[Edward Gorey, “The Stones.” 4 3/4″ × 2 1/2″. A card from The Fantod Pack (Portland, OR: Pomegranate, 2007). Border added.]
Re: fantod : George Bodmer mentioned Edward Gorey’s Fantod Press and Fantod Pack. Which made me remember that I have the pack, or at least the 2007 reproduction of the 1995 Gotham Book Mart publication. The Fantod Pack consists of twenty cards and a tiny book explaining the use of the deck and the meanings attached to each card, as “interpreted by Madame Groeda Weyrd.” For “The Stones”: March, loss of teeth, a forged letter, paralysis, false arrest, falling sickness, evil communications, estrangement, a sudden affliction, anemia, strife, distasteful duty, and misconstruction.
Photographing this card was difficult: the card is slightly warped and printed off-center; its surface is glossy. The photographer’s equipment and ability are sharply limited. What matters, as my mom and dad would point out, is that I did the best I could. I picked this card from the deck for obvious reasons.
Thanks, George, for thinking of the Gorey connection.
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Department of Wow!: George Bodmer appears in Mark Dery’s recent biography of Gorey, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey (New York: Little, Brown, 2018). He’s on page 202, commenting on Gorey’s alphabet books.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Some Gorey rocks
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comments: 3
Leave it to Gorey to depict his “some rocks” not as the pleasant ovoid rocks of the comic strips, but these vaguely ominous monoliths. I bought my daughter the Fantod Pack a few years ago, but have apparently failed my fatherly duty to pass along my love of Gorey, and during a tidying purge she tossed the pack into our Goodwill box. I rescued it, and kept it for myself.
Pete, my stupid finger deleted your comment when I thought I was clicking on the post title to leave a comment back. Yes, these are far from Bushmiller’s friendly rocks. Good save on the Fantod Pack.
I just discovered that my stupid finger didn’t delete your comment — it marked it as spam after it was published. Using Blogger on an iPhone can be risky business.
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