Editing Edward Gorey (section)

== Personal life ==
{{Tone|section|date=July 2021}}
Gorey was noted for his love of the [[New York City Ballet]]. He attended every performance and some rehearsals for 25 years.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Harvey|first=Robert|date=6 October 2021|title="Gorey, Edward (1925-2000), author and artist."|url=https://www.anb.org/search?q=Edward+gorey&searchBtn=Search&isQuickSearch=true|journal=American National Biography|via=American National Biography Online}}</ref>

Critic David Ehrenstein, writing in ''Gay City News'', asserts that Gorey was discreet about his sexuality in the "Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell era" of the 1950s. "Stonewall changed all that—making gay a discussable mainstream topic," writes Ehrenstein. "But it didn't change things for Gorey. To those in the know, his sensibility was clearly gay, but his sexual life was as covert as his self was overt."<ref>{{cite web |date=19 August 2019 |title=Edward Gorey's Discreet "Something" |url=https://www.gaycitynews.com/edward-goreys-discreet-something/}}</ref> By contrast, the critic Gabrielle Bellot argues that Gorey, "when pressed by interviewers about his sexuality ... declined to give clear answers, except during a 1980 conversation with Lisa Solod, wherein he claimed to be asexual—making Gorey one of few openly asexual writers even today."<ref>{{cite web |date=28 December 2018 |title=Edward Gorey and the Power of the Ineffable |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/12/edward-gorey-surrealism-power-of-the-ineffable/579028// |website=[[The Atlantic]]}}</ref> (Gorey himself did not use the term asexual in the Solod interview.)

[[Alexander Theroux]] states that when Gorey was pressed on the matter of his [[sexual orientation]] by "a rude ''Boston Globe'' reporter," he replied, "I don't even know." Theroux is referring to Lisa Solod's September 1980 ''Boston'' magazine interview with Gorey ("Edward Gorey: The Cape's master teller of macabre tales discusses death, decadence, and homosexuality"). Gorey's exact words were rather: "Well, I'm neither one thing nor the other particularly. I suppose I'm gay. But I don't really identify with it much. I am fortunate in that I am apparently reasonably undersexed or something. I do not spend my life picking up people on the streets. I was always reluctant to go to the movies with one of my friends because I always expected the police to come and haul him out of the loo at one point or the other. I know people who lead really ''outrageous'' lives. I've never said I was gay, and I've never said I wasn't. A lot of people would say that I wasn't because I never do anything about it." Shortly thereafter, he says, "What I'm trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else."<ref>{{cite book |last=Dery |first=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WzlTDwAAQBAJ&dq=Edward+Gorey+born+to+be+posthumous+%22I+suppose+I%27m+gay%22&pg=PT463 |title=Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey |date=November 6, 2018 |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |isbn=978-0-316-18854-8 |page=410}}</ref>

Gorey's remark "I suppose I'm gay" from the Solod interview was omitted when the interview appeared in ''Ascending Peculiarity'',<ref name="Gorey 2002">{{Citation|first=Edward|last=Gorey|year=2002|title=Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey|publisher=Harvest Books|isbn=978-0-15-601291-1}}</ref> a collection of interviews with Gorey edited by the art critic [[Karen Wilkin]].

From 1995 to his death in April 2000, Gorey was the subject of a ''[[cinéma vérité]]''–style documentary directed by [[Christopher Seufert]]. (As of 2024 the finished film and accompanying book are in [[post-production]].) He was once interviewed on ''Tribute to Edward Gorey,'' a community, [[public-access television]] cable show produced by artist and friend Joyce Kenney. Gorey served as a volunteer camera-person and master control operator at that same public access station, where he designed community bulletin graphics. His house, in Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, is the subject of a photography book entitled ''Elephant House: Or, the Home of Edward Gorey,'' with photographs and text by Kevin McDermott. The house is now the [[Edward Gorey House|Edward Gorey House Museum]].<ref>McDermott, Kevin. ''Elephant House: Or, the Home of Edward Gorey''. Pomegranate Communications (2003). {{ISBN|0-7649-2495-8}} and {{ISBN|978-0-7649-2495-8}}</ref>

Gorey left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust benefiting cats and dogs, as well as other species, including bats and insects.<ref name="locus" />