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Van Gogh's Bad Café
The author of Tintin in the New World presents a blend of fantasy and romance about the last days of Vincent van Gogh and his obsessive love affair with an opium-addicted nineteen-year-old photographer. Tour.
163 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
Frederic Tuten
39 books66 followersFrederic Tuten is the author of Tintin in the New World, The Green Hour, and Self Portraits, among other fiction. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Writing. He lives in New York City."
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 16, 2019
An odd little book that somehow I found myself liking while at the same time not enjoying it very much at all.
One day at the end of the twentieth century, while rambling in Alphabet City, NYC, our narrator meets a mysterious young Frenchwoman, dressed in archaic garb, who steps out of a crevice in a wall. She is, it emerges, Ursula, the lover of Vincent van Gogh. Somehow she has traveled through time and space to be here. At first all she wants to find is a reliable source of the morphine she craves. For his part all the narrator wants is her love, but that's something she can't give him because it belongs to Vincent, to whom she's determined to return once she's explored this new age. She can be the friend of the narrator (whom she calls Louis, after her morphine dealer back in the old time), and occasionally his lover, but love itself: no.
And so we have two love stories running through the novel: that of the futile love of "Louis" for Ursula and that of the strange but seemingly genuine love between Ursula and Vincent.
Where I had real trouble here was with the writing. I felt I was having to fight my way through the often ludicrous over-extravagance of the language, like an Amazon explorer fighting through the teeming, cloying ground foliage of the rainforest. Some samples:
After that last little burst of examples I decided, for the sake of sanity, to stop noting them.
And then there are a couple of odd examples of imagery that repeats and morphs as it does so. What do I mean by this? Well, on page 1 the narrator, in his wanderings in Alphabet City, mentions how you might see "a bathtub naked on its side, and through its drain, a lone sunflower . . ." A few paragraphs later, on page 3, we encounter "a bathtub, beached among the flotsam, naked on its side, with an infant cypress tree spearing through its drain hole." I liked the image the first time and I'm sure would have liked it the second time had I not been flipping back and forth between the two pages going "Huh?"
Again, on page 71 we find that "Her father woke one day when she was nine and thought he had struck his head against the bedpost, but the blow came from seeing her . . ." Just half a dozen lines later we discover that, instead, "It was what her father felt that morning he woke and supposed he had cracked his head on the stone lintel of his bedroom door." Well, which was it, bedpost or lintel? Or is the point supposed to be that Ursula's stories are unreliable, not to be taken at face value? In my usual charitable way I strove to persuade myself of the latter explanation, but I remembered the bathtub and its drain hole.
In sum, I felt that Van Gogh's Bad Café was far too pretentious for its own good: sloppiness of language and imagery does not equate to genius. It has an intriguing, if rather slight, tale to tell; it should not expect the reader to have to struggle so hard to read that tale.
One day at the end of the twentieth century, while rambling in Alphabet City, NYC, our narrator meets a mysterious young Frenchwoman, dressed in archaic garb, who steps out of a crevice in a wall. She is, it emerges, Ursula, the lover of Vincent van Gogh. Somehow she has traveled through time and space to be here. At first all she wants to find is a reliable source of the morphine she craves. For his part all the narrator wants is her love, but that's something she can't give him because it belongs to Vincent, to whom she's determined to return once she's explored this new age. She can be the friend of the narrator (whom she calls Louis, after her morphine dealer back in the old time), and occasionally his lover, but love itself: no.
And so we have two love stories running through the novel: that of the futile love of "Louis" for Ursula and that of the strange but seemingly genuine love between Ursula and Vincent.
Where I had real trouble here was with the writing. I felt I was having to fight my way through the often ludicrous over-extravagance of the language, like an Amazon explorer fighting through the teeming, cloying ground foliage of the rainforest. Some samples:
She put her book in her lap and squinted at him as if he were a marmalade cat she happened upon in a cemetery on the moon. [p21]
. . . because he was nothing but a little impotent nothing -- a Dutchman with his canals drained and sluices clogged. [pp86-7]
. . . the coup de foudre, into his brain into his heart into his cock and balls, straight down to his big toe. [p88] [punctuation sic]
. . . forms suggestive of blurry sexual organs decomposing in space. [p89]
After that last little burst of examples I decided, for the sake of sanity, to stop noting them.
And then there are a couple of odd examples of imagery that repeats and morphs as it does so. What do I mean by this? Well, on page 1 the narrator, in his wanderings in Alphabet City, mentions how you might see "a bathtub naked on its side, and through its drain, a lone sunflower . . ." A few paragraphs later, on page 3, we encounter "a bathtub, beached among the flotsam, naked on its side, with an infant cypress tree spearing through its drain hole." I liked the image the first time and I'm sure would have liked it the second time had I not been flipping back and forth between the two pages going "Huh?"
