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November 8, 2004
OGIC: Pocket jackpot
I just came back from the neighborhood used book store, where I was selling some books, thereby freeing up some much-needed bookshelf space and bringing in some not unwelcome cash. I was on my way out of the store with the cash in my hot little hand, on the verge of making a cleanly profitable getaway, when something caught my eye. It was a whole shelf packed with old Anchor and Vintage paperbacks illustrated by Edward Gorey. Ooh and ouch. Some were books I've long hoped to find. And there went twenty-five percent of my cash. Easy come, easy go.As long-time readers know, I collect Gorey books and have an especially soft spot for his early oeuvre. Looking again at the gallery maintained by the folks at Goreyography.com, I see that I still have a long way to go before my collection is complete. But the highlights of today's haul, some of which can be viewed over there, are:
An Elizabethan Song Book, songs selected by W. H. Auden, bright green for the grass and yellow for the lute.
François Villon, D. B. Wyndham Lewis's biography of the medieval poet. The wall is dense black cross-hatching on a gunmetal gray background, the lady's dress a dramatic red streak against the gloom.
The Yellow Book: Quintessence of the Nineties, edited by Stanley Weintraub, a collection of stories and essays from the famous fin-de-siècle journal. The cover of this one features a strange little Max Beerbohm drawing framed by an ornamental design by Gorey, who also did the typography. An odd but successful marriage. Beerbohm must have been an influence on Gorey.
Happy as I am to have stumbled on this cache, I can't help wondering what brought the like-minded soul who put it together to letting it go. An heir who didn't know what he had, probably, and better for the books they come live with me. I look over my own newly expanded collection, and the words "when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" come to mind.
Posted November 8, 2004 3:42 AM
