Gorgeous Ghouls

AMPHIGOREY ALSO by Edward Gorey. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $29.95.) Quoth the flap copy: “Herewith a companion volume to ‘Amphigorey Too.’ The subjects dealt with--of which the variety is stupefying--range from Aspic to Zoo.” And on the back flap: “Edward Gorey does not care for flap copy.” The eye insists on reading everything Gorey scribbles, down to the Canadian price printed on the jacket, because he has masterminded a dark conspiracy between the eye, the imagination, the language, history, horror, dementia and curiosity. They all do his bidding. This is a collection of 17 series, from “The Utter Zoo” (“The Kwongdzu has enormous claws; its character is full of flaws.”) to “The Blue Aspic,” the story of a clerk, Jasper, who is obsessed with a diva (pictured above) and “The Broken Spoke,” which includes a drawing of “Innocence, on the Bicycle of Propriety, carrying the Urn of Reputation safely over the Abyss of Indiscretion.”