While not completely persuasive, this alternative theory on van Gogh’s death manages to provoke doubt as to what actually...
A debut work of historical investigation argues that the famous painter of The Starry Night was murdered.
Most historians believe that the clinically depressed Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 of wounds he had sustained when he shot himself in the abdomen with a revolver. Physician and amateur sleuth Arenberg feels differently. The great artist, the author argues, was the victim of a murder and coverup so devious that they have gone largely unsuspected for well over a century. “This intriguing and epic cold case of the death of Vincent van Gogh involves multiple theories and scenarios of what happened on July 27, 1890,” writes Arenberg. “With almost no agreed-upon facts, it remains one of the most enduring legends and enigmatic unsolved mysteries of art history.” Using modern forensic analysis, documents from van Gogh and his associates, and the most recent theories of experts, the author meticulously examines the case for suicide and accident, attempting to show the ways in which the record has been misinformed, misinterpreted, or ignored. He then chases down the various suspects that might have been involved, landing finally on those who he believes actually killed the man, offering their reasons for doing so and the ways in which they were able to keep the truth from the public. Arenberg’s prose is exact and excited, making it clear just how much fun he has had trying to solve the puzzle. “She was there and saw and heard everything!” he writes, defending the credibility of Adeline Ravoux, the subject of one of van Gogh’s paintings. “She has no obvious or nefarious agenda.” As with many conspiracy-minded books, this one sometimes gets lost in the weeds, slowing momentum and diffusing tension. The audience will likely think a tighter, less shaggy work would have been a better read. Even so, there is much to be learned about the artist’s milieu and his final days, and the author enjoyably transforms some of the famous faces in van Gogh’s portraits into whodunit suspects. Fans of the revisionist theory genre should enjoy this earnest work in which the pleasure lies not in the truth but in the uncertainty.
While not completely persuasive, this alternative theory on van Gogh’s death manages to provoke doubt as to what actually happened.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72950-757-5
Page Count: 350
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
