Floating Worlds

Edward Gorey and Peter Neumeyer met in the summer of 1968. Gorey had been contracted by Addison-Wesley to illustrate a children's story written by Neumeyer. On their first encounter, Neumeyer managed to dislocate Gorey's shoulder when he grabbed his arm to keep him from falling into the ocean. In a hospital waiting room, they pored over Gorey's drawings for the first time together, and Gorey infused the situation with much hilarity. This was the beginning of an invigorating friendship, fueled by a wealth of letters and postcards that sped between the two men through the fall of 1969. Those letters, published here for the first time, are remarkable for their quantity and their content. The letters also paint an intimate portrait of Edward Gorey, a man often mischaracterised as macabre or even ghoulish. His gentleness, humility, and brilliance - interwoven with his distinctive humour - shine in each letter; his deft artistic hand is evident on the decorated envelopes addressed to Neumeyer. More than anything else, Floating Worlds is the moving memoir of an extraordinary friendship. Gorey wrote that he felt that they were "part of the same family, and I don't mean just metaphorically. I guess that even more than I think of you as a friend, I think of you as my brother." Neumeyer stated, "Your letters . . . your existence has made something of this world that [it] hadn't the possibility of before."