Gary in first

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about the need for me to sit tight and wait for response to my manuscript from the readers I've given it to. Well, I'm happy to report that last week one of my readers chimed in with both gratifying encouragement and thoughtful reservations. I've been living with my Van Gogh project for so long now it's hard to keep my perspective on what works, what doesn't, what's vital, what's not. I can tell you, blog readers, that when I finally finished entering my handwritten drafts into the computer, the novel was upwards of 1250 pages. The version I sent my three readers was 830 pages: long, but 30% shorter than what I had before!The first reader to chime in was Gary McCullough, a professional speech therapist and UCA professor who also happens to be a very active creative writer. Gary has written several novels, is starting to publish his short stories, has impeccable taste in his reading, and feels as much passion for his craft as any writer I've ever met.

Gary told me something that was crucial for me to hear: He could, without difficulty, see Yellow not only being published but "big." (That's the kind of determination you can never make about your own book, so I appreciate Gary's confidence.) On the other hand, he had questions about the conflicts that occupy the last third of the book, when my Van Gogh character--as Van Gogh did in real life--has essentially broken from his family, except for his brother Theo, and commits himself to living the life of a painter in a foreign country. Previous to this point, and especially while his father is alive, Van Gogh struggles mightily against his own family (who regard him as a failure), and against his own uncertainty as to his vocation. Once he moves from Holland, conflicts with his family retreat to the background. (His father, at this point, has passed away.) What I try to show in my novel is that Van Gogh's main conflict from that point on was with his ability to realize the paintings he saw in his mind's eye.

This is not to say that the Van Gogh had no interpersonal conflicts in the last 5 years of his life. Hardly. In fact, his extremely complicated relationship with Paul Gauguin--a third resentful of him, a third suspicious, and at least a half worshipful--became the most dominant and problematic relationship in his life; previously that designation had belonged to his relationship with his father. In my novel, you can't miss Gauguin's presence in the latter chapters. Even so, it is Van Gogh's conflict with paint that dominates the last third of my book, and it's my challenge and my duty, Gary seems to be saying, to make that as vital and engaging a conflict as the earlier one with his family. I agree. Thanks for the input, Gary.

The Langlois bridge?--Part Two

In my last post, I described the somewhat off-the-beaten-path Van Gogh site of the Langlois Bridge, or "Pont Van Gogh" as it is actually designated on maps (because the real Langlois bridge was removed several decades ago). Besides the bridge itself, what I was most intrigued by when I went there was the tall, dying, long unoccupied house that sits very close to the bridge. (That's it in the photo.) Even on my first visit to Pont Van Gogh I think I took more pictures of this house than the bridge itself. And on my most recent visit last May, I left the bridge behind and walked through waist high weeds to circumnavigate the house. I would have taken more and closer pictures of it except that the battery in my camera died. So I brought out my sketchpad and starting drawing it from several different angles. Having to do so was a real blessing, because it forced me to look a lot more closely at the house than if I were merely snapping a photo.

I cannot swear to the age of the house, but I have to assume it was once occupied by whomever was responsible for operating the bridge. In fact, in Van Gogh's painting of the real Langlois Bridge, a similar structure does sit off to the right. When I decided for the sake of my novel to accept a tour guide's story that the Langlois Bridge was really called the "L'anglais" Bridge in Van Gogh's time, because an Englishman was the bridgemaster, this old house became more important. It would be the home of this unknown and unnamed Englishman, who I decided would feature prominently in my Arles scenes. After all, Van Gogh depicted the bridge in several paintings and must have walked to it from his hotel room in Arles repeatedly. Plenty of occasions for interaction. In my novel, his friendship with this English bridgemaster has essentially stood in for the friendship that in real life he seemed to have enjoyed with his postman Roulin. That is, a good-natured, easy going, rather masculine give and take, which allowed him, as I imagine it, to escape for a few moments or hours the severity of his commitment to painting. Roulin's physical appearance, as depicted by Van Gogh in a well known portrait, actually influenced my mental image of the English bridgemaster, whom I've named Portis. They aren't identical by any means, but elements of Roulin's appearance--his heft, his beard, his hail-fellow-well-met redness--coordinate pretty well with an Englishman occupying an easy job who enjoys his pint (or more) every day.

