Critics never quite knew what to make of E dward \;Gorey (1925-2000)\, author\, artist&mdash\;and\, from 1934-&rs quo\;37\, a resident of Wilmette\, where his eighth-grade classmate was Ch arlton Heston.
\n\;Gorey&rsquo\;s darkly droll tales of murder\ , mayhem\, and discreet depravity\, illustrated with densely crosshatched pen-and-ink drawings that evoke Victorian engravings and Surrealist collag es\, have influenced Tim Burton\, Lemony Snicket\, Neil Gaiman\, and Guill ermo Del Toro\, among others. Crossing camp-macabre wit with unsettling su bject matter\, Gorey&rsquo\;s little books are arsenic-laced bonbons: The Loathsome Couple \;was inspired by the true-crime exploits of a pair o f child-killers\; The Gashlycrumb Tinies \;is an ABC book that reels o ff the deaths of 26 little dears in rhyming couplets.
\n\;In th is illustrated \;lecture\, Mark Dery\, author of \;Born to Be Post humous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey \; re veals the surprisingly serious themes woven through Gorey&rsquo\;s \;g othic nonsense: death\, sexuality\, the human condition\, the meaning (or meaninglessness?) of life. As well\, he \;explores \;the obscure i nfluences&mdash\;and Freudian shadows&mdash\;haunting Gorey&rsquo\;s whims ically sinister body of work. \;
\nhttps://wilmette.libnet.info/eve nt/6141725 URL;VALUE=URI:https://wilmette.libnet.info/event/6141725 ATTACH:https://static.libnet.info/images/events/wilmette/gorey_block_01-01 .jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR