Have you heard about our Bike into Spring event taking place at the Dufferin Clark library? It’s taking place Saturday April 29th,  which is in just over a week, so mark your calendars! Bring your bike and helmet for a bicycle-filled day of games, DIY workshops, stories, an obstacle course, and a whole lot more! The event starts at 1pm and ends at 4pm, and there are going to be lots of community participants there, including the York Region Cycling Coalition, Pedalheads, velofix Mobile Bike Shop, and more from the City of Vaughan & York Region.

Now, if your biking style is anything like Embley and Yewbert from The Epiplectic Bicycle, I don’t know whether to be envious of or worried for you. If we were looking at it as a regular story, I’d say that the two aforementioned are the two protagonists, but this is no regular book, so arguably, there are actually three protagonists – Embley, Yewbert, and the Epiplectic Bicycle – and the former two go on a trip using the latter, around… I’m not really sure around where, to be honest. Just around. (One might even say it’s not that the two take the third for a ride, so much as the bicycle takes Embley and Yewbert for a spin.) They go here and there, and (as Victoria pointed out to me) they explore so many things outside of the scope of this book that Gorey cuts out entire sections of their journey altogether, as you can see by the skipped chapters throughout. They even meet an alligator, who – on second thought, I won’t spoil it for you. The only way you can find out is if you take your bike around to try to meet that same alligator, or if you go and read The Epiplectic Bicycle!

I confess that I most definitely picked this up because of the cover: the illustrations by Edward Gorey are sublime. I did a bit of intaglio in school, and these crosshatched black-and-white illustrations are just so incredibly reminiscent of etchings: the clean lines, the crosshatching – the everything. And despite having read it, I still haven’t any inkling as to whether there might be any hidden meaning to the plot*; is this really nonsense verse? Or should I read something into the giant crow or raven? Should I link them to the obelisk? And how about Embley and Yewbert’s collapse from exhaustion? This isn’t even close to an exhaustive list of all the things that maybe could have meant something more than they do… like what’s with those 14 yellow boots? Why 14? Why are they yellow? More importantly, why are they there? Of course, this is all part of the book’s charms, so my griping is most definitely of the sort that just shows I’ve fallen head over heels for Gorey.

Edward Gorey can be found in our catalogue, although it looks like this is the only book we have written & illustrated by Gorey himself. The other things related to him are other books he has illustrated for, rather than authored, such as T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, or The Jumblies by Edward Lear. We also have a book about Gorey, featuring a collection of his illustrations: Elegant Enigmas. If you enjoy Gorey’s verse, I would recommend Edward Lear, for whose The Jumblies Gorey illustrated, who seems to write in like form (nonsense, that is). And if you’re just a plain ol’ Gorey fan, there’s an Edward Gorey House. No joke.

*Sorry. I actually meant the surface meaning as well. I don’t need a hidden meaning so much as just WHAT’S GOING ON? Although if anyone could tell me what it means as well, that’d be pretty great.