But it's a fair question to ask: "Why do this?" All I can give as an answer is to say that I never asked myself the question; instead, I asked "Why not?" I liked the idea of semi-slothful expatriate Englishman in my novel, one who lives in a crumbling old house with his lovely provencal wife and two children. And just as in real life Van Gogh eventually painted Roulin (see photo) and his wife, in my novel Vincent--at Portis's suggestion--paints Portis's daughters. On of these daughters, who I've named Elise, is in my telling the model for Van Gogh's famous "Mousmé" sketch and painting. (I posted about that some weeks back.) Later, Van Gogh's fallout with Gauguin is catalyzed by tensions and jealousies involving Elyse and the entire Portis family. In real life, the failure of the experiment of the Yellow House was rooted in differences between Van Gogh and Gauguin over matters of art, taste, and technique. Fundamental aspects of any friendship--like respect--were in question. It wasn't simply a matter of one man getting angry over unwashed dishes. This is all true of my novel as well. But it's a rare interpersonal combustion that has only one cause, and deciding to bring the Portis family into the mix has made, I hope, for a more drastic, believable, and intriguing blowup between the two proud men.

Next time: Even more about the Pont Van Gogh! Who knew there was this much to say?

Kicking a coin, or the unexpected benefits of a trip

You never know what kind of dividends a research trip can pay. I remember hearing Tracy Chevalier say that while she was working on Girl With a Pearl Earring she only went to Delft one time and that was for a few days. But even so the trip paid off because it was on that trip that she noticed the great star embedded in Markt Square, a physical nuance that turned out to be extremely useful to the plot and structure of her book. Well, on a much lesser scale the trip I made to Arles last summer paid a similar divdend just yesterday, in this case allowing me to enhance the verisimilitude of an action. I was revising the scene in which Paul Gauguin, in October 1888, arrives via train to Arles. I'm not sure why, but I inserted a vagrant character into the scene, a shabbily dressed man lingering on the platform who eventually scuffles with Vincent. The vagrant--if that's what he is--acts strangely and wants to communicate something, but he speaks in a language that is not French, Dutch, English, German, or Spanish. Neither Gauguin nor Van Gogh understands him. Prior to the scuffle, Vincent tries to buy the man's departure, if you will, by giving him a coin. The man, who apparently is not begging for money, reacts with horror, immediately dropping the coin and kicking it. Well, without really thinking about it, I had the kicked coin bounce off the wall of the Arles station house.

However, having arrived and departed from that very station myself last summer--that's the actual platform pictured above--I realized that my original conception of the scene was fundamentally flawed. Gauguin, coming from Brittany, arrived on a southbound train. Southbound trains arrive into Arles on the far track (i.e., the one on the right in the picture). So this vagrant kicked the coin, on a hop mind you, all the way over the tracks to hit the station house on the far side? Uh uh. Again, having been there, I know there is a waiting room beside the far track. So I had my vagrant kick the coin that way. The coin now bounces off the wall of the waiting room, which is perhaps two feet away, rather than the wall of the station house many yards away and across a set of tracks. Much better. A minor detail? Yes. It is. But it could be an extremely distracting detail to any reader who has actually traveled through the Arles station and knows its layout. The very last thing I want to do is take one of my readers out of the story. And as many writers of historical fiction will tell you, the greater number of little details you get right, the more likely it is that your reader will buy into the fictional story you have to tell. So there's one detail--having flown all the way across the ocean to get it--that I'm happy to make right.

An adventure to Montpellier

Sometimes researching a historical novel turns out to be harder even than crossing an ocean and traveling the length of a country. I did all that when I traveled last summer to Paris and then by train down to Arles (where I stayed for a month), but the difficulties didn't end there. Some background: I'm about to start revising a scene in my novel where Van Gogh and Gauguin visit the city of Montpellier, about fifty miles southwest of Arles, and more specifically the Fabre museum. This scene was suggested to me by historical fact. Apparently as a way to break out of a rut, and put aside their increasing differences, the two housemates actually did travel to Montepellier in December, 1888 to visit the Fabre. If the point of the trip was to bring peace to their relationship it didn't work. They fell into a disagreements about various artists and not long after the trip had a kind of blow up at an Arles cafe. At least Gauguin said so. Too, this was not long before Vincent's big and infamous breakdown, the one where he cut off his ear.

