Customer Reviews

Vincent Van Gogh: A Biography

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I just finished this excellent biography this afternoon. After reading Stone's Lust for Life, I was curious to read a regular biography about Van Gogh. This is not exactly a "regular" biography, but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless. Meier-Graefe blurs the line between historical fiction and biographical nonfiction. The result is really fantastic. I felt like I got a sense of Van Gogh's tortured soul, his complex relationships (with his brother, with Gauguin..), and how it all worked together to create his art.

I found the book extremely hard to follow for a couple of reasons. First is the type font and the layout. The book seems to have been condensed to save space for some unknown reason. The font is extremely small, letters are compressed together and the spaces are extremely tight within a paragraph which will make your eyes strain to read and ultimatley will give you a headache. Second and most important, the book was translated from French to English and the translation is difficult to comprehend at times causing to re-read what you have just read. It reads like someone who is learing English and writing for the first time and the sentence structure is baffling through out most the read. You will have to do your own interpretations of what is attempted to be said. I haven't even made it through two chapters yet I am already frustrated trying to get into this stroy. Having been written in 1931 also doesn't help matters since it seems wtiting styles were very different back then just adds to the difficulty in reading this book. But, I will continue on hoping that I can learn more about the life of Van Gogh which is why is bought this book in the first place.