Students are to post ONE reaction (minimum 350 words) to the assigned listening/reading/viewing linked below. Students are encouraged (but not required) to additionally respond to other student reactions."The Autumnal Genius of John Bellairs" by Grady Hendrix: "There’s a particular kind of nostalgia that smells like burning autumn leaves on an overcast day. It sounds like a static-filled radio station playing Brylcreem advertisements in the other room. It feels like a scratchy wool blanket. It looks like a wood-paneled library stuffed with leather-bound books. This is the flavor of occult nostalgia conjured up by author John Bellairs and his illustrator, Edward Gorey, in their middle grade gothic New Zebedee books featuring low-key poker-playing wizards, portents of the apocalypse, gloomy weather, and some of the most complicated names this side of the list of ingredients on a packet of Twinkies." Click heading to read essay.
"Is there still room for scares in John Bellairs?" by Erik Adams: "The imagery and atmosphere of Bellairs’ work inspired a previous generation of readers to become a new generation of writers: The John Bellairs Fandæmonium website collects testimonies from such fans-turned-authors; The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy recently dropped Bellairs’ name in an NPR interview about Under Wildwood, his second YA effort with wife/personal Edward Gorey Carson Ellis. It all goes to show that the art that most often sticks with us, the work that most terrorizes and tantalizes, is that which leaves room for the unknown and the unsaid, that which invites us back by leaving room to interpret what’s hovering just out of view." Click heading to read the essay.
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THE GASHLYCRUMB TINIES by Edward Gorey: "Part Tim Burton long before there was Burton, part Edgar Allan Poe long after Poe, the book exudes Gorey’s signature adult picture book mastery, not merely adorned by the gorgeously dark crosshatched illustrations but narratively driven by them." Click heading to read/view The Gashlycrumb Tinies.
THE HAPLESS CHILD by Edward Gorey: Click title to download PDF of The Hapless Child.
Why the Link Between Bellairs & Gorey is Unbreakable by Matt Domino: "Bellairs were browsing a bookstore and came across The Fatal Lozenge, an illustrated alphabet book by Edward Gorey. Bellairs was particularly fond of Z, which was illustrated with a Zouave [a class of French Army infantry members in the 19th and 20th centuries] hoisting an impaled baby on a bayonet with an accompanying verse." Click heading to read essay.
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Charles Addams by Christian Willaims (The Washington Post): In a sunny day in 1953, patent attorney F.T. Griswold holds a funny-looking electrical gizmo out the window of his office, aiming it down at the streets below. At his side stands the inventor of the device, hat in hand and waiting hopefully. "Death ray, fiddlesticks!" comes the verdict. "Why, it doesn't even slow them up."That is, of course, a New Yorker cartoon perpetrated by Charles Addams. Like his inventor's ray gun, Addams has never successfully harmed anybody. But it is safe to say that, over the past 50 years, his weird cartoons have certainly slowed them up." Click heading to reading article.
The Father of the Addams Family (NPR): They said that Charles Addams slept in a coffin and drank martinis with eyeballs in them. They said he kept a guillotine at his house and received chopped-off fingers in the mail from fans. It was once reported that he had been given a monogrammed straitjacket as a birthday gift -- a garment that might have come in handy if the other stories were true, such as the one Patricia McLaughlin told about Addams moving around the living room at a party, "methodically and imponderably depositing" dollops of tooth powder in various corners. "A charm to ward off cavity-causing vampires?" she wondered. People said that Addams had married Morticia, the pale dagger in the spidery black dress from The Addams Family, that familiar band of subversives that included Gomez, Lurch, Pugsley, Wednesday, Uncle Fester, Grandma, Thing, and Cousin Itt. Click heading to read essay, excerpt, and/or listen to interview.
Is Someone Going to Bake Me a Pie? The eeriness of Mother Goose. Charles Addams' Illustrations remind us how the classic tales could seem in the minds of the kids to whom we read them. Click heading to view book.
16 comments:
"The Autumnal Genius of John Bellairs" by Grady Hendrix:
The discussion of Bellair’s work makes me wonder how an author can attempt to stave off exhaustion in the works they create like Bellairs, or mask it well enough so as to continue/complete a series like in his House series. It’s a shame the later books didn’t hold up as well as the first one, I wonder how Bellairs felt about them up to/past their completion. Maybe looking back there might be some way he’d wished he had changed them, or maybe he wouldn’t change anything at all. It’s hard to tell what an author intends to incite in their work, and even harder to determine if they were successful in their endeavors.
