Mas Ballot

One of the pleasures of researching and writing a novel, historical or not, is getting to know other places and people. In writing my first novel, set in a Trappist monastery, I developed a relationship with a specific Trappist community in South Carolina. I ended up visiting the monastery four times, and for several Christmas's running sent them a donation. My Van Gogh novel has taken me even farther afield: all the way across the ocean. Since I've started working on this project, I've visited Paris twice and Provence three times. (My longest stay, five weeks, came last summer.) I've walked the streets of Montmartre, shuffled around the Louvre, and strolled the Boulevard Montmartre--where Theo Van Gogh's gallery was located. In Provence, I've spent many hours in the city of Arles and other parts of the Camargue; I've driven out to the Abbaye de Montmajour, where Van Gogh often went to paint for its views of Arles and La Crau; I've taken a day trip to Montpellier, scene of an uncomfortable visit by Van Gogh and Gauguin to the Musée Fabre (see an earlier post); and three times I've visted the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy where Vincent voluntarily committed himself for over a year. These were wonderful, memorable, and extremely useful tours. But the single greatest benefit of my trips to France has been finding and experiencing Mas Ballot.

No, there's no direct Van Gogh connection (although the owner has an abiding interest in Van Gogh's rendering of constellations). Mas Ballot is a beautifully maintained house in the quiet village of Raphele-les-Arles, and it's where I've stayed during each of my three visits to Provence. I happened to find it on the internet five years ago, and boy was I lucky. Not only is the house surberly decorated in French country style--which my wife appreciates--with a sweet back garden, but it's large enough for a family to spread out in it, and it's a comfortable distance from Arles: close enough to drive to quickly, and far enough away that it can act as an oasis of countrified silence. You can sit on the upper balcony at night with a glass of wine and take in a huge sky of stars with only the sounds of an occasional car passing on the road nearby to disturb your communion. My wife and I have enjoyed many many glasses of wine on that balcony as our two sons slept in the bedroom just inside. (In fact, my profile photo--click on the Sidebar--was taken on balcony at Mas Ballot.)

I don't know if Van Gogh ever passed through Raphele-les-Arles, but he was famously a walker, and when I stay at Mas Ballot--whether enjoying the broad night sky, or running the next morning along a country road, passing farm houses and fields of crops--I sense that I am taking in the provencal landscape much as Vincent did, a landscape that has changed remarkably little in the last 100 years. And when I'm overheated from a day of exploring I can always jump in the pool, a luxury--I admit--not available to Vincent.

I love my home in Arkansas and my friends here, but I really can't think of any other place I'd rather be than Mas Ballot, especially in the summer: walking to the bakery, listening to the cicadas, reading and sunning myself on the patio, attempting a watercolor portrait of my sons, cooking up a dinner from the groceries we just bought from the Geant store up the road. Enjoying that glass of wine. I can't know if when I finally finish my novel I will have occasion to experience Mas Ballot, or Provence, again. But I'm certainly hoping so. And I keep trying to improve my French.

Going back to Dad

My wife and I drove to Kansas City late last week. Our university was on Fall Break so we took the opportunity to explore what may soon become one of our favorite cities. More on that some other time. (And, by the way, a thanks to my brother and his wife for the boysitting help.) On the drive up and back, my wife finally was provided access to the manuscript of my novel-in-progress. She read to herself while I drove and I read aloud to her while she drove. While she cetainly did not finish the whole thing, there were some important first impressions. First--thankfully--she liked it. Quite a lot. (I allow myself to take her praise seriously because she teaches creative writing--and is a novelist herself.) Second, she had some concerns about the scenes that feature a point-of-view character other than Vincent himself. As I explained in an earlier post, various scenes throughout the book, although in third person, emphasize the perspective of other individuals. While the book, as I've presently assembled it, is mostly in chronological order, I did not write it that way. I wrote The Hague scenes for a while, then some St. Remy scenes, then childhood scenes, and so on. On putting them altogether I'm discovering that there are long stretches from Vincent's perspective only and also stretches in which many different perspectives are highlighted. We went through the latter on our way back from K.C. Stephanie's concern is that too many of these other people have condescending views of Vincent, sometimes quite negative views. And she worries this might give the reader the wrong idea of my main character. "It distracts from the story you're trying to tell," she says.

Basically, I think she's right. And I'm grateful for the criticism because it makes it easier for me to cut scenes. Cutting is the name of the game from here on out. (I've got to reduce this behemoth by at least a third.) On the other hand, some of these other viewpoints are critical to the point my book makes about Vincent. While we revere his art, the image many of us have of Van Gogh is "the crazy guy who cut his ear off." And ''the crazy guy" is certainly the view that too many people had of him while he was alive--without revering his art. My point in juxtaposing these different points of view with Vincent's is to show how thoroughly misperceived he was, sometimes by those who were supposed to know him best.

