New Book 'Memento Gorey' Chronicles Edward Gorey's Final Interviews

Memento Gorey: The Last Interviews with Edward Gorey, a new illustrated volume by Christopher Seufert, has been published by Schiffer Publishing. The 224-page hardcover collects 17 previously unpublished interviews, including five conducted with Edward Gorey himself, and features more than 250 previously unpublished photographs, offering rare primary material that illuminates Gorey's life, creative process, and relationships with contemporary writers and artists. The book includes a foreword by prolific American novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux, also an Edward Gorey friend.

Purchase the book here.

When filmmaker and photographer Christopher Seufert first stepped into Edward Gorey's rambling Yarmouth Port home in the late 1990s, he expected eccentricity. He did not expect intimacy. 'I thought I was coming to film a legend,' Seufert says. 'Instead, I found a man who was funny, shy, and endlessly curious - someone who wanted to talk about everything except himself.'

The interviews in Memento Gorey are drawn from Seufert's work on a feature length documentary shot with Edward Gorey's involvement and encouragement from 1996 to 2000, the year of Gorey's untimely passing at his home on Cape Cod. That film, 30 years in the making, is slated for release in the coming year. 'Originally the film was going to be completely driven by Gorey's interviews, however we decided to take on the further production of interviews with, not only friends and family, but significant artists who were inspired by his work.'

That list of artists included perspectives and recollections from Neil Gaiman, Lemony Snicket, Terry Gilliam, Danny Elfman, Julie Harris, and more. 'Once Edward passed,' recounts Seufert, 'even though we had many hours of footage we still had significant production to accomplish, traveling the world to track down those additional interviews featured in this book.' Seufert creates an intimate visual documentation that will interest Gorey's readers in the humorously macabre sensibility that defines Gorey's legacy and also those who've yet to encounter his work, which includes the opening animation to the Mystery! Series on WGBH and a Tony Award for his costumes and sets on the 1978 Broadway production of Dracula. The combination of this rare trove of unpublished interviews along with the intimate photographs makes the book a strong candidate for those looking for an intimate look at the person behind the artwork.

'I thought I had more time,' says Seufert. 'There's so much more I'd personally want to know. I mentioned to estate executor Andreas Brown that Edward seemed to me, from an anthropological perspective, the last of a long lost race. He said, 'Have you considered that it's the reverse, rather he was the first of a new race, or generation of artists?' It's with those ideas in mind that I push this out to the world after this long with enough of the raw information for people to hopefully make up their own minds.'

Twenty six years after Gorey's passing, Memento Gorey's transcripts and photos, which document Gorey's house and possessions, even including the contents of his refrigerator, is a new piece in the Edward Gorey puzzle.

It may offer the most personal portrait yet of the famously enigmatic illustrator. 'I didn't set out to write a biography,' Seufert explains. 'I set out to preserve the experience of being in a room with Edward. The book is really about that - the atmosphere, the humor, the oddness, the warmth.'

About the Author

Christopher Seufert is a filmmaker and documentarian who worked closely with Edward Gorey in his final years, producing the only documentary shot with and approved by Gorey. He has worked on film projects with Walter Cronkite, Albert Maysles. He lives with his children on the beach in Chatham, Cape Cod.

Review copies; high-resolution images; author interview availability; press sheet available at www.ChristopherSeufert.com.

Publisher note: Additional permissions and image assets are available through Schiffer Publishing's publicity department upon request.

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