THE GASHLYCRUMB TINIES by Edward Gorey:
The idea of a gruesome and grim alphabet book like the one Gorey wrote in The Gashlycrumb Tinies is something so strange and disturbing I can help but admire the strangeness and creativity that went into it and the creative (sometimes comedic) deaths he came up with. The prevalence of death with a rhyming alphabet book makes a perfect juxtaposition that makes it a brief yet strangely entertaining read.
THE HAPLESS CHILD by Edward Gorey
As for the Hapless Child, I felt that this to be a substantially less engaging read. Unlike the alphabet book there is no punchline to act as juxtaposition for the cruel things we read of, it comes off as simply misery for the sake of misery with no lesson or point. Though it possesses the same iconic Gorey-grimness which is done excellently to instill dread and sorrow, I felt at the end that there wasn’t really a point in reading the story.
Why the Link Between Bellairs & Gorey is Unbreakable by Matt Domino
It’s interesting that Bellairs and Gorey had absolutely no direct interaction yet somehow together managed to resonate with each other so well with their tone/artistic stylings. It’s unfortunate that they never did, as while they were able to work off each other so well however brief, it begs one to wonder if they had what sort of ideas/stories they could’ve came up with their combined grimness and strangeness.
Charles Addams
I personally enjoy Addam’s approach to death as being a ‘cozy feeling’ more than the alternative we’ve seen in some other works such as Gorey’s stories. It provides a very engaging tone that is similar to Gorey in how it isn’t afraid to use death as a juxtaposition with comedy, but in my opinion is much more satisfying and feels like it serves some sort of purpose whether it be for comedy or some hilarious insight.
The Father of the Addams Family (NPR)
It’s fascinating to hear how Addams drew from his own fears as inspiration for his work, and more importantly how he twisted these fears and other grim things like death into something that becomes seemingly mundane and comical for the masses.
Is Someone Going to Bake Me a Pie?
I very much enjoy how Addams maintained the dreary nature of the literary portion of the Mother Goose stories while managing to maintain the comical undertone through the drawings that accompany them. The reuse of the Addams family characters makes these particularly enjoyable as their reuse makes the reader imagine that all these stories are all connected through a strange series of events surrounding an even stranger family, who treat the abnormal as normal. Thus as they find joy in the strange so does the reader with great effect.
In "The Autumnal Genius of John Bellairs," Grady Hendrix highlights Bellairs’ skill of “indicat[ing] by insinuation, hinting at What Might Happen in dark whispers, and thus [making his work] all the more intriguing.” I found this point interesting because it seems like it may be something difficult to do well. While leaving things unsaid allows the reader’s imagination to fill in the gaps and helps maintain a sense of suspense/mystery, it can also be frustrating or confusing if too many questions are left unanswered. However, according to Erik Adams in "Is there still room for scares in John Bellairs?" Bellairs is able to avoid this problem and make sure that his stories are not “composed of blurry lines and hazy descriptions” by grounding his stories in their rich, gothic atmospheres. This reminded me of our class discussions about enriching our settings with specific details—like naming flower species instead of simply saying “a flower”—and how this can deepen a fictional world and enhance a story's acoustic flow.
Another interesting point that both authors touched on is how writing for a middle grade audience shaped Bellairs’ style. His debut novel was initially written for adults but ended up being repurposed and released for a middle grade audience. Hendrix suggests that the novel’s sequels don’t live up to the first one in part because when Bellairs wrote with children specifically in mind, his writing grew overly simplistic, condescending, and lost some of its magic. This made me wonder how other stories might be transformed if they were reworked with different age demographics in mind—not necessarily in terms of the content in the story but more so in terms of how the story is told. I am curious how a children’s story made into an adult novel might turn out, and if it would still be enjoyable to children.