Given its apparent importance to the history of the Yellow House meltdown, I knew I wanted to write about the trip to the Fabre. And I wanted to do it while I was staying in Arles. I'd never been to the Fabre before or to Montpellier. But, I figured, I do have a rental car! So off I went one morning after vigorously checking and rechecking Google maps. I thought I knew what I was doing. I got off the highway at the right exit and came to an expected traffic circle (otherwise known as a "roundabout"). At the circle I went in one direction, immediately realized my error, turned around and came back. At the circle again, I took what looked like the only possible correct direction and proceeded. A few minutes later it was clear that the street names and terrain didn't match what I remembered from Google maps. After a few minutes more I was driving dangerously off the beaten track. So I turned around where I could and headed straight back to the original traffic circle. Except coming the other way, the road I was on was a Bus Only lane. Cars could not go in this direction--but it was the only way I knew to get back to that traffic circle! I caught a million strange looks from cars going the other way and expected police sirens at any moment. I imagined some torturesome conversation, trying with my almost non-existent French to explain my actions to an officious, club-toting gendarme.

Finally, as sweaty as I was relieved, I reached the traffic circle and was back on legal territory. I went around the circle again and got off in another direction. This didn't look like it could possibly be the right way, but a sign pointed to "Palavas" and the street I wanted to get on to was called "Avenue de Palavas." Oh, well! Ten minutes later it was blatantly clear that I had left the environs of Montpellier altogether. The drive was a pleasant, even rural one, but lead me to a cute little Mediterranean resort city called Palavas-les-Flots. Not that Palavas! Oh, well, so I turned around again and headed back a fourth time to the d*** traffic circle in Montepellier. When I finally got there I took the only other direction remaining for me, which originally had looked completely wrong. If this one didn't work, I'd just have to give up, drive back to Arles, work on the scene blind, and wonder forever about the veracity of Google maps. What do you know, but a minute later I recognized one street name and then another. I was on the right road! Not long after that I found the Montpellier train station, where I intended to park all along, but when I pulled in I only saw what looked like drop off parking. Just before I pulled in, I thought I'd seen a sign pointing to other parking, but I'd ignored it. Now I would pay for my stubbornness, because I had to find that other parking. Well, easier said then done in a French city you're completely unfamiliar with. I took what turns I had to, crisscrossed my route several times, and a few times almost found myself heading the wrong way on a one way street. But I did at last see a sign for the other train station parking. I pulled in after what felt already like a complete day on the road and took the only parking spot I saw, not even sure I was allowed to park there. Too bad. I wasn't giving up the spot, and I wasn't going out on the road again.

After some hiking around and asking for a map at the tourist office, I did find the Fabre, and going there certainly did help me iron out some details of the scene. (I actually wrote the first draft before I went.) Montepellier is a lovely university town I'd recommend to anyone but even now all I can think of is how hard it was just to get there. Gauguin and Van Gogh had it easy. All they did was hop a train. I had the option too. I just didn't take it.

(Above: The Fabre Museum on a sunny day last May.)

That darn Gauguin

Well, Monsieur Gauguin has arrived on the scene, and things--as they did in real life--suddenly have gotten very interesting. For those who don't know: At the request of Vincent's brother Theo and of Vincent himself, Gauguin (after considerable dawdling) moved to Arles in October, 1888 to share Vincent's "Yellow House." The two were housemates, in short. And it didn't turn out well. Gauguin is quite the case. And to get it out there: I don't treat him too well in the book. I worry a teensy weensy little bit that I'm being unfair to him, but I don't really worry that much because: a) he's an excellent foil to the more sympathetic Van Gogh, and b) I don't actually think I'm being unfair. Don't get me wrong, one can't simply say that Van Gogh was the saint and Gauguin the devil in their relationship. That's an obsessively Vincent-centric way to look at things, and, besides, it's true that in different quarters Gauguin spoke generously of both Vincent and his paintings. It's also true that Vincent was likely a piece of work to live with, if only for two months.

