Paper is 60-pound Franklin Library '1854' Cream, typeface is 11-point Bodoni Book, gilt is 22 karat. Franklin's as-always lavish binding, in a limited signed edition of Stone's 1934 first major publication, the biographical novel 'Lie Down in Darkness'.
Full rich brown leather, gilt decorated and imprinted, spine panels rib divided, All Edges Gilt, deep maroon moire endpapers, with matching satin page-marker ribbon. Octavo, 512 pp., illustrations by Howard Rogers, commissioned for this edition. Includes the rather scarce 22-page "Notes from the Editors", which accompanied this edition in its original shipment. Signed by Irving Stone on the third free end paper. Franklin Center, PA: The Franklin Library, 1981. Would his mental health ultimately have fared better if they had? This work being fiction, it naturally piqued my curiosity to learn how much was factual and how much speculative, so next I'll have to pick up Heiligman's biography, Vincent and Theo.Hardcover. It was heartbreaking, though, as he, as well as Vincent's friends and acquaintances, continuously encouraged him for years upon years, but always cruelly regretting that, alas, they could not yet exhibit any of his work. Vincent's brother Theo was astonishingly, almost mind-blowingly supportive. I referred frequently to online images of Van Gogh's drawings and paints as they were mentioned in the narrative.
This book echoes some of the same themes, including the fine line between genius and madness and an artist's willingness to starve themselves or live in squalor in pursuit of their craft. When I placed this book on my TBR I had no particular interest in Van Gogh, but I had just read the author's breathtaking and unforgettable biographical fiction book, The Agony and the Ecstasy, about Michelangelo. Becoming malnourished, weak and physically and mentally ill while chasing his passion but never realizing success would prove to be recurring circumstances for the rest of his life. Accepting a ministerial position in an impoverished Belgian coal mining community, he was inspired by the rough and downtrodden faces surrounding him, and he eschewed his comfortable lodgings, nearly starving himself while giving most of his allowance to the locals he asked to model for him as he made his first forays into crude drawing. He was expected to go into the art business as well but grew frustrated by having to sell terrible art to wealthy clients who couldn't discern the difference between talent and rubbish. Vincent Van Gogh was the son of a clergyman, though his extended family were quite prosperous art dealers.
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