I enjoyed reading Gorey’s “The Gashlycrumb Tinies.” My favorites were “E is for Ernest, who choked on a peach” and “N is for Neville, who died of ennui.” This poem and its illustrations are both creepy and funny, and I really liked seeing how many creative deaths Gorey was able to come up with. I tried to think of a few of my own, but it was surprisingly difficult, and mine were definitely not as witty as Gorey’s. However, I didn’t like his other work, “The Hapless Child,” as much. Though I still enjoyed looking at his illustrations, I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to take away from the story, as it felt very miserable and aimless. I was expecting some sort of twist at the end, and the one that ended up occurring (Charlotte Sophia’s father not being dead) felt a bit anticlimactic and random.
I was surprised to learn that Bellairs and Gorey had no personal communication, according to Matt Domino’s “Why the Link Between Bellairs & Gorey is Unbreakable.” Although their collaborations turned out well, I wonder how Gorey’s illustrations might have looked if Bellairs had been able to provide input. It’s possible that this actually would not have benefited the artwork, as having someone like Gorey provide a fresh/outsider’s perspective might have allowed for a more imaginative interpretation of Bellairs' text.
Lastly, I’m glad I got to learn more about Charles Addams. I’ve never read the original Addams family cartoons, but I’ve seen some of the films based on them and have always enjoyed them. I liked hearing his perspective in the Washington Post article that the best cartoons don’t have captions. Creating a cartoon without text forces the artist to communicate everything visually, and when it works, the result can be especially powerful.
Tomas
Something I found interesting about “The Autumnal Genius of John Bellairs” by Grady Hendrix is how Bellair’s quality of writing decreased after he began to write explicitly for a middle-grade audience. Hendrix states, “Now that Bellairs was writing middle grade from scratch and not repurposing an adult manuscript, the writing feels condescending. Characters refer to each other repeatedly by their full names in the first few pages so that young readers can better remember them. What worked in the first book (a dark figure approaching at night, a headlong car journey) is deployed again for lesser effect.” This creates the question of whether one should write for an audience, or if one should write first and then decide what audience is best for your manuscript. In my opinion, I think the latter is better because the writing does not come out as forced, instead it is read naturally, and it just happens to be the case that a certain audience will feel connected to your manuscript. In a sense, writing with an explicit intent to connect with a specific audience is like writing with limitations, as you cannot express your ideas and themes clearly. Instead, your writing would be filled with the fear that your intended audience will not enjoy your work. This can be seen in Edward Gorey’s “The Gashlycrumb Tinies.” Even though the book is an alphabet book, it is very sinister. One reads as follows - “H is for Hector done in by a thug.” Gorey was capable of writing an alphabet book in his own style. He doesn’t care about the intended audience of alphabet books, which is exactly what makes “The Gashlycrumb Times” memorable.
I think these two articles showcase the importance of finding one’s voice and allowing others to connect to it, rather than writing to forcefully connect with someone else. When a writer tells a story in his own original voice, without any sort of care for the audience, then the audience will come organically, as writers produce work of higher quality, free of censorship. A writer will naturally attract an audience if they write manuscripts of higher quality, which is not what happens when a writer suppresses themselves by limiting themselves to an audience.
In The Autumnal Genius of John Bellairs, the idea in The House with a Clock in Its Walls that a fuse box dwarf can cause a lunar eclipse intrigued me. This would entice me to read this story, even as an adult.
The Gashlycrumb Tinies: A Very Gorey Alphabet Book, was definitely creepy, but quite humorous as well. What caught my attention in this book is that Gorey does not include the actual death of the children in most of the pictures. For instance, when the book says ‘V is for Victor squashed under a train,’ Victor is not squashed- he is standing, and you can infer that he is about to be squashed by the train. However, if certain children do not know how to read, this book may not be too disturbing to them because most of the pictures do not depict the gruesome truth if you do not know the story behind the pictures.
In The Hapless Child by Edward Gorey, the recurrent themes in his work are quite depressing, and I wonder if Gorey himself experienced anything similar to Charlotte. Charlotte Sophia’s character really stands out in the illustrations in the book. When she is sent to a boarding school, she is depicted to be smaller compared to the other children, and I think Gorey did this on purpose to highlight how invisible she may feel with her dad gone, and her mom not mentally present to support her.
In Why the Link Between Bellairs and Gorey is Unbreakable by Matt Domino, it is fascinating that Bellairs and Gorey both wrote about/drew similar things, because their work seemed to be rather niche and specific. Seeman says that both of their work is ‘disconnected from anything contemporary’ and are of ‘another time, but a place strangely familiar.’ I feel as if a lot of people find horror scarier when it takes place in a familiar setting. However, I think that if the horror is placed in a make-believe setting that is different from the real world, it can be just as effective, if not more, in eliciting shock from the reader.
