born in 1975 he would probably have been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and force-fed Prozac until he stopped doing all that infernal cross-hatching

He lived in a little town in New England, with one of those vaguely Lovecraftian-sounding names, where he ate breakfast and lunch every single day in the same little cafe and was bemused and cooperative when people asked for autographs. Before that he lived in New York City, in a small apartment full of cats, where he saw every single performance of the New York City Ballet for about thirty years, until choreographer George Balanchine died. Every single performance. If Edward Gorey had been born in 1975 he would probably have been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and force-fed Prozac until he stopped doing all that infernal cross-hatching. But he was born in 1925, and we're all grateful for that. He never admitted to any romantic entanglements whatsoever.

I first saw his work on an edition of Freaky Friday that was from the sixties or seventies, but it wasn't the movie tie-in version. I can't find it now. But it had a pink cover. There was a sequel called A Billion for Boris that had a blue cover, and also a Gorey illustration. There was, there is, something obscurely fascinating about even his simplest work. I remember the way the figures on the cover balanced tenuously on the tips of their narrow pointy feet, like awkward ballerinas. I remember the dense textures of their rumpled, vaguely old-fashioned clothing. And I remember the enigmatic, but vivid expressions on their faces, which were stylized in that distinctive Gorey manner. I spent a lot of time staring at that cover. I wasn't even sure I liked it--it didn't have the realistic proportions and features I, at that young age, associated with "good" art. But I couldn't stop staring all the same. So I think I must have liked it, on some deep down level that I was too young to recognize. I know I eventually saw the MYSTERY! introduction, and loved it, but I think that was after I knew who Edward Gorey was.

I felt totally suburban and dull, and way too blonde.

When I was fifteen years old I had a punk pen pal. Her name was Colleen. It was 1981 and she lived in Altadena California, so when my family visited relatives down there I spent the night at her house. We wandered around Hollywood, checking out thrift stores and record shops. We went to a party at one of the thrift stores where she knew the people who ran it. The store had mostly black clothes inside and lots of weird, do-it-yourself art involving Barbie dolls, broken mirrors and things like that. They were cool. I was intimidated. I split a beer with Colleen because she was driving. I didn't like the beer much. I loved the art and the people, even though I was too shy to talk to them. I felt totally suburban and dull, and way too blonde.

He had an ear for the language. A sense of timing. He wrote many of his books as if they were for children, with alphabets and strange little animals and few words and deceptively simple storylines. And that's another part of the magic of his work, I think. It reminds us of some of the very first books we read. It makes us feel a bit like children, being told a little picture-story. His work is disquieting, but there's something obscurely soothing about it as well. The archaic fashions, the quaint technology. Little Hector may be about to be done in by a thug, but doesn't he look cute in his sailor suit? Doesn't he?

Little Hector may be about to be done in by a thug, but doesn't he look cute in his sailor suit?

During the eighties, I spread the word about Edward Gorey, showing his work to anybody who would sit still long enough. As I went through college, it seemed that more and more often people I ran into already knew who he was. Maybe they'd watched MYSTERY! or bought one of those Gashlycrumb Tinies posters (I don't know what happened to mine. It had a lipstick stain on one corner.)

I never seriously tried to draw like him, because I knew I couldn't, although I drew a few deliberate homages for invitations and things like that. But I know he was a big influence on how I thought about art, illustration, humor. He was the first artist I really cared about, and certainly the first living artist who meant anything to me. Sometimes I see the work of people I think are obviously influenced by Edward Gorey. For instance Tim Burton's collection of drawings and stories, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, seems a pretty clear case. But when I look at what other people do, it's never as good. It's too obvious, too crude, too modern, too simple. And it's never drawn with the same painstaking fervor, the amazingly disciplined riot of lines and textures. Lord knows, I'm not capable of it. But I'm pretty sure Goth House would not exist if I had never discovered Edward Gorey's work.

In 1991 I wrote and asked him to be Art Guest of Honor at VikingCon 13. I got his address out of a book, some kind of compendium of living authors at the library. I didn't expect him to accept, of course. I didn't even expect him to reply.

He responded with one of the most charming rejections I have ever received.

Throughout the nineties, he would come out with new work every so often--cards, books, illustrations, which I snapped up eagerly whenever I saw them. Some of his little books were re-released as actual little books, which was neat. I started to see more interviews with him. In most of them he mentions his own death, one way or another. In one he talks about wanting to die quickly, with a minimum of pain, while he is still healthy enough to continue working.

It seems he got his wish.

So I guess that's something