Van Gogh's Bad Cafe: A Love Story [Paperback]

Frederic Tuten (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1998

Vincent van Gogh created his life's work out of a vortex of passion and delirium so intense his paintings seem to burst off the canvas. Now Frederic Tuten, the highly acclaimed author of Tintin in the New World, has imagined the personification of van Gogh's fervor and madness: Ursula, one of the most beguiling creations in recent literature. A morphine-addicted, nineteen-year-old photographer, Ursula is van Gogh's lover and tormentor. But she is lost to him, and he to her, when she steps through a crack in the wall of the Bad Cafe and finds herself in a strange world-New York City at the end of the twentieth century.Vincent van Gogh created his life's work out of a vortex of passion and delirium so intense his paintings seem to burst off the canvas. Now Frederic Tuten, the highly acclaimed author of Tintin in the New World, has imagined the personification of van Gogh's fervor and madness: Ursula, one of the most beguiling creations in recent literature. A morphine-addicted, nineteen-year-old photographer, Ursula is van Gogh's lover and tormentor. But she is lost to him, and he to her, when she steps through a crack in the wall of the Bad Cafe and finds herself in a strange world-New York City at the end of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This tender novel is author Frederic Tuten's imagining of Vincent van Gogh's last months, encompassing in its beautiful passages a possible motive for the artist's legendary suicide. A true ode to van Gogh, to love, and to art, this book is essential reading for anyone who has ever been fascinated by the life and work of van Gogh. Relying as much upon historical and biographical information about the artist as it does upon the author's own imagination, this is an exploration of the mysterious territory where art and life intersect, impact, and collide with one another. As vibrant and passionate as the art of its subject, reading this book is an experience akin to viewing one of van Gogh's paintings. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A magical painter in words, Tuten (Tintin in the New World) gets inside the Dutch artist's wounded soul as few writers have. In this exquisite postmodernist fantasy, Ursula, a mercurial, morphine-addicted 19-year-old photographer who is Vincent van Gogh's lover, shuttles back and forth between 19th-century France and present-day New York City. In the East Village, she becomes the roommate and occasional lover of Louis, a down-and-out photographer. Back in time, meanwhile, Tuten's van Gogh is a gaunt, pipe-smoking, half-drunk misfit in a world out of joint, raging with jealousy at other artists. Lonely beyond words and even beyond his own pictures, he seeks a world purged of pain and suffering, so that love and beauty can reign on Earth. Ursula, too, is enthralled by beauty, and seeks to capture it with her camera lens. But in leaving behind the Old World, she experiences dizzying culture shock. To share the burden, Louis agrees to travel back in time, where he drinks and arm-wrestles with the tortured painter. Tuten is a remarkable stylist, able in one sentence to combine the lyricism of a parable with the grit of Avenue B: "I was ready, already, to live with her and share the common dish, to make children?should she want?and bring home the bacon, if need be... or to become a pair of companionate hawks in our iron love nest atop the Brooklyn Bridge." Is Ursula just an obsessed 1990s street kid inspiring Louis to fantasize? It's anyone's guess as Tuten gorgeously explores the interface of reality and illusion, art and life, love and death. Illustrated with original color and black-and-white prints by Eric Fischl (not seen by PW).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 163 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co (June 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688161030
• ISBN-13: 978-0688161033
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,208,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to imagine her..., August 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Van Gogh's Bad Cafe: A Love Story (Hardcover)

Beautiful, haunting, surreal, poetic. Not a book for realists or those seeking the everyday, this book allows you to enter tuten's dream for a few hours, then leave it with a thousand beautiful(and ugly)visions dancing before your eyes. A masterpiece.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful, charming book by one of my favorite writers, January 12, 2012

By 

Benjamin Janse "Ben Janse" (Boston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Van Gogh's Bad Cafe: A Love Story (Paperback)

Ok, here's the thing about Frederic Tuten: most the world has no idea how to read him. Being in the art scene around the Pop movement (and good friends with Roy Lichtenstein among others) he brought that approach and energy to literature. What most of his books do is take a famous historical figure or fictional character and reimagines their life, or some crucial moment in their life, with a wonderful fantastical whimsy that is charming, fun, and deeply fascinating. It is the idea of fictional truth: nothing you read is true but somehow more true than what really happened. Most of the criticisms have to do with the book not coinciding with the facts, or having actual information about the character's life, etc. - these people are entirely missing the point. Pop art was about appropriating popular symbols and celebrities in order to make a larger statement. Tuten is not trying to make a statement about Van Gogh in this story, but about life and love, and what drives people to the brink of disaster. If you spend any time looking at Van Gogh's paintings this story will start to ring more true for the man than any fact ever could. An absolute joy to read that I have been thinking about since I put it down (I read the whole thing on a 6 hour bus trip and it turned it into a wonderful adventure). If the idea of a book in which Van Gogh is a character that isn't a historical novel, that doesn't pertain precisely to the facts, bothers you and makes you angry, go somewhere else. However, if you have an open mind to the limitless possibilities of fiction, if you want something with imagination and vision, read this book. Then go out and get his others. They are all great.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A SMALL TREASURE OF A BOOK, June 7, 2002

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Van Gogh's Bad Cafe: A Love Story (Hardcover)

Long being an admirer of VanGogh's work, I was immediately interested in reading this brief novel when I discovered it recently. It's a heavy subject for an author to attempt -- I would think it would be much 'safer' to write about characters of one's own creation, eliminating any preconceptions that might be held by the reader -- but I can recommend this book very highly. Frederic Tuten has succeeded, I believe, in creating a believable view of VanGogh -- not a biography, but more like a snapshot or an observation.

The center of the book is a wonderfully enigmatic woman named Ursula -- Van Gogh's lover, friend and fellow artiste (she's a photographer). She's also a morphine addict. Sharing addiction with Vincent (his addictions being to pain, art, and absinthe) gives them a bond that unites them in not only love but life. When Ursula steps through a crack in time to emerge into late 20th century Greenwich Village, the 'progress' she sees breaks her heart. She attempts to embrace it -- as she does everything else in her life -- but ultimately feels herself drawn back to her own time, to Vincent.

The novel is subtitled 'a love story' -- and it is certainly that, but not in the traditional sense. The love here is not just the romantic variety, but love of life, of creation, of joy and pain -- all of the things that besiege and bless us all. The trick is to understand how to accept them.

After reading about some of Tuten's other works, I'm not really sure if I want to read them or not -- I'll have to investigate them further -- but I'm certainly glad I stumbled across this little gem. It's a beautiful story, gently and lovingly told.