Charles Addams

My long holiday-written story still isn't out of the editing down stage so instead let's think about something else entirely, or rather someone else. In the annals of sketchdom there are many unique artists who found their niche in sketches for periodicals like 'The New Yorker', which seems like a publications that the interesting people could get published in then. For the record, a lot of Woody Allen's prose appeared in 'The New Yorker', and it is hilarious. Buy it if you can, if only for 'What if the impressionists were dentists?', but I do digress.

Charles Addams developed the masterwork of his the life, 'The Addams Family' over a number of years, various different characters appearing separately in macabre or mocking settings until finally being united as a unit quite late in the game. It's interesting to note that it all started with Morticia, the icon of the set, and then flowed from her. Oh, Morticia, speak French some more! Ahem, to get back to it, on many levels Charles Addams was just as impassioned about the eventual Morticia image as many of the fans of the sketches and television show seemed to be. From Morticia and her butler Lurch his opus and range of work would become concentrated around that Addams 'family' and nothing would ever be the same again.

Addams had a gift for inversion and satire, while still maintaining an absurd reality. Or perhaps his gift was for gothic slyness, but that doesn't exactly capture the essence either. The curious thing about the sketches (of those I've seen), is that this oddball and strange family seems to function. They might all be sadistic or twisted in strange ways but they do all get along. The television show made this even more blatant in its loose adaptation of the characters, amusingly making it the least dysfunctional family on television at the time and perhaps in history to date. Gomez and Morticia were the most loving and affectionate married couple to be found anywhere!

Darn, stalled again. Excuse me while I crib from 'The Addams Family: An Evilution' for a moment...

Some day, once fully exposed to the works, the man himself will become clearer. Apparently he was criticised for not being fond of children but youths feature heavily in the Addams family in positive roles. I can not claim to even barely have researched the man, but the most important facet is clear: He was funny. As someone who doesn't react well to humorous sketches in general this is almost revolutionary. It's not just a long sequence of Morticia adoration but actually a fondness for the humour on display, and the intelligence underlying it. The man becomes clearer through his works than he ever will in his death, evidently being clever, funny and individual. In the contemporary morass of muddied identities, the discovery of an individual and distinct talent it always to be appreciated. When next I make money, the books will roll in. The television show sits quite close to me, however, an adorable monument in itself but one that runs parallel to the source material. It is so close though...

O.