Lust for Life by Irving Stone

Amy   

biography, historical fiction

Lust for Life by Irving Stone, about the life of Vincent Van Gogh, entered my radar when it was included in a list of good books about artists. I’ve always appreciated Van Gogh’s art. Then, I found out that my favorite narrator, Steve West, reads the audio book. PERFECT!

I had never heard of the movie based on this novel. Nor had I ever learned much about Van Gogh beyond the facts that he was troubled, cut his own ear off, and died young and poor. Therefore, almost everything in this novel was new to me.

It was interesting reading but Van Gogh’s life is easily summarized--much of this novel was great detail about the same patterns. Quite simply, I think Van Gogh would have died even earlier if it weren’t for the financial support from his brother, Theo, during the many years in which Van Gogh was trying to become a good artist. Most of the book is about Van Gogh’s obsession with work. He attacked work, no matter the type of work, in his efforts to improve himself. However, I don’t see it as a lust for life. To me, it was a lust for observing life or maybe even a lust for interpreting life—but not a lust for living life. He was never truly able to live much outside of his work circumstances due to being so driven and focused on his goals, no matter how unreachable they seemed, and never doing anything to earn money for himself. In the end, rather suddenly, he lost his motivation to keep working at his art and decided to take his own life by shooting himself.

Vincent was obsessive, manic depressive, selfish (most of the time, but definitely not always) yet not fully self-aware, and unable to understand others’ feelings about him. He seemed self-destructive and bi-polar. As he aged, he began having hallucinations and would have occasional behavioral fits. I couldn’t help but feel sorry that proper mental health care was not around to get him on track and make his life easier. Several times during his life, he was treated unfairly and was incorrectly accused of things he did not do and these situations negatively affected him. I found it amazing that his brother, Theo, was so generous and supportive of Vincent. Theo was the one person on whom Vincent could always depend. Vincent was mostly rejected by people during his life. It was really quite sad. But, he also isolated himself much of the time.

I come away from this novel knowing much more about Van Gogh than I previously knew and I found it to be a very touching, yet disturbing, story. I’m glad I read it.

As for Steve West’s narration, it was superb as always. There were many characters to juggle and many accents and a few different languages—all done perfectly. He rocks. A+.