On the other hand, I think it's perfectly fair to say that Gauguin was always, his entire adult life, concerned with only one thing: Paul Gauguin. This is true to his relationships with people both inside and outside of the art world. He was concerned with establishing a reputation for himself and "making it," even if this meant resorting to personal manipulation, abject dishonesty, and character assasination. After all, this is same man who, upon hearing of Vincent's death, wrote to an artist friend that perhaps "[they] could use this to [their] advantage." This is the man who in his autobiography, Avante et Aprés (follow the link for a relevant snippet), told a story of being attacked by a crazed, knife wielding Van Gogh, a story that today is almost universally regarded as a self-serving fairytale. In the same book, Gauguin presented himself as the master and tutor of Van Gogh during their time together in Arles. Gauguin took credit for the stylistic breakthroughs that allowed Vincent to paint pictures such as Sunflowers. (See above.) The entire Sunflowers series was completed before Gauguin ever moved to Arles! And the pictures that Van Gogh painted under Gauguin's direct influence are generally considered to be among his least successful. That's certainly my opinion, and that's the case I make in my novel.

But, again, both for the sake of the novel and for the sake of fairness, I'm trying to make Gauguin a bit more rounded character than simply a mustached bad guy. After all, given the praise (call it hero worship) that Van Gogh lavished on Gauguin when trying to convince him to move to Arles, given that Van Gogh told Gauguin he would be the "abbot" of their new "Studio of the South," Gauguin can be forgiven for feeling in a superior position to Van Gogh. And likely he was miffed, so soon after Van Gogh's death, to see the meteoric rise of Vincent's reputation, so strong and so fast that it surpassed Gauguin's own reputation. I can see the man thinking Wait a minute. This is Vincent Van Gogh we're talking about. So far I'm loving the contest between the two men. Lots of fascinating psychological currents to play with, not only the ones I discussed in my last entry, but a whole bevy of others too. I can see, as I write, how the blowup between these two odd, complicated, and driven men was inevitable.

Ooh la la

Well, things are getting sticky, in more ways than one. I'm trying to suggest the build up of a lot of nervous tension, in both good and bad ways, during Vincent's summer of 1888. In my mind, and as I'm hoping to present it in the novel, it's the time of his ultimate breakthrough artistically. He gets to a place he never got to before and never did again. But at the same time, his personal life gets more and more tricky. I'm blatantly fictionalizing an involuntary (and not quite consumated) "relationship" between him and a young girl who is infatuated with him. I'm using the figure from his famous "Mousmé" painting as one of my points of inspiration. At the same time--and this is very true to life--he was that summer becoming more and more adamant on the question of Gauguin moving to Arles and moving into his house. His admiration for Gauguin both as an artist and a man was tremendous, a kind of hero worship, and some critics have even suggested that his adoration bordered on the homoerotic. If you read Van Gogh's letters there is something to that notion, but it is only a notion. You have to be careful. 19th century male culture was not as hamstrung in regard to expressing affection as 21st century male culture is. I've heard it said, and I believe it, that the necessary political and social assertion by homosexual men of their rights and their simple existence has made straight men terrified to show affection for one another, for fear of being misunderstood. Such fear did not exist in the 19th century. That said, the possibly homoerotic nature of his admiration for Gauguin is something I am playing with while at the same time developing this odd, unwanted "affair" with the girl (the ficitonalized daughter of a man who did actually exist in real life, although we know nothing about him).

Am I building beneficials tensions into my book? Getting my character into hotter and hotter water, as good novels are supposed to? Or am I forcing into the Arles section ahistorical material that really shouldn't be there? I'm not sure yet. Maybe the answer is both. All I can say for sure is that as I looked over one scene with the girl I really had to tone things down. I don't know what I was doing in that earlier draft. It came close to porn. I think my wife, when she finally gets to read the draft of the whole novel, is not going to believe that this scene has been significantly cut. But it has!