^Sierra/Casper
John Bellairs original book is said to uphold a standard of storytelling and writing that is simply not met in the latter two or more books in the series. When I read about this, I found it depressing, but also not surprising. I thought it was really interesting that he had originally written for an adult audience, but just changed it slightly for a younger audience. This links back to our previous discussion about how we can classify middle grade to YA and adult fiction. The best type of story can move between these distinctions and be appealing for everyone. When writing solely for middle grade, it seems like these books lost their appeal and sense of urgency and suspense that was built up in the first one.
I really liked Gorey’s illustrations. They were reminiscent of A Series of Unfortunate Events, with the black and white and how sharp they seem to be. It seems to be a similar vibe to what Lemony Snicket wrote to what Bellairs wrote as well. I liked their darkness that was unabashed, and didn’t try to shy away from anything. In fact, like Bellairs stories are said to do, it lays them out as fact, leaving them very open to whoever looks at them. I also think it’s interesting that these two never met, and that Gorey saw his work as a means to an end. Even though it was not what he wanted to do, he still came out with a very interesting product. Perhaps its darkness is somehow intermingled with the fact that he felt like he had to do this, and therefore was not exactly in a cheerful mood when doing these illustrations.
I never read the Addams Family comics or watched the show, however, it seems similar to what Gorey and Bellairs wrote and illustrated about. It kind of falls into that category of horror and creepiness that is completely confident in itself, and embraces the fact that it is horror. It plays with it, the scary funny in a way that hadn’t really been previously imagined. All of these works reminded me of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was not a horror series, but one of those kids series that is creepy and doesn’t always shy away from topics that middle grade or YA won’t touch on.
In the essay “The Autumnal Genius of John Bellairs” there is this exploration of the classic magic system that stood out to me. Hendrix mentions that John Bellairs, in his book House, uses the “classic rule of magic”, which he describes as using misdirection to “obscure what is important”, essentially blurring what will give away the major plot points before they are fully revealed. He mentions how this works together with a limited mention of the actual apocalypse and when reading this it reminded me of YA books that I have read where I saw these patterns and even adult books as well, speaking to the fact that literature often does have key things that helps to make a good story in genre. There was also a mention of how Bellair originally wrote House as an adult book but rewrote it as a middle grade book, and how that made it more original and have a sense of maturity to it that goes lacking in the next books that are written as middle grade books off the bat. This shows how when writers make themselves write for a certain audience and gear their books towards those age groups during the writing process it can hinder the level of creativity and make the book not reach its full potential.
The Gashlycrumb Tinies: A Very Gorey Alphabet Book, is a jarring concept as the alphabet is associated with children generally since it’s one of the first steps in learning how to read and write, which is something most adults already know. The fact that the book has taken a more gorey edge to it with the mentions of death, yet in more of a rhyming storybook kind of way makes the structure of the book and the details themselves juxtapose each other, but in a way that the reader can ‘t really turn away. The childlike nature of the graphics and the writing style makes it an easier read but the content is what aids in its compelling nature.
The Hapless Child was a story that had many turns so that it was hard to guess what would happen next. Originally the story opens up with a seemingly normal family, but then death and hardship quickly take over, but in a manner in which the reader must go to the next page to see what has been done as the book highlights moments and not a singular one. When she is unconscious and the men both steal, take and sell her, there is a call to child trafficking that may bring a fear to young adults but is noticeable to me, as an adult, as an actual reality to many kids, that is both scary and sad.
“Why the Link Between Edward Gorey and John Bellairs Remains Unbreakable”, there is an exploration of the connection that illustration has to a story and how books often can be remembered not only for their literary content but for their graphics too, keeping illustrators and authors connected. One thing that mainly stood out to me was the mentioning of MG/ YA books having the elements of the fantastic without needing overt explanations for it, it can just be because it is.
“Charles Addams” - As Charles Addams works show the before of the attempt to harm, yet harm is never actually done to anyone in the cartoons, his work takes on a more funny edge. The fact that he can write these things though, and come up with the different manners of torment would have people question Charles Addams as a person himself and whether he is this crazy or out there man, but in fact he is very charming and normal. This contrast between his work and his person really highlights how writers are able to create these worlds and situations that don’t reflect who they are as a person, but simply shows their creative ability.
