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I studied a lot of stuff from the Modernists in my collegiate years, because that was apparently the in thing to do in the early 90's curricula at my school, so I have a healthy, informed loathing of most of the art from that period, extending a bit to either side, because I'm good at splash damage, and think that the entire PoMo movement is a facile, self-aware pile of crap, and, less-informedly, that the Impressionists that got the ball rolling were, while doing some interesting stuff, still an opaque pain in the ass to grasp.
It's taken a combination of Doctor Who and Christopher Moore to make me not resent Vincent van Gogh, and even though Vinnie is mostly tangential to the story here, it's his famous death that kicks the story off.
If you're looking for Moore's usual litany of zaniness, it's present but muted and somewhat sparser than in his other work. I actually found his epilogue, where he talks about his research, to be fairly engaging in ways that some portions of the narrative weren't (see my aforementioned antipathy towards the subject), but it's an entertaining book nonetheless.
And, most amusingly to me, it neatly tells a very close approximation of an absolutely terrible erotic horror short I wrote in college - in how many ways can aliens and the color blue sexually predate upon those in whom they inspire a fevered response? I went more sci-fi/matrix with my version (note: this was 1994, well before The Matrix came out) and it never would have occurred to me to dump the idea among a bunch of French Impressionists... but Moore definitely pulls it off with aplomb and fun.
Three and a half ill-considered brothel visits out of five.
It's taken a combination of Doctor Who and Christopher Moore to make me not resent Vincent van Gogh, and even though Vinnie is mostly tangential to the story here, it's his famous death that kicks the story off.
If you're looking for Moore's usual litany of zaniness, it's present but muted and somewhat sparser than in his other work. I actually found his epilogue, where he talks about his research, to be fairly engaging in ways that some portions of the narrative weren't (see my aforementioned antipathy towards the subject), but it's an entertaining book nonetheless.
And, most amusingly to me, it neatly tells a very close approximation of an absolutely terrible erotic horror short I wrote in college - in how many ways can aliens and the color blue sexually predate upon those in whom they inspire a fevered response? I went more sci-fi/matrix with my version (note: this was 1994, well before The Matrix came out) and it never would have occurred to me to dump the idea among a bunch of French Impressionists... but Moore definitely pulls it off with aplomb and fun.
Three and a half ill-considered brothel visits out of five.
