What has made Good Night, Gorilla a classic (and earned it a special reissue, which includes the author’s testimony) is its timeless wit, its handling of a virtually mute humor, wisely timed in rhythm and in a perfect playful seriousness (an attribute of great comedians), which triggers a joyful laughter. It plays with movement, with silence, with light… It plays with the absurd and with a playful suspense that heightens the joke in its double ending.
Its plot is simple and exploits the universal possibilities of repetition: a mischievous gorilla steals the zookeeper’s keys and frees his companions (an elephant, a lion, a hyena, a giraffe, an armadillo…) who follow him to his home, where they wish to spend the night as children long to sneak into their parents’ bed.
The album’s cover presents the subject in a concise and collaborative exercise that is constant throughout the book. Rathmann designs with wisdom the pages’ discourse: the creation of a visual chant, sustained by the dynamic construction of the figures (a perfect mime of the “slow chase”), the “dialogues of glances” and subplots (the little mouse’s caper, which includes a joke about the joke). The two-page spreads pace themselves perfectly with the horizontal sense of the march and the shifts in perspective constructively shape the nocturnal landscape. The retro style guarantees a certain air of timelessness, suited to a form of universal and enduring laughter. It is the cheerful laughter, the child’s laughter—a laughter to share at night, between silence and the contained chuckle, at the foot of the bed.
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Author: Peggy Rathmann. Title: Good Night, Gorilla. Publisher: Ekaré. For sale at: All Your Books.