The Edward Gorey Cocktail Party; or, A Nocturne at The Strand by Russell Lehrer

The Edward Gorey Cocktail Party; or, A Nocturne at The Strand by Russell Lehrer

Russell Lehrer curated an assortment of his Edward Gorey collection to exhibit at the Edward Gorey cocktail on August 9th, 2023, hosted by The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust at the iconic New York City-based bookstore, the Strand. The following article presents a version of Mr. Lehrer’s opening speech for the cocktail, narrating the story of how he became a collector and enthusiast of Edward Gorey’s work.

I grew up in central New Jersey, and when I was 14, not knowing anything about Edward Gorey, I saved not one by three copies of the program from McCarter Theatre’s production of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, and insisted my mom buy me the sweatshirt with the Gorey logo.  I still have them.  By the time I went to Carnegie Mellon, I knew who Gorey was, and even worked at the drama department’s box office, sitting daily beneath his poster for THE MIKADO.  I found some old programs for THE MIKADO in a storeroom and was told I could take them.  I moved to New York in 1993, working in Times Square.   I would go to Gotham Book Mart at least once a week on my lunch break, and Gina or Kevin or Flip would take me upstairs, turning the lights on to commune with whatever exhibition was currently set up.  

I couldn’t afford anything Gotham was selling upstairs, but this was the golden age of the booksellers around Washington Square Park, so I got good at scanning spines quickly to find Anchor paperbacks.  I spent entire days at Gallagher’s on 12^th Street – right down the street from The Strand — flipping through copies of the Atlantic or Playboy or the New Yorker looking for ads and illustrated articles.  And whenever I found something, I brought it to Gina or Kevin or Flip to show them, my way of thanking them for fanning my love for Gorey’s art.

Gina was the first person to tell me I was starting to collect ephemera, and she would duck into the back room to sell me anything fun and within my budget: stuffed figbashes before they came with the hand-signed note attached, sure, but also sealed memo pads from NY City Ballet in the original marbleized paper bag or something that had just come from The Cape entertainments — all the things that Andreas made certain were signed and available to those of us who couldn’t get to The Cape.

Original art came my way only much later, but the thing I love about collecting Gorey is he gives us permission to find our own niche at any level, explicit and implied permission in his works and in his life.

The more I collected ephemera, the more I resembled Mr. Crague in THE REMEMBERED VISIT, wanting nothing more than to share my scraps of paper with Drusilla or Gina or Kevin or Flip.  Other collectors go the route of The Edwardian Ball in San Francisco or get tattoos.  But didn’t Gorey himself lay that groundwork when he reinvented himself at Harvard, emerging bedecked in furs and chunky rings?  Are we allowed to place ourselves at the heart of what we take from Gorey’s enigmatic work?  Gorey says yes, absolutely!  He gave us a guide to doing just that in THE LAVENDER LEOTARD, a dramaturg’s dream of placing the audience, not the artists, at the center of interpreting an artist’s body of work.

If you have TV Guides next to original art in your collection like me, Gorey gets that, esteeming MURDER, SHE WROTE and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER right beside esoteric French silent movies.  A recluse he might have been, but Gorey insisted on the viewer’s collaboration in his work, never more so than in works like THE HELPLESS DOORKNOB, MELANGE FUNESTE or THE DRIPPING FAUCET.  But also every time he focused his eye just before, just after or just to the side of the action he’s describing in his prose, efficient as a surgeon’s scalpel.  

Edward Gorey made us all co-conspirators of his work, and on nights like the Edward Gorey Cocktail, we gathered like suspects on the Orient Express.  We have Gorey to thank for that.