SPOILER ALERT! The big hook in the selling of this huge, deadly-weapon of a book is the speculation that Vincent did not actually kill himself, but was more likely killed by a Buffalo Bill wannabe named Rene Secretan. Bear in mind that Secretan apparently only came out with his stories about Vincent when he was 82 years old and saw a picture of Kirk Douglas in the soon-to-be-released biopic LUST FOR LIFE. Well, according to our authors herein, seeing that picture of the ersatz Vincent "so violated Rene's sense of duty to the truth that he could hold back his story no longer." So for 66 years we are supposed to believe Secretan - and his brother Gaston (who also supposedly knew Van Gogh back in 1890 and who eventually became a movie song writer and occasional actor) - never whispered a peep about their summering with the increasingly mythic painter until LUST FOR LIFE was about to be unleashed on the world. Bear in mind, the ONLY person that told the tale of Vincent and the Secretan brothers and their cohorts and how Vincent got hold of a gun is...Secretan himself. At 82 years of age. And as far as this book goes, there apparently was NO ONE else in the Auvers area in 1890 who saw the sixteen year old dressed up like Buffalo Bill and bringing Moulin Rouge gals down to the riverside to make Vincent drool. No one! Except...Secretan. Vincent never mentioned Secretan and his gang in any letter. There are no apparent photos of Secretan in his outlandish cowboy costume, no corroborative accounts placing him in Auvers in 1890 let alone the scene of the crime, nothing...except the 82 year old's coming forth to set the record straight on what the actual Vincent was really and truly like. Remember - Secretan was so incensed at the phony portrayal that Hollywood was about to foist on the world that he just HAD to blow his whistle and get five minutes of fame that have now lasted much longer - right until the 21st Century and THE LIFE of Van Gogh by Naifeh and Smith wherein we learn that more than likely Vincent's suicide was a myth - and more likely than not...he was murdered! And it wasn't Irving Stone's best-selling novel from 1934 which the movie was based upon that drew Secretan's secrets out into the open. No. It wasn't until Hollywood put spotlights galore on Vincent's tale - only then did Secretan come forth from the shadows. Hooray for Hollywood!
When KING KONG had its 50th Anniversary in the '80s some old codger came out of some woodwork somewhere and said that it was, in truth, he who was the man in the monkey suit and that he climbed to the top of the Empire State Building with Fay Wray in hand. The Associated Press swallowed the tale - hook, line and sinker. It was front page news across the globe. The old man's smiling picture was everwhere, shown next to a picture of his secret self, a.k.a. Kong, Eight Wonder of the World. The trouble was: it was a complete lie. Kong, alas, was an 18 inch animated puppet. The old man, alas, was just going for the gusto. And maybe some gold.
Back to 1890, the year of Vincent's contested suicide. I must note that Secretan never said he shot the painter. In his remembrance of things past he merely says it was his handgun that Vincent pilfered and used on himself. So what our adventurous authors have done in this book is akin to trying to figure out who killed JFK. They say the suicide theory doesn't stand up for many reasons. But for as many reasons - actually more - neither does their teen crime take. Their interpretation is filled with contradiction. One instance is wherein they argue that a man bent on killing himself wouldn't shoot himself in the side - and if he did and realized he didn't succeed, he would then most likely put the gun to his head to complete the deed. The trouble is, they never once entertain the very viable notion that Vincent perhaps did NOT want to actually kill himself - but may have wounded himself in a masochistic cry for help. As with his ear. When Vincent was asked by the police if he had, in fact, wanted to commit suicide, he answered "Yes, I believe so." When the police further told him it was a crime to do so, he was concerned that no one else be blamed for the act. "Do not accuse anyone," he said. "It is I who wanted to kill myself." The authors then are vexed as to why he would have voiced such concerns. They feel that since he was tired of living anyway, why spill the beans on the Secretan brothers who may have shot the Dutchman accidentally or purposefully? Of course, Naifeh and Smith do not even entertain the remote possibility that Vincent was trying to protect the person he actually got the gun from - or in a more interior way, trying to protect perhaps his own brother Theo who - who knows? - may have wished Vincent dead during the cataclysmic, violent argument in Paris one sunny Sunday not long before Vincent's wounding by gunshot. The authors go on at great lengths to argue that Vincent was morally opposed to suicide and would never had done himself in and if he had, he would have poisoned himself or drowned himself instead! (Really? When in the history of the world did anyone else ever sever a part of their ear with a razor blade? Vincent was unpredictable - in his art and in his actions.) The thing the authors also hammer home is the shame to be associated with suicide. Vincent would never have stood for exiting life as a suicide, they say. So then why does he do precisely that in remaining silent as to the true source of the bullet in his body? He lingered for 30 hours. At some point he must have known he wouldn't make it. He died in Theo's arms. If he did NOT shoot himself, why then would a man so strongly against suicide let that belief eventually make it into the history books for all time? Remember - his answer to the police when asked if he tried to kill himself was "Yes, I believe so." A cry for help gone wrong? More likely than accidental or intentional murder. Vincent never was even able to explain exactly why he cut off his ear lobe in 1888 - two years before his self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had black outs! So when he answered "Yes, I believe so" to the question of his shooting himself, he was more than likely being more than honest.
