Clifford Ross and Karen Wilkin - The World of Edward Gorey

At the same time, I also borrowed this appreciation of Gorey's work, having spotted it in a bookstore earlier that day (I'm not really one for delayed gratification any more, if ever I was). For what it is, it's solid rather than exciting - there's a reasonably extended interview with E.G. himself (conducted by Ross, who's an artist of some stripe), a glowing analysis of Gorey's work by Wilkin (an art critic), and a generous collection of reproductions of Gorey's art, some scattered throughout the interview and analysis, and some collected in the final part of the book. Still, while I may've come close to damning this book with faint praise - 'solid rather than exciting' - I'm not sure how it could really have been improved; as a whole, it gives a good sense of what Gorey's art is all about, and I did pick up quite a lot from it which I hadn't previously known (he likes Matisse but not Picasso; he's fond of cats (though I could've guessed that); he often portrays himself in his own books; there are far more allusions to other artists and works of art than I'd begun to imagine (the Ronald Firbank comparison is a good one)...). Perhaps it's just that, although there's so much that could be said about the peculiar, delightful work of Edward Gorey, the art speaks more eloquently for itself than anything else ever could.