“The Father of the Addams Family” - As someone who has never actually read the Addams Family and has only seen the Netflix show adaptation of it, I was still always aware of the Addams family existence and the black and white / sinister nature of the family. The fact that this was the case really speaks to the way that as, Ms. Davis mentions his cartoons being timeless and using “universal theme[s]”. I find it interesting how years later his work is still able to be adapted to many different forms of art without taking away from the originality of his pieces.
“Is Someone Going to Bake Me in a Pie?’ The Eeriness of Mother Goose”- The illustrations of the childhood stories really stand out as they capture each line, the interpretations fitting the original works and helping to bring to life the words written. There are some pieces where what is being said is up to heavy interpretation like the “I do not like thee, Doctor Fell” which makes Doctor Fell out to be what looks like a mad scientist, and the illustration helps to capture that fear as well as put it in a manner that a child would also understand.
Out of all of this week’s readings, I particularly enjoyed Gorey’s work the most. The alphabet piece was so simple, yet a fantastic read. I think the horror lies in the vagueness. You as a reader are trusted to fill in the blanks with what little Gorey provides. There are a bunch that are violent like getting struck with an axe or hit by a train, but the ones that hit me the most were the ones that were unusual. You never think about getting smothered by a rug or getting sucked dry by a leech or even dying of ennui (which is my personal favorite). The vagueness also makes this child friendly horror, as this stuff isn’t particularly unsafe for children content-wise. The illustrations aren’t overly detailed or gorey (ha!), which lets the imagination do most of the work.
The Hapless Child also really struck a chord with me. I liked the way it followed typical children’s story conventions. It follows a child who loses her parents and while away from home goes through many horrible situations. That plot structure is super familiar to me, as it feels like the cautionary fairy tales read to you when you’re a child. The illustrations were beautifully done and complemented the horror. The moment where the girl’s father doesn’t recognize her anymore is so heartbreaking, and terrifying! I can totally picture this freaking me out if I read this as a kid. I think the concept of your parents not recognizing you is extremely frightening as a kid (reminds me a lot of the scene in Spirited Away when Chihiro’s parents were turned into pigs in the very beginning… a scene that lived in my mind for a really long time). Also having your comfort toy, Hortens, being ripped limb from limb after already losing both parents and your home is terrible. I think Gorey does a great job choosing the worst situations to put a child in for his stories, which is very important when your task is to write children’s horror.
Some of the articles that really interested me were the ones discussing Charles Addams. From a young age I was exposed to the Addams family as a cultural phenomenon in both my American and Latin roots. And much more recently I came to learn about the creator and origins of such iconic characters like Morticia, Gomez, Wednesday, Pugsley, Lurch, and Thing. In the article, "The Father of the Addams Family," it is interesting that people believed that he somehow had this comfortability with the macabre, so much so, that there was this belief that his cartoons reflected some of the values he held in his everyday life. When in reality, that wasn't the case, he was just a regular man, but I feel like there is some truth to the previously made claims about his "spooky" interests, and that is that every horror writer tends to put a bit of oneself, be it themselves or their experiences into their pieces. And it is obvious that Charles had to have some kind of fascination by the morbid and unusual, otherwise his characters wouldn't have left the impact that they already have. I mean, putting it simply, while yes, the Addams family could be considered a work of horror, there is this odd sense of happiness and laughter that stems from seeing such a functional family interact with each other in their own unique ways, I mean, it's even in their theme song, "They're creepy and they're kooky, Mysterious and spooky, They're altogether ooky, The Addams Family."
And in the article, "'Is Someone Going to Bake Me in a Pie?' The Eeriness of Mother Goose" you can see the eeriness of his art style bringing to life many common children's nursery rhymes, which is rather odd considering that one might not associate a cartoonist with such a well-known fascination for the gruesome to also be in touch with the innocent mind of a child, but then again, he does. In his drawings there is the simplicity of illustrating almost word for word what happens in each rhyme, the way in which a child might visualize these tales in their mind, put down on paper. And while some might still be apprehensive to believe that one could mix Addams and nursery rhymes, take this into consideration; Wednesday, objectively the most popular character to come out of the Addams Family, has a name that was actually inspired by a children's nursery rhyme, "Wednesday's child is full of woe."
