Soon after his death, Vincent van Gogh's reputation grew and developed
through the remarkably symbiotic relationship evident between his
paintings and letters. However, the sheer bulk and complexity of Van
Gogh's complete surviving correspondence presents a formidable challenge
to those who wish to read and analyze the whole text as a literary work.
Reading Vincent van Gogh is at once an interpretive guide to Van
Gogh's letters and a distillation of the key themes that reoccur
throughout his collected letters - foremost among them the motifs of
suffering, love, imagination, and the ineffable. In this indispensable,
synoptic view of the letters, Patrick Grant makes the main lines of
Vincent van Gogh's thinking accessible and displays the arresting
vividness of the well-known artist's writing.