Pink: A Novel [Paperback]

Gus Van Sant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1998

Gus Van Sant goes from auteur to author in an brilliant, inventive, and endlessly entertaining first novel that reads like a Warholian mix of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins.

In the town of Sasquatch, Oregon, Spunky Davis, middle-aged maker of infomercials, is trying to find his next assignment, finish the screenplay that he hopes will bring him Hollywood glory, and deal with the death of his friend and favorite infomercial presenter, teen idol Felix Arroyo. Enter two young aspiring filmmakers, Jack and Matt, whom Spunky finds strangely familiar--especially as Jack bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Felix. But Jack and Matt are not what they appear to be; they are messengers from a dimension beyond time known as Pink, and they invite Spunky to join them on their voyage of transcendence and recovery.

Using a delirious array of voices signified by different typefaces, a flip cartoon that animates the novel's action, footnotes and line drawings, Gus Van Sant turns the novel into an explosively visual experience, a captivating combination of texture and text. As original and involving as any of Van Sant's films, Pink is both a hip, comic deconstruction of our image-obsessed culture and a genuinely tender story on the classic themes of love, time, and loss.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Filmmaker Van Sant's (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho) fictional debut is a tepid tale of a director of TV infomercials and his adventures with a pair of would-be film types, perhaps from another dimension, one of whom resembles his dead lover; they are all surrounded by other slackers in places like Las Vegas and Sasquatch, Oregon. Whatever its small merits, the novel is made harrowingly pretentious by Van Sant's noodling of the medium?he employs footnotes, different typefaces, flip drawings, and the like. (It's not so much Tristram Shandy as just a shanty.) However compelling one finds the author's images on film and video, in print they're pretty flat.?David Bartholomew,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Independent filmmaker Van Sant's first novel recalls his My Own Private Idaho's collagelike texture, its central male-male relationship, and, under the transparent pseudonym Felix Arroyo, its costar, the late River Phoenix. Dead from a drug-induced "misadventure in the gutter . . . in front of [a] nightclub" (sound familiar?) when the book begins, Felix starred in many of the "informmercials" made by 52-year-old still-aspiring director Spunky Davis. He was homosexual Spunky's obsession, too, and it isn't surprising that Spunky is now gaga over blond Jack, who greatly resembles Felix and who is inseparable from dark Matt (Phoenix was paired with Keanu Reeves in Idaho). As Spunky lives out his infatuation, he discovers that both young men are visitants from the Pink (the place referred to by the expression in the pink), where Felix is now permanently ensconced. Spunky tells most of what story there is, but other narrative continuums frequently interrupt him (two of these concern a dead rock star whose avatar Matt may be). Imagine a William S. Burroughs extravaganza without the grotesque sex, the drug taking, and the wild-and-woolly humor. That is Pink. How odd. Ray Olson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (November 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385493533
• ISBN-13: 978-0385493536
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,598,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An interesting experiment, but boring story, January 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Pink: A Novel (Paperback)

Though I appreciated and respect that Van Sant tried to create something different here, that alone was not enough. The central problem with the book is that the story line is far too weak. Some of my favorite authors also use a style that jumps around a bit and slowly pieces together a story (e.g., Vonnegut, Dunn, Robbins), yet Pink fails where these authors succeed. Initially, I found the book fun to read because of the varying style, fonts, perspectives, etc., yet quickly became bored with it as I searched in vain for an interesting story line that could be construed as gripping. Nothing of the sort presented itself. If an experimental and loose writing style alone does it for you, than this is a good book to read. If you desire content that will captivate you and sustain your interest, look elsewhere.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Stick to his movies, August 20, 2001

By 

David Robinson "Home Dad" (Bradford, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pink: A Novel (Paperback)

I'll admit it:

I bought this book because I liked the cover.

It has a matte finish, and I love books like that. It usually signals that there is something important inside. And with this being written by Director, Gus Van Sant, I thought that my suspicions might be confirmed. After all, the blurbs on the back described "Pink" as being like the works of Vonnegut. Enough said! Vonnegut is one of my heroes, and since I've read everything he's written, I figured an author *like* him would be suitable for the time being.

