Customer Reviews

Van Gogh's Bad Cafe: A Love Story

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Eloquent, sad, beautiful, desperate and desolate, this haunting fictional account of Van Gogh's life and those who knew and loved him is wonderful, beginning to end. The book focuses primarily on his love interest and her newfound companion, who exists in another place and time, both of them lost and desperate to be close to genius (namely Van Gogh). All in all, a gem.

The first Tuten I haven't liked. But if you're not a drug addict, starving artist in a garret, a NY or LA art critic, or all of the above, I don't think the book has much appeal.

I'll give the author two stars purely for risk-taking. The concept at least is original and it has to have taken a certain audacity to write this book.

What I don't understand is why he wrote it, or why we are supposed to enjoy reading it. The girl Ursula is a stupid, self-centered, insensitive, thoroughly repulsive excuse for a human being. Not that she isn't convincingly depicted--Tuten did all too good a job on her--but I can't think why we are supposed to care about her and want to read about her. And certainly not why we are supposed to admire and approve of her, as Tuten obviously does.

That Van Gogh might have fallen in love with someone like her is all too plausible--he did, after all, have a record of wasting himself on women who were far beneath him. But Vincent's love for Ursula is not shown as yet another self-destructive folly, but rather as something fine and beautiful.

Vincent himself is handled a good deal better. The flashback to his days as a preacher among the coal miners is perhaps the best thing in the book. The attempt to get inside his deteriorating mind is very fanciful and speculative, but then so is any attempt to see what goes on in the head of a schizo-affective.

As for the modern-day narrator, he is simply pathetic. Who can care about him? Who even wants to know about someone like that?

Furthermore, Tuten might have made a little more effort to get his facts straight. For one very big thing, the "Night Cafe" that Van Gogh painted and wrote about was located in Arles, not in Auverre-sur-Oise.

I have to admire the artistic courage that went into the writing of this book, but the results are just too badly flawed. But I admit I would like to try reading something else by Tuten. He is undeniably a gifted writer.

This book has bothersome billing for three reasons.It is billed as a romantic love stroy. It, however turns out to be a revelation of one person's relationship to heavy drugs. It is a tawdry exhibition of bizarre drug addiction.There is lilttle insight into Van Gogh's life. Any information about Van Gogh is lacking. In the reviews on Amazon.com it is said that the art work is vibrant color. The paperback has no color in the art work. The paperback has only black and white art workThis review is from a book club with 9 members,thus we give it 18 thumbs down. The one redeeming quality of this book is a brief moment of drug education awareness. We actually learned the meaning of absinthe and peyote. Read this book if you have time to waste on bizarre drug trips.. Crituque by: The Talking Book Society of Greater Boulder County (Colorado)