Whoopee! Just before leaving The Netherlands I have finished this book! I've underlined and written comments in it so I can get back to you guys with some thoughts on it. (After the move.) Has anyone else here finished? Overall impressions? I was thinking (spoiler alert) that it would end with his (now disputed) suicide and actually I love how they chose to finish it because it reads somehow like a book and not just his letters. There is a beginning and an end if you will, but I suppose that is life too.
I don't know what I think about these new theories, that he had epilepsy, that someone else killed him. Ok, it does sound like he was having fits later in life, but is that epilepsy or was it brought on by his previous intake of the green fairy? And he talks many times about how his sex life no longer interests him so how can the premise that he was flirting with girls of some reckless teenagers/young adults who killed him. My father-in-law finds it very fishy, saying that it is just people from the town making up stories to make themselves feel important. Perhaps. He certainly seemed unhappy with life at the end. Whether he was capable of killing himself, who knows. But maybe yes as he felt such a burden to his brother. Or maybe it was during one of his fits. He claimed to not remember parts of some of his fits.
In any case, he was very intense and I guess that is why it took me so long to get through this book. I was at times annoyed with him, but still the whole time admired his passion for painting. Nothing stopped him, not even mental and physical illness, from getting back to his painting. Being in the middle of moving myself and struggling just to sketch once in a while amid the madness (pun intended) I find that incredibly admirable. To have that level of focus, that even amid his own self-caused chaos he felt the drive to paint and succeeded in doing so, is something I'm willing to stand in ovation of. Bravo.
I don't know what I think about these new theories, that he had epilepsy, that someone else killed him. Ok, it does sound like he was having fits later in life, but is that epilepsy or was it brought on by his previous intake of the green fairy? And he talks many times about how his sex life no longer interests him so how can the premise that he was flirting with girls of some reckless teenagers/young adults who killed him. My father-in-law finds it very fishy, saying that it is just people from the town making up stories to make themselves feel important. Perhaps. He certainly seemed unhappy with life at the end. Whether he was capable of killing himself, who knows. But maybe yes as he felt such a burden to his brother. Or maybe it was during one of his fits. He claimed to not remember parts of some of his fits.
In any case, he was very intense and I guess that is why it took me so long to get through this book. I was at times annoyed with him, but still the whole time admired his passion for painting. Nothing stopped him, not even mental and physical illness, from getting back to his painting. Being in the middle of moving myself and struggling just to sketch once in a while amid the madness (pun intended) I find that incredibly admirable. To have that level of focus, that even amid his own self-caused chaos he felt the drive to paint and succeeded in doing so, is something I'm willing to stand in ovation of. Bravo.