Oh, how misled I was!

"Pink" is a jumbled, nearly indecipherable mess of a novel. It is littered with characters about whom we give not a damn. There are scenes that take place in Orlando, FL, where I lived for a few years. It is apparent that Van Sant knows nothing about the area -- talking about highways, for example, that simply do not exist. How hard would it have been to take a look at a map? This is just one way that his lazy, thoughtless writing is evidenced. It makes "Pink" look suspiciously like a first draft -- written once, never to be checked for such details, or larger things, like, say, plot or character.

There are clever allusions to dead rock stars and dead actors, like that is supposed to somehow make the novel thought-provoking. "Hey, isn't that River Phoenix? And didn't Van Sant do a movie with him?" Yeah, and who cares? There are footnotes, which, I guess, are meant to be clever. They are not. This is not to say that they can't be. Dave Barry knows how to use footnotes. "House of Leaves" uses footnotes to excellent effect. These are just a waste of time.

Much like the entire book, as a matter of fact.

Perhaps the only good thing about it is the flipbook cartoon, which may indicate that Van Sant should really stick with moving pictures and abandon the literary ones.

Not recommended. At all. Ever.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I Wanted to Like It!, May 28, 2004

By 

foundpoem - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pink: A Novel (Paperback)

Gus Van Sant, my favorite director, couldn't pull off this novel. Oh, what a bummer. Even his grammar is fairly poor. It's clear he's a visual person/artist - not just because he drew some of the scenes and people in the book, but the descriptions, too, are vibrant with great visual detail.

I'm avoiding the inevitable - fairly bad book. I agree with much of the reviews. It's an homage, dedicated to River Pheonix (a rather roundabout dedication that I know is one only because I read it is, and the word "river" is in the verse), that references perhaps a number of the young men Van Sant works with or, perhaps predominantly, River and Keanu. I couldn't help but think Affleck and Damon read this and preyed on the "dirty old man" to pitch their script; he does love friendships between two young men--something that plays so beautifully in his films, and so poorly with a fifty-something narrator who's part of the story.

In "Pink" the main character writes in the first person, but in the footnotes refers to himself as his name. He's an infomercial maker in his 50's and not very successful. He meets two young boys, Jack and Matt, and is intrigued by them. They've got a secret. "Pink" is their secret and I won't say what Pink is because we don't find out for most of the book.

One of the boys is eerily similar to the dead infomercial-spokesman/teen-idol, Felix. Felix = River Pheonix. He even died in the street outside a nightclub (Felix, that is) while his brother called 911; he is 23-years-old; and his complexion, described in amazing technicolor detail, River's. We've got lots of detail about Felix here and, as someone else wrote, how much of that is non-fiction? Ouch. I've read, too, about Van Sant's attraction to River Pheonix during the shooting of "My Own Private Idaho" - a film I adore to the pont of speechlessness (and I admit I'd found this attraction sort of hot) but, while oh-so-romantic on screen and so beautiful to watch, this book reads too uncomfortably like the journal of the "dirty old man."

I didn't care for the footnotes thing - they served to slow the book down for me - the print is tiny and the information in them pertinent to the story - i.e., not footnote material. I enjoyed the drawings; they looked to me like a storyboard, as it's not hard to remember who's writing this book.

But, it misses the mark. Ah, if the narrator had been younger... okay, I won't start editing. Wonderful, amazing director. Not such a good author. If it's a love letter of sorts, or a memoir, or journal entry to the memory of a lost friend, I appreciate that very much and, actually, I find the book's redemption in that notion. I love Van Sant's filmmaking and artistic sensibility so much that, perhaps, I have the need to think this was something he needed to get off his chest - as well, I've read this is an homage to his loss of River Pheonix. But, it really is different in concept than to experience.

If you don't have an interest in him, don't believe the "similar to Vonnegut" or other statements on the book jacket. It isn't. If you're an auterist, and want to see it, do - it's not wretched, but disappointing coming from this artist.