Again, on page 71 we find that "Her father woke one day when she was nine and thought he had struck his head against the bedpost, but the blow came from seeing her . . ." Just half a dozen lines later we discover that, instead, "It was what her father felt that morning he woke and supposed he had cracked his head on the stone lintel of his bedroom door." Well, which was it, bedpost or lintel? Or is the point supposed to be that Ursula's stories are unreliable, not to be taken at face value? In my usual charitable way I strove to persuade myself of the latter explanation, but I remembered the bathtub and its drain hole.
In sum, I felt that Van Gogh's Bad Café was far too pretentious for its own good: sloppiness of language and imagery does not equate to genius. It has an intriguing, if rather slight, tale to tell; it should not expect the reader to have to struggle so hard to read that tale.
August 13, 2009
First of all, it's such a little book! I mean, it's about this size of my hand. I kind of liked that. Perfect subway reading size. And I loved that each chapter started off with a cool black and white sketch drawing.
But the novel itself? I am pretty torn. I think I've decided that I liked it. But let me warn you...this isn't really all that accurate about Van Gogh. And it's a little fanciful. Ok. Very fanciful. But the writing...the writing is beautiful. So here we go:
The narrator starts the book in present day New York City. He's sitting outside somewhere on Avenue C, when a woman somehow magically steps through a wall. She's Ursula, Van Gogh's once upon a time paramour. She calls him Louis (we never really know his real name). So then the story flashes between present day Louis and Ursula and the past with Ursula and Van Gogh. And it's all written pretty poetically.
But it's a bit weird. The whole Ursula coming to modern times. And the narrator is clearly in love with her. But Ursula is really just a spoiled girl who's main love is morphine. Yes, there are a lot of drug references. And the story with Van Gogh takes place in time, after he's been sent to the Saint Remy asylum, after he had the ear incident, and is in France. But...in real life, Van Gogh met Ursula in England...way before he was in France. Hmmm. Not too accurate.
And it seems like instead of based in fact, the novel is based on the myth of Van Gogh. The whole depression, alcoholism, love affair, obssesion, ear mutilation, absinthe drinking viewpoint. Are all these things steeped in fact? Some of it. But this is an example:
"When night fell, he'd stick a candle on the brim of his hat and paint until the wax melted down to flickering stubs and the straw went up in flames, his hair and head along with it--a red-headed man on fire, lighting his palette with his fiery crown."
This is a famous portrayal of Van Gogh. Does anyone know if Van Gogh really did this or is this just a famous legend? I was under the impression that it's a bit of a legend.
So my thought on this book? I thought the writing was poetical and at times beautiful. But it seemed that this was mainly the author's love story...his love of the legend of Van Gogh. And Ursuala...well the character isn't factually represented so it's more a tribute to the type of women Van Gogh may have been in love with. So it's sort of a bittersweet novel to me. Very poetic but I guess inaccuracies and fancifulness was sometimes a bit distracting.
But the novel itself? I am pretty torn. I think I've decided that I liked it. But let me warn you...this isn't really all that accurate about Van Gogh. And it's a little fanciful. Ok. Very fanciful. But the writing...the writing is beautiful. So here we go:
The narrator starts the book in present day New York City. He's sitting outside somewhere on Avenue C, when a woman somehow magically steps through a wall. She's Ursula, Van Gogh's once upon a time paramour. She calls him Louis (we never really know his real name). So then the story flashes between present day Louis and Ursula and the past with Ursula and Van Gogh. And it's all written pretty poetically.
But it's a bit weird. The whole Ursula coming to modern times. And the narrator is clearly in love with her. But Ursula is really just a spoiled girl who's main love is morphine. Yes, there are a lot of drug references. And the story with Van Gogh takes place in time, after he's been sent to the Saint Remy asylum, after he had the ear incident, and is in France. But...in real life, Van Gogh met Ursula in England...way before he was in France. Hmmm. Not too accurate.
And it seems like instead of based in fact, the novel is based on the myth of Van Gogh. The whole depression, alcoholism, love affair, obssesion, ear mutilation, absinthe drinking viewpoint. Are all these things steeped in fact? Some of it. But this is an example:
"When night fell, he'd stick a candle on the brim of his hat and paint until the wax melted down to flickering stubs and the straw went up in flames, his hair and head along with it--a red-headed man on fire, lighting his palette with his fiery crown."
This is a famous portrayal of Van Gogh. Does anyone know if Van Gogh really did this or is this just a famous legend? I was under the impression that it's a bit of a legend.