The New Zebedee books are going right on my books-to-read list (at least, the first one is). From the example given at the beginning of the first article, I was hooked by the imagery that John Belliar used. “There’s a particular kind of nostalgia that smells like burning autumn leaves on an overcast day. It sounds like a static-filled radio station playing Brylcreem advertisements in the other room. It feels like a scratchy wool blanket. It looks like a wood-paneled library stuffed with leather-bound books”. I absolutely love that stuff. And then, I learn that there are poker-playing wizards and occult style mysteries. I don’t know if you’ve noticed from them everything about me, but I absolutely love magic. I am disappointed, however, that the story seems to go down hill after the first book.
I did not know that an alphabet book was before this assignment, and now that I do, I feel stupid for not understanding the obvious. I did not know that you could write a book like that and make it sound so macabre. It was like if Edgar Allan Poe decided to teach kindergartners, but was too used to doing horror stuff and made his lesson not suitable for the children in his class.
Gorey’s art style is really interesting. There is a lot of attention to detail, which gives a strange sense of texture to his illustrations. In addition, the vibe of the images compliments Belliar’s writing style.
It’s interesting, if not unexpected, to see that Charles Addams, the creator of the Addams Family, was (allegedly) just as strange as the characters that sprang from his mind. It’s said that his sense of humor was similar to Uncle Fester, and had a personality that caused people to think he should be in a straitjacket. In essence, he would have fit in well with the creepy and kooky Addams Family, especially since his last name is also Addams. Also, that does it mean to slow someone up?
I didn’t expect Charles Addams to turn Mother Goose into Grimm’s Fairy Tails, but all things considered, it makes sense. I can just imaging Morticia reading these stories to Wednesday and Pugsley.
I like how Grady Hendrix begins his article with these very interesting and immersive metaphors to describe nostalgia, my favorite was “scratchy wool-blanket.” Also, Grady Hemdrix saying that only the first one really captured that “lightning in a bottle”of the New Zebedee books in his opinion, kind of reminds me of how people say the original book is most of the time better than its sequels. I have similar sentiments about movies like Scream and Halloween in how although some of the sequels in those series came out pretty good (and some not so much), they were never able to capture that same magic that the original did. But some sequels in my book absolutely matched the quality of the original such as The Godfather 1 and 2, and Terminator 1 and 2 to the point where I’m not sure which movie I liked better than the other. I also really liked how Grady Hendrix’s method of describing The House with a Clock in Its Walls. He not only gave a plot synopsis of the events of the novel, but also gave detailed scenes and descriptions of the magic system. Some descriptions that stuck out to me were the description of the Fuse Box Dwarf that has a button on it that causes a lunar eclipse, how the main character Lewis Barnavelt and his best friend Mrs. Zimmerman would play card games and call each-other funny names like “brush mug” and “hag face”, and I liked the detail where Lewis, in an attempt to impress his only friend in school Tarby, raises Izzard’s wife back from the dead. Finally, I appreciated how Grady Hendrix highlights the importance of illustrations especially in MG books. I remembered back when I was in elementary school and I would always look for the books in my home room classes with the most intriguing illustrations. I think one of the few books that I really enjoyed back then that didn’t really have any illustrations was the Magic Tree House books.
I really enjoy Gorey's work and I actually knew about him previously. Me and my family went to his house in Massachusetts when I was really young. I almost bought the alphabet book that was mentioned in the readings. I think as a writer and artist he was very talented. His art really worked because it turned macabre themes into something more approachable and even fun. This could probably be attributed to his really distinct style. It's carefully made to creep out the viewer but not be too distressing. The black and white cartoony images have a perfect balance of reality and artistic depiction. For the Gashlycrumb Times this is really important because he needs to balance themes of death with the alphabet. Each image gives enough suggestion of the broader themes while also being tasteful. Still he is consistent with his style even if he has to make so many different scenes.
I really enjoy Gorey's work and I actually knew about him previously. Me and my family went to his house in Massachusetts when I was young. I almost bought the alphabet book that was mentioned in the readings. I think as a writer and artist he was very talented. His art worked because it turned macabre themes into something more approachable. This could probably be attributed to his distinct style. It's carefully made to creep out the viewer but not be too distressing. The black and white cartoony images have a perfect balance of reality and artistic depiction. For the Gashlycrumb Times this is important because he needs to balance themes of death with the alphabet. Each image gives enough suggestion of the broader themes while also being tasteful. Still he is consistent with his style even if he has to make so many different scenes.