One other thing the authors pick up on to try to explain why the gun was never found - nor Vincent's painting easel and supplies for that matter. According to the authors, Secretan and his pals got so scared when the painter was shot that they tidied up the scene of the crime! It was they who absconded with the painter's accoutrements! That is why the gun and other bits of evidence were never found by the police! (Even though, contradicting this, the writers say that the police were searching the wheatfields and never adequately searched the actual area of the crime.) But the question Naifeh and Smith fail to answer is this: if the Secretan brothers were so frightened as to what happened, why would they want to secret away Vincent's stuff - but not Vincent himself? If they saw that he was wounded they would have been much more afraid he would tell the cops what really happened. If they thought he would just lie where he fell and die...then why take off with his painting gear? It doesn't hold water. There are just too many (gunshot) holes in this book's big hook to hold water or blood or paint.
Likewise with this book's take on the incident of the ear. On page 702 we find as it relates to the ear incident: "No one knows what happened next." And then for the next two pages Naifeh and Smith - either one or the other or both - proceed to tell us not what MAY have happened, but what DID...by their lights and based largely on Gauguin's dubious depictions. Surprisingly, they state matter-of-factly on page 704 that Vincent, after punishing himself by slicing off his ear lobe and wrapping it in newspaper, would "find Gauguin and show him the awful price that had been paid." According to our authors, Vincent then goes to where Gauguin probably will be found - in the brothel. He asks for Gauguin's favorite prostitute, Rachel, still looking for his pal. The trouble is, the more likely scenario - that Vincent intended the cut lobe as a gift for Rachel on that Christmas Eve for whatever reason - is not even entertained. The stress is on Gauguin's getting the gift and this is most likely the less likely purpose behind Vincent's act. Not mentioned in their discussion of this pivotal act in the Van Gogh saga are the other possibilities behind the slashing of the ear: perhaps Vincent was hearing voices - or was influenced in a perverse way by the taking of the bull's ear in the bullfights he had seen in Arles or the influence of the Jack the Ripper murders that were occurring at the exact same time as the events between Vincent and Gauguin in Arles. The stories of the Whitechapel Murders were shown to have been covered in the newspapers in Arles - stories wherein it was related that the Ripper mutilated the prostitutes he killed and even clipped off their ears to send to the police. Curiously, mention is made on page 702 that Gauguin and Vincent knew about a "Jack the Ripper style killer" they'd read about - yet no direct mention is made of their most likely knowledge of the actual Jack the Ripper! With Vincent's knowledge of the Whitechapel district of London - where the Ripper murders were then taking place - it seems even more likely that the Ripper stories impacted him in some fashion.
As to the book as a whole: when reading this tome I had the gradual sense that Naifeh and Smith were like two painters painting away at a large and complex canvas. Sometimes, it seemed, certain areas of that canvas were repainted by one or the other of them without the others knowing it. There are awkward moments of chronology - backtracking, strange repetitions. But more than that, I slowly came to see that the authors were painting their canvas with a decided emphasis on the darker colors in the spectrum. Our author's seemed a bit smarmy with the lights they put on the people in their huge opus, the canvas of a book that made every single person' motives in Life seem suspect and shady and shallow and self-centered. No one truly comes off well in this book. The best in human nature is not emphasized whatsoever in Naifeh's and Smith's portraits of all the people in the story of Vincent's life. Even the Postman Roulin is presented as an opportunist - and not as a human being. And Vincent's letters seem combed to find the most negative aspects of his complex personality - and the rest of his correspondence is often just summarized by the authors' in a very lop-sided way. The man was great writer! Yet...that rarely comes across to hear Naifeh and Smith tell it. Poor Theo is rendered in a most unpleasant manner. The tortured complexity of what he had to deal with in his love for his brother and his need to live his own life with his wife and baby is told in a mostly shallow, unsympathetic way. That is the sadness of this telling: the once very much alive and three-dimensional peoples in this saga are presented in a largely one-dimensional fashion. Our authors - as painters with words - should have taken a lessen from Vincent's own style. Yes, they should have written this book with much more impasto! That would have been something!
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I've read a book on Vincent Van Gogh before and it was much much more truncated than this. Its quite a hefty book. And I also received it with a dirt mark which possibly occurred during packaging. But still, its a beautiful book, i'd recommend for the avid reader with lots of time to spare.
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Sandra Peña
Una obra completísima de Van Gogh
Reviewed in Mexico on May 11, 2020
Sandra Peña
Reviewed in Mexico on May 11, 2020
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