The Object-Lesson

This book is great Edward Gorey fun. Each page contains one intriguing sentence that is completely unrelated to the sentence on the last page, but the implication is that the author is telling one coherent story. The pictures are hilarious, the vocabulary stimulating, and the situations entertainingly bizarre.

The pictures alone make this book worth getting. If the story had been better, I would have given this book a five. As it is though, the story felt like each page was written separately, to be collected together in the end. Perhaps I need someone to explain the story to me, but it seems like many of the pages are only related to one another if you're in the habit of disengaging your brain from reality.

Edward Gorey, most easily recognizable for the opening animation of the television show "Mystery!", wrote dozens of strangely comic picture-books that were not intended for children. The Object-Lesson shines among them. The first sentence, divided amongst six elaborately crosshatched panoramic ink drawings, initiates what is only the first of several surreal and non-sequiturial narratives and gives readers the sense that an elaborate story of some sort is unfolding and they are mearly seeing brief snippets. Having just read the book, I'd say the effect is of looking out from inside a novel: a story is happening, but the large passages of narration that connect the individual events of "The Object-Lesson" into a single story are as unavailable to the reader as they are to the characters. It's mysterious, it's exciting, it's lots and lots of fun. I reccomend buying this and leaving it anywhere in your home where people will be waiting for the maybe-five minutes it takes to finish the book, as the wierdness of it all will make their day that much more fun.

This nifty book defies summarization. Traipsing along through 30 pages of illustrations and text, the story draws the reader along a whimsically surreal story, where each event leads inexorably to the next completely unconnected event! The illustrations are black-and-white, stark like the text, reminding one of the whimsical images that featured at the beginning of PBS's mystery show. This book is not to be taken too seriously, but is also not to be missed; it is an enchanting book.This nifty book defies summarization. Traipsing along through 30 pages of illustrations and text, the story draws the reader along a whimsically surreal story, where each event leads inexorably to the next completely unconnected event! The illustrations are black-and-white, stark like the text, reminding one of the whimsical images that featured at the beginning of PBS's mystery show. This book is not to be taken too seriously, but is also not to be missed; it is an enchanting book.