When I visited his house the decor was very much like his work. His characters were all over the place in cardboard cutouts. The house itself was simple but the addition of these cutouts made it jump to life. At the same time though they did the opposite, they gave a feeling of unease. Blame it on the blank eyes or how dead they looked. Still, this is an achievement because there was no feeling of monotony. It really makes me wonder how someone could balance style and innovation.
Hapless child shows how his style can elevate even a simple story of tragedy. If we just read the text below each image there really is not much going on. It's his depiction of the plot that makes the story sadder. The second image on page 8 was made with so much care. The shadows that Charlotte Sophia hides in helps feed into the feeling of isolation she is going through. Gorey, whether he knew it or not, used his monochrome art style to great effect here with the shadow to make it stand out. In other scenes, we see Charlotte in other forms of isolation whether it's under a hat (page 6) or with her dying mother (page 5).
Bottom line, I like Gorey because of his art style and how he uses it. It makes me want to develop a style that I could also use masterfully. Style is an asset for any art piece and for the artist themselves.
Bellairs’s books were interestingly turned into YA after he was advised to make his originally adult fiction more middle grade by an editor. I really liked the plot of THe House with a Clock in Its Walls, it has a kind of weirdness to it that at some point, you have to kind of leave your sense of reality behind, and just completely go in. Especially with things like Lewis never mentioning his parents again, etc. What I found that was unexpected is that Lewis doesn’t really have an overarching plot where he gets to triumph over the odds. Also when the writer of the article mentioned one drawback of the later stories- the writing feeling too condescending”- this made me think about how middle grade fiction should be, and what exactly are the differences? Obviously the content can vary, but the specific way in which you deliver the story( the writing style)- what exactly would change?
It’s very cool that Gorey is an illustrator AND an author, and I think that him being able to do both of that helps him do them better. He has a better idea about what kind of images created give what kind of feeling. I noticed the kind of blank and soulless kind of expressions in his characters, which gave a very different tone than what a scared or terrified expression would have given. I thought the expressions in The Hapless Child were absolutely terrifying.
Also, his last name -
Gorey ~ Gory?
First of all, I wanted to mention that I really enjoyed reading something short like The Hapless Child by Edward Gorey. It was refreshing considering how different it is from other writings I have read for school. Coming from someone who not only admires but enjoys creating art myself, I appreciated his illustrations of his story. If you look closely, you can see that in every drawing, there is a devil lurking, making itself hidden from its audience. Once I noticed it, I enjoyed seeking that devilish creature out in the rest of the illustrations. coupling the writing with pictures really enhances this story. It’s almost like the pictures came first and the story was written around them. I feel like the drawings carry the story and I’m not sure how interesting the story would be without them. The black and white style of it all adds a spooky element and I can see just how these stories can be very popular among the YA audiences.
“ There’s a particular kind of nostalgia that smells like burning autumn leaves on an overcast day. It sounds like a static-filled radio station playing Brylcreem advertisements in the other room. It feels like a scratchy wool blanket. It looks like a wood-paneled library stuffed with leather-bound books.”
Bellair’s writing, partnered with Gorey’s illustrations is described by the paragraph above. These two powerhouses are creating literary magic together if readers are able to pinpoint exactly how Bellair’s writing makes them feel. I know it’s mentioned that some of his later books fell off but I think it’s notable that Bellair is creating work that is so unique to him it’s hard to even compare him to anyone else.
When I was reading this article I noticed a lot of elements in his work that are the same techniques we are learning in class. He finds way to grip the readers and take them to a world unlike any other. For example, the town of New Zebedee is where the story takes place in his first book. The name of this town is weird and intriguing. Already, I am drawn to want to know more about this town that already feels mysterious and maybe a little dark. In class we are encouraged to name people, places and things from personal experience and this town is actually based upon a real town in Michigan. Another technique is how Bellair comes up with these weird terms that only his characters speak like, “Hag Face” and “Brush Mug”. These terms are made up and give his writing its own personality thats makes readers so invested in his stories. These techniques are what professor tries to encourage us to use when we write in class.
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