Like, for instance, his father. (Pictured above.) The Reverend Theodorus Van Gogh certainly demonstrated concern and love for his son, but he never "got" him. (An old old story, I realize.) Yet while Vincent's relationship with his brother Theo has been well-documented, even theatrically dramatized, I think Vincent's relationship with his father, both the good and the bad, was actually more important, was at the center of his life--and it's at the center of my book. I feature a number of scenes from Theodorus's point of view, and I suspect/hope these will be saved from the cutting room floor. For instance, just a little while ago, I was revising two successive scenes: one from Vincent's POV in which he engages in political agitation on the behalf of Belgian miners, and a second, from Theodorus's POV, in which the reverend reproves Vincent for doing this and for losing his position as a lay missionary to the miners. The contrast in ethos between the two scenes couldn't be greater. In the first, the desperate need of the miners for better protections is highlighted, with the point being that Vincent's agitation can be read as Christian activism. Whereas what we get from Theodorus's viewpoint is that Vincent violated the "rules" of his position and is to blame for the fallout. This dual vision gets to the heart of Vincent's conflict with his father and, more broadly, to much of the trouble he suffered through in his life. I think I can trust my reader to get the point. At least that's what I'm saying now. (Check in later for updates.) But many many thanks to my wife for showing me several scenes in a very different light.

Vincent's wife, Part One

As successful as he eventually became as a painter, Van Gogh demonstrated scarce success in other facets of his life. Certainly his love life was disastrous. The only two women in his life whom he became urgently and passionately (let's say obsessively) drawn to--an Englishwoman named Ursula Loyer and his cousin Kee Stricker--wanted nothing to do with him. The latter seemed terrified by him. These were intense, white-hot infatuations that ended with Vincent hopelessly proposing and then falling into black depression when the inevitable answers came. Meanwhile, the only woman who ever claimed to be in love with him--Margot Begemann, the daugther of his father's neighbor--was something of a psychological basket case, a woman for whom Van Gogh felt pity rather than love, and who eventually was hospitalized after trying to poison herself. Their "affair" ended the friendship between the Van Goghs and the Begemann's.

Ironically, the most successful relationship Vincent had with a woman was in The Hague, where he met a pregnant prostitute who was very ill and offered to let her live in his apartment so she could get out of the "business" and recover her health. Vincent called her "Sien"--no one is really sure why--although her actual name was Classina. In the English-language edition of Vincent's Collected Letters, however, she is referred to, as Christine. (I decided to use that name for my book.) His relationship with Sien, who modeled for some of his drawings (like his famous "Sorrow," pictured above) was an utter scandal within the family. It strained his relationship with his father nearly to the breaking point, lost him the respect of the painter Anton Mauve (married to Vincent's cousin) and his former Goupil's boss Tersteeg, and even threatened to undercut his all-important relationship with Theo. All these men pronounced him crazy, not just for taking the woman in but also declaring (as he quickly did) that he would marry her. Clearly, it satisifed Vincent on a deep and instinctual level to be the provider for a "wife" and family. (Sien already had a daughter, to go along with the new baby boy.) Even if those provisions basically came in the form of handouts from Theo, it gratified him to be a man with a family at home. He always conceived of this as the most natural situation for a painter. And he grew close to the baby boy.

Ironically, Sien's family, instead of feeling grateful for Vincent having saved her from the streets, quickly turned on him. Her mother pressed Sien to leave Vincent. Why they changed their attitude toward him is not clear, but it's possible that they were disapponted to learn that Sien's "savior" was perfectly indigent. It's possible that they suspected he was merely trying to keep her around for free sex. Whatever the reason, they became an issue between Vincent and Sien, and the relationship over the period of a year and a half steadily deteriorated. In his letters to Theo, Vincent's proud sermons on love eventually became little more than gripes about Sien, about her courseness, and especially about her family's meddling. More or less by mutual agreement, they went their separate ways in September, 1882. Believe it or not, this was Vincent's longest and truest romantic relationship. Perhaps the only relationship in his life that deserves the name, even if in the final analysis there was very little romance involved at all.

(In Part 2: Why this relationship mattered so much to my book.)

Sister, sister

Earlier today I was reworking a scene which while presented in the third person is from the perspective of Vincent's sister Lies. The middle sister, very little is reported about Lies in the literature on Van Gogh or in his letters. (I have seen a picture of her and read that she was interested in writing. That's pretty much it.) This is good in one way: I'm free to imagine her as I want. Maybe because of that, I found myself gravitating to Lies's point of view in several scenes featuring Vincent's family. There's nothing wrong with the scenes as written, but it's a fact of his biography that, after Theo, Vincent was closest to his youngest sister Wil. He wrote letters to her from France, and even considered introducing her someday to Boch, a Belgian poet and painter whom he met in Arles. After Theo, she was the most sympathetic toward Vincent's ambition to become a painter. And yet, I don't seem to highlight her that often in the novel.

In the rewriting process I have struggled with this, forcing myself to put more of her into the book. I'm starting to wonder if this desire is based solely on biographical fact and if I should stop worrying about it--since I'm writing a novel. With such a well known individual as Van Gogh, is the fiction writer expected to play it closer to the documented life? I tend to think so, even if in the end I, of course, need to stay true to what my novel needs. But here's the thing. I feel more comfortable writing from Lies's point of view. Wil, a lot of the time, feels like an add on. If this were any other novel I would simply cut Wil's character out. Can I do that in a historical novel? Well, yes, I can, obviously. (And maybe I will!) But what I'm really asking is can I do that without suffering repercussions of a kind that are never suffered by the writer of a strictly fictional novel. Can I get away with it without anyone noticing? I don't think so. Certainly not Van Gogh enthusiasts, whom I hope will be interested in reading this book. So what, if anything, to do differently with Vincent's sisters is one of the many crucial decisions I will face in coming months.

