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Edward Gorey (American, 1925u2000) was a prolific artist and author, illustrating more than one hundred published works of his own as well as those of other writers. His erudite wit shines in every story and couplet he published. But as a letter writer, with few exceptions, he engaged in only cursory communication. Perhaps this is why he was such a fan of postcards. Featuring Edward Gorey's ever-popular dark humour, The Betrayed Confidence Revisited offers ten of the artist's postcard series, including Neglected Murderesses, as well as his annual creations promoting National Post Card Week. His two Q.R.V. sets are here, along with Whatever Next?, Alms for Oblivion, Sc nes de Ballet, the Dogear Wryde Interpretive Series (reproduced in full colour), Menaced Objects, and Trag dies Topiares. The original edition of The Betrayed Confidence was published in 1992 and is long out of print. This revised edition supplements the contents of that book with three series not previously included, along with an introductory essay by Edward Bradford, the official Edward Gorey bibliographer.… (more)
User reviews
This book is a collection of Gorey's imagined postcards by the Dogear Wryde [anagram] Postcard Company and the text is minimal, mainly present only as titles for the cards. To start with the less good (more out of phase?): Interpretive Series: It's a lizard-thing in gloves and boots expressing various nouns through the medium of mime. OK, now I've written that, it actually sounds quite funny, but looking back at the postcards, it's not all that much.
The two Q.R.V. series are marginally better, and have the added interest of some nonsense verses in the form of mendacious advertising slogans which, again, sounds actually rather funny, but what the hell has that got to do with an anatomical sketch of a spine or of pen nibs or of toilets?
The best, and which actually made me laugh twice (I counted) was Menaced Objects, with various inanimate objects in a state of perilous fear, the predicaments of the grape and of the soda craker provoking my jocular ejaculations.
Neglected Murderesses was my second favourite series. Macabre and strangely empowering (apart from Angelica Transome, she's tragically creepy) to see these confident, if homicidal, women.
Hmm... writing this review, requiring myself to think a little more deeply about the drawings and their captions, is somewhat elucidating. The contrast between the odd and the mundane has a Zen koan-like quality - stop trying to find the rational meaning and be open to finding the absurd in the everyday? Hardly an original observation on Gorey's work, but perhaps one I hadn't fully appreciated before. Maybe I've now got a new way of looking at Gorey that will take me further into his world.