I love Edward Gorey. Most of his works, I can figure out. I recently got my hands on The Curious Sofa. The ending confused the hell out of me! Did Alice die? What happened?!
Um. It's three o'clock in the morning where I am so I won't be able to get my hands on the book for some hours but... The first point is this book, like most of Gorey's work is a game. If you read ABOUT him, you will discover he was more reticent about his private life than Andy Warhol (and this was apparently less of a pose). The book can be described as about innuendo more than anything else, so, while one might possibly say, the sofa ATE everybody, the proper response to that would be how inappropriate. In other words, he was writing a book about his attitude towards discussing sexuality, and this was why it was called A pornographic work. He clearly thought it was a good thing to convince people the sofa ate everybody, but he wanted to leave a little mystery about it. EDIT: Checking it, of course, has proved more complex than -- it should have. I finally have, though. What I said was almost correct. Simply put, yes. He is alluding to the story of the Egyptian -- queen, I think it was -- who invited her enemies to a feast then then in the middle of the meal let in the Nile, or the story of Dracula who invited some poor citizens to a feast in a hut he sealed and burned the house down. I won't say Sir Edward murdered everyone for the reason I cited above: it's inappropriate. Gorey wanted the end of this book to be as ambiguous as possible.
