Scrap Irony by Edward Gorey is a distilled essence of the artist’s singular vision—a cryptic almanac of existential dread and deadpan humor, where each page feels like a torn fragment from some larger, more ominous narrative left deliberately untold. Presented as a series of stark pen-and-ink drawings paired with terse, gnomic captions, the book unfolds as a parade of Gorey’s signature obsessions: Victorian-clad figures frozen in mid-gesture, objects imbued with sinister significance (a single abandoned shoe, a noose coiled like a sleeping snake), and landscapes where the weather itself seems complicit in some unspoken tragedy.

The title, a punning masterstroke, hints at the work’s dual nature: these are both “scraps” of imagery and text, discarded as if from a greater work, and moments of “scrap”-like tension—tiny confrontations with the absurd. A typical plate might show a woman in a cloche hat staring at a teacup, the caption reading simply, “The day the clocks ran backward,” leaving the reader to unravel whether this is a metaphor, a supernatural event, or merely another of Gorey’s dry jokes at the universe’s expense. The irony lies in the gap between the meticulous beauty of the crosshatched illustrations and the unsettling void where meaning ought to be.

Gorey’s genius here is in his restraint. Unlike his narrative works (The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Doubtful Guest), Scrap Irony refuses to resolve into story, instead offering glimpses of worlds where logic has quietly unraveled. It’s a sketchbook of the uncanny, where every image feels like the middle of a sentence spoken in a language just beyond comprehension. The cumulative effect is less a book than a séance—one where the spirits summoned are equal parts whimsy and despair.

“Gorey’s scraps are more complete than most artists’ masterpieces—they contain all the missing pieces we’re too afraid to imagine.” — The New Yorker