So my thought on this book? I thought the writing was poetical and at times beautiful. But it seemed that this was mainly the author's love story...his love of the legend of Van Gogh. And Ursuala...well the character isn't factually represented so it's more a tribute to the type of women Van Gogh may have been in love with. So it's sort of a bittersweet novel to me. Very poetic but I guess inaccuracies and fancifulness was sometimes a bit distracting.
December 11, 2019
In his lyrical love story, "Van Gogh's Bad Café," Frederic Tuten veers from the well-trodden path of Van Gogh fantasy and speculates afresh how the artist could have only killed himself for the love of a woman. A story in which life is not only mediated by art but the artist by love, this literary portrait of Van Gogh is sketched through Ursula, the sensual being who draws Vincent out from his lonely existence. With a love that blooms as fervently as the oleander in Arles, the two solitary beings become one: “‘U’ and ‘V’ side by side, for as long as there’s an alphabet.”
I recommend this short novel for anyone who is hopelessly in love with Van Gogh.
I recommend this short novel for anyone who is hopelessly in love with Van Gogh.
September 23, 2019
A book that you read as if in a fever dream is cliche, but what can I say — I’m not that original. Frederic Tuten has written the story of Van Gogh from the perspective of a junkie, one in his present time and the other in the 1980s Lower East Side of Manhattan. An unlikely bridge between worlds that works because of a dream logic that looks at art, obsession and love through a poetic lens. I read this book in only a couple of days, which added to the unreality of it, so it now sits in my mind like a recovered memory. Is it true or not doesn’t matter. It’s weird, disturbing and passes too quickly, just like life.
August 28, 2009
Tuten is no better than Tom Robbins, objectifying unlovable women with senseless worship which, while it is in a sense more than they deserve, is still just ownership.
The girl is an asshole.
The narrator has nothing better to do than convince himself he loves her.
Van Gogh is a sketch, and a pathetic one at that.
Why bother writing such beautiful (albeit often pointlessly florid) prose if you're going to put it to ends such as this?
The girl is an asshole.
The narrator has nothing better to do than convince himself he loves her.
Van Gogh is a sketch, and a pathetic one at that.
Why bother writing such beautiful (albeit often pointlessly florid) prose if you're going to put it to ends such as this?
March 6, 2020
There is no real discernable plot, however, the imagery created is fantastic. If plot is not a concern to you, this is an amazing book!
June 22, 2020
One of my all time favorite books. Time travel, obsession, addiction. I love it.
May 6, 2021
A clever time travel fantasy, economically realized.
September 27, 2025
This was a nice short read! I love time travel books and this was definitely a good one
July 22, 2017
I'd gotten this book years ago and it just sat in my room for a while because I couldn't get into reading it (I think I was too young). I finally picked it up again and read it in a day and a half and I really don't have many strong opinions on it. The writing was very lyrical, although some parts were difficult to understand. It was an interesting story about Van Gogh's lover Ursula traveling to modern New York City and meeting a struggling artist who parallels Van Gogh. It has themes of addiction, love, and despair. Very interesting story though, especially if you like Van Gogh. I also liked that before each chapter there was one of Van Gogh's little sketches.
October 4, 2012
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11358873
Maybe this is just too intelligent for me; I didn't get it. I didn't find the story particularly interesting and I think I just went through the motions of reading it without taking it in. I have just finished it, but could not describe to anyone what happened in it.
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11358873
Maybe this is just too intelligent for me; I didn't get it. I didn't find the story particularly interesting and I think I just went through the motions of reading it without taking it in. I have just finished it, but could not describe to anyone what happened in it.
December 28, 2012
If this book were hanging in a museum it would be referred to as avant-garde as it mixes allegory, time travel and meticulous observations of addiction and the flaws modern society. Essentially, Van Gogh's girlfriend finds herself in modern New York city after passing through a crack in a wall. She collides with an artist who struggles as Van Gogh does thereby igniting an interesting exploration into depression, addiction, and creativity on two plains of existence (past and present).
November 28, 2012
I picked this up at a massive clearance sale at my local bookstore, and was surprised to discover how excellent it was! Tuten's prose is delectable, and this novella perfectly showcases his style without being too drawn out. I enjoyed the mix of reality and fiction, as well as the blending of time periods. A lot of the themes of the book also resonated personally with me based on the experiences I have been dealing with recently.
July 23, 2012
This is a very poetic type of book. I enjoyed it, it was a bit confusing but it is written beautifully. There were several pages I earmarked just so I could write down some of the lines. Beautiful writing, again, it is worth the read.
November 28, 2010
The first novel I've read by Tuten. Don't know how I missed such a fine writer, but thanks to Dawn for clueing me in.
January 10, 2013
Read this one several years ago... Quirky, quick read.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews