Whether he identified as LGBT+ or asexual is a fierce debate between those who consider him a workaholic more interested in cats, and others, like Fun Home author Alison Bechdel, who revere his work’s iconic queerness, regardless of his personal preference. Gorey famously rejected classification: a gothic writer who wasn’t goth, a children’s author who didn’t write for children, a graphic novel genre founder who insisted he wrote “Victorian novels all scrunched up”. Past examples include author James Baldwin, astronaut Sally Ride, and this year, the Native and African American sculptor Edmonia Lewis.ĭery said: “To my mind, what made him inimical to becoming a mass phenomenon … and taking his place in the pantheon of US culture … is his profound queerness.” Last month they organised a letter-writing campaign to the US Postal Service, with Gorey now reaching “committee stage” for consideration as a celebrity stamp. The Edward Gorey House, a museum opened in his 200-year-old house in Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, after he died in 2000 aged 75, hopes to change that. “The people making culture are influenced by Gorey but … the ordinary folks who dine on a steady diet of Hollywood blockbusters and Marvel franchises might not be aware that they know Gorey without knowing him.” Looking through the Tunnel Calamity by Edward Gorey Photograph: filt3rtips/Stockimo/Alamy
