Wes Anderson Is Under Edward Gorey’s Spell
As a smelly little boarding-school boy, I could have done with some Edward Gorey. His lunar campness, his toys-in-the-attic surrealism, his easy way with cruelty, and his remote compassion, coldly and distantly flaming—all of this would have nourished and amplified my child-mind. His tiny, twisted books would have helped my development. But I grew up in England, where—despite his rarefied Anglophilia and profound relation to English literary tradition—no one knows about Edward Gorey. So I pickled myself in Edward Lear and then, later, a more modern master of English nonsense: Morrissey, from the indie-rock legends the Smiths. As Rose collects the money in a canister / Who comes sliding down the banister / The vicar in a tutu / He’s not strange / He just. (What’s that, if not a Gorey drawing set to music?)