A mixed up day

It's been a weird, mixed, and mixed up writing day. A transitional one. Got thrown off my pace this morning, in a good way, by a call from my mother. She'd ordered my novel Burnt Norway off of Lulu.com and was calling to say how much she liked it. I hear what you're thinking . . . of course his mother is going to like it. But she's an extremely literate person and a hecka of a smart reviewer of fiction. Her praise was intelligent and true to the nature of the book. In short, her kind words really meant a lot. But it also made me high as a kite for a while, and it took me some time to get back in the writing groove. I did, and actually, finally, worked my way through my (for now) complete revision of the Paris section of the novel. He's done there! He's on his way to Arles! I accomplished this, however, by just flat dropping a very long scene in which Vincent visits the studio of Georges Seurat. That was a hard choice. Not only did this visit actually happen (shortly before he left Paris) and not only is it intriguing to the imagination if you know anything about these two important Neoimpressionists, but I really liked this scene. I'd worked long and hard on it, carrying out multiple revisions and doing an immense amount of fact checking. But, in the end, it wasn't necessary for the book. Not only is the book too long already, but I discovered as I went along that the main focus of the Paris section is Van Gogh's developing, changing relationship with two men: Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin. I shouldn't and finally couldn't distract from that. So I cut the Seurat studio scene and instead saved a scene (conveniently shorter) in which Van Gogh and Bernard arrange Vincent's studio on the night before he leaves Paris for good. That scene, in part, showed how the "evil" influence of Gauguin was already upon Bernard, a theme I run with in the Arles section, so the scene makes a nice bridge.

The other mixed up part of my day came after I finished revising the scene I just mentioned. The way my novel is structured is that I go back and forth between scenes in St.- Remy, France (where V. was hospitalized) and scenes from the rest of his life. So, done with the Paris section, I was supposed to jump back to St.-Remy. Lo and behold, I got to my St.-Remy file and found that I was out of scenes! I'd used all of them already. Oh well, I decided, to paraphrase an old Dorito's commercial, I'll just have to write more. Two, as it turns out. One for now and one to insert after the Arles section. The former I kinda sorta finished by the time my writing day ended, the latter I haven't started yet. Both will be short. They simply have to be, given the length of the novel already, and because I think they can work well being short. Actually, having to compose these scenes works out nicely because there are elements of his stay in St.-Remy that I didn't bring in before but now can (albeit briefly) and in that way better nuance the tone of the whole St-Remy experience. That's it for today. Not too many questions to raise, just a report on one of my more scattered but still beneficial writing days.

(Above: The view from out the window of the recreated "Vincent's Room" at St. Paul's hospital in Saint-Rémy, France.)

Vincent at art school

Had fun today working with one of my favorite scenes in the book: Van Gogh trying to take a painting class with Fernand Cormon (that's him on the right), a leading academic painter of the day and director of a well known Paris school for the fine arts. Though he did not study with Cormon that long he met a number of notable young talents there, some of whom became lifelong friends and important Neoimpressionists. Some people he met were Emile Bernard (pictured on the left), Louis Anquetin, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and John Peter Russell. My scene includes people who we know were students of Cormon and others who are completely imaginary. The group leads a revolt against Cormon and his rather backward aesthetic rules. Something like this did actually happen, with Bernard being one of the rabblerousers. It led to Cormon closing his school for a time.

It was nice to break out of Vincent's mind and show him interacting with fellow painters. He actually had a habit of making friends and associates in all the different places he lived. He wasn't simply an isolated man, despite his mad genius reputation. But even his friends regarded him as slightly peculiar and occasionally trying. At the same time they could also feel great loyalty toward, and love for, him. My worry for today is that in trying to fit Vincent's whole life into one novel I am necessarily sacrificing parts of that life, one being his ability to make friends and professional associates. (He did not seem shy about meeting other artists.) I do show his friendship with Anthon Van Rappard. I also will develop his friendships with Bernard and Signac and Gauguin. But I'm coming out of the Nuenen section in which he was more isolated than in other parts of his life, and out of the Antwerp section in which I've mostly highlighted his epistolary argument with Theo over whether or not he should move to Paris. Not a lot about friends in those parts, even if in real life he did have some. I don't want this book to become too interior even recognizing the profoundly interior nature of Van Gogh and of painting itself. As with any novel, stuff has to happen. And then more stuff. Basic rule.