Word: victorian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...bell-pulls, and his diction matches the furniture-- his characters say things like "Mercy!" and "Drat!." Gorey's nonsense verse is the direct descendant of Edward Lear's and Lewis Carroll's, and, as it would be impossible to transplant Lear or Carroll to another era, Gorey inherits their Victorian world along with their spirit...
Gorey's taste for deadpan absurdity is sharpened by what he has called his "unreasonable interest in surrealism and Dada." He is a great fan of surrealist Max Ernst, and, just as Ernst rearranged 19th-century engravings into his own fantastic collages, Gorey recombines the elements of forgotten Victorian novels, reshuffling the set pieces and stock characters after his fancy. One of my favorites, The Object-Lesson, is constructed along these lines, piling delicious non sequitur on delicious non sequitur, like this: "It was already Thursday, but his lordship's artificial limb could not be found; therefore, having directed...
...hope so. Any art form is going to be a dying art form if experimentation doesn't continue. Some of the devices I've used are actually not new but they had been forgotten. For example, the technique of dialogue, of a dialogue chapter, is a Victorian form where two erudite men, say, would have a long conversation that would be written out in chapter form. There's a dialogue that Oscar Wilde wrote, for example, which discusses socialism. But the discussion is conveniently couched as two very articulate men talking. And it's a fascinating form which has fallen...
...This departure from the usual techniques of biography is hardly the last, as one discovers throughout the book. Morris revives an old Victorian form with a dialogue chapter, frequently lapses into screenplay scripts, letters, diary entries, speeches, interviews, scrapbook pages and author's notes. This varied format lends a vibrant immediacy to Reagan's life, one which would be hard to recreate within the confines of traditional biography. Morris, who thinks in terms of music, has infused the text with references to music--from "The Old Rugged Cross," Reagan's favorite hymn, to Liszt's Faust Symphony...
...WHAT TO LOOK FOR: "The only funny Victorian play ever written." That's how Fred Hood describes this work. A native of Great Britain, the director says his upbringing should improve his interpretation of the cultural manner so key to Wilde's masterpiece. Importance will be "a very classic production of a classic play," says Hood...