Struggling with what Theo believes

Yesterday, I was working over a scene in which Vincent's brother Theo receives Potato Eaters from him. All you need to know for now is that Potato Eaters is considered one of the finest, if the not the finest, paintings Van Gogh completed during his Dutch Period. I can't know for sure what Theo thought about it, but I do know that he hung it in his living room, which says a lot. Even he must have realized what an accomplishment Potato Eaters was; he must have seen how far Vincent had come in his technique and in his vision. At least that is how I play the scene out. While this didn't happen in real life, I have Theo receiving the painting already in a frame, the point being to show Vincent cared about how exactly it would be seen. (Don't get me wrong. He always cared about how his pictures were seen. He just couldn't afford to frame them. So he mailed them to Theo and told him how they should be framed.)

I like the scene. In it Theo's nervousness is highlighted. He knows Vincent has invested a great deal of time and effort and pride into what might turn out to be a failure. And if so he won't know how to tell Vincent that. Before Theo opens the box and sees that the painting isn't a failure, I have him speculate as to what makes or doesn't make a great painting. It's a weird passage. It felt right to me as I wrote it, at least in terms of what Theo might think jus then, but looking it over I'm not sure I even agree with it. Theo's a sympathetic character, so this makes me a little nervous. Of course, every writer has to deal with characters who think or do something that the writer wouldn't in life approve of. But because we're talking about the nature of art, here, I'm a little more squeamish.

In short, Theo argues that the mark of near-great art is that it's dominated by ideas, by precosity. The artist is fixated on pursuing an intriguing Idea rather than beauty, whereas in front of a great work of art "he fe[els] as if his head ha[s] been shot open and his thoughts drained away with his blood. There c[an] be no thoughts in front of a great painting, only a disbelieving awe." I don't stop there. I also add: "The great painters Theo kn[ows] d[o] not struggle so much to master technique—that they had learned ages ago—but to rid themselves of ideas, to so clear their minds of precosity as to let the technique be automatic; guided less by strategy then by will." This seems like an awfully conservative, Romantic notion of creation, one that I actually try to fight in my own creative writing classrooms. I don't have Theo say that the painting "just comes to you" when you're inspired--that would truly be drivel. I don't have him discount technique. I even indicate that master painters have already learned technique, and learned it well. So well they can surpass it. But I'm not sure that latter point actually comes across. It's his Against-the-Idea credo that dominates the passage, a credo which seems to resist the fact that a lot of important 20th century art--art I love--is hinged on interesting, novel, radical ideas. Do I really believe what Theo thinks here? Does he? Is it only a moment's impulse, one he'll contradict two minutes later? (We all do that, don't we?) Maybe; maybe not. Bottom line: I did enjoy writing the passage, and I'll just have to squirm about it.

Juggling, juggling

Today I'm editing and revising what I've written about Van Gogh's two years in Nuenen. These were important years for him. He wasn't yet the painter he would become, but--through dogged work habits and finally some peace in his life--he began to mature and produce some of his first exceptional work. It's also known as his "Dutch Period." My big problem as I look over what I've written is knowing how much and what to include. There are so many different aspeccts of his life in Nuenen that, in my opinion, need and deserve to be reflected in the novel: his up and down relationship with his family, especially his parents (who lived in Nuenen); his suddenly strained relationship with his close friend Anthon Van Rappard; his first forays into teaching drawing and painting to others; his up and down relationship with the town; his growing insight into the "laws" of color, especially as interpreted by Eugéne Delacroix, a painter he greatly admired; his indifference to the Impressionists (about whom he knew only a little then), his father's death and how that affected the family; his difficulties finding models; his ever desperate need for indepedence; his love of Brabant and the peasant population; his ongoing epistolary relationship with his brother Theo. And that's just a starting list.

You can see my problem. In a novel that's already getting too big, how do I make scenes out of all that stuff and keep this beast from becoming Ugly Monster Big. By very judicious choices, of course. But that's easier said than done. By giving the novel what the novel needs--and nothing else. Of course, but that's easier said than done. It all seems necessary. (This guy had a quietly big life!) Errrr . . . The old schoolboy nerd in me really comes out in these situations. I want to be thorough! I want to cover it all! I remember way back in high school when I was assigned to do an oral presentation for an American History class. I was assigned a reading and basically was just supposed to explicate it to the class. I can't remember the time limit, but I went up to and beyond it--and I still wasn't done. More points to get to! The teacher had to stop me and schedule the rest of my presentation for the next day. "I think I gave John too much to read," he said, very generously. But I remember, even then, realizing the truth: I just didn't choose carefully enough. I tried to give too much information. It all seemed fascinating, relevant, important. Yes, I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was . . .