Pink
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Book Overview
Gus Van Sant goes from auteur to author in an brilliant, inventive, and endlessly entertaining first novel that reads like a Warholian mix of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins.
"When you come across a novel as weird and innocent as PINK, you know it's got to be real and you know it's got to be read. Gus Van Sant is a Luke Skywalker of the heart."--Tom Robbins In the town of Sasquatch, Oregon, Spunky Davis, middle-aged maker of infomercials, is trying to find his next assignment, finish the screenplay that he hopes will bring him Hollywood glory, and deal with the death of his friend and favorite infomercial presenter, teen idol Felix Arroyo. Enter two young aspiring filmmakers, Jack and Matt, whom Spunky finds strangely familiar--especially as Jack bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Felix. But Jack and Matt are not what they appear to be; they are messengers from a dimension beyond time known as Pink, and they invite Spunky to join them on their voyage of transcendence and recovery. Using a delirious array of voices signified by different typefaces, a flip cartoon that animates the novel's action, footnotes and line drawings, Gus Van Sant turns the novel into an explosively visual experience, a captivating combination of texture and text. As original and involving as any of Van Sant's films, Pink is both a hip, comic deconstruction of our image-obsessed culture and a genuinely tender story on the classic themes of love, time, and loss.
"When you come across a novel as weird and innocent as PINK, you know it's got to be real and you know it's got to be read. Gus Van Sant is a Luke Skywalker of the heart."--Tom Robbins In the town of Sasquatch, Oregon, Spunky Davis, middle-aged maker of infomercials, is trying to find his next assignment, finish the screenplay that he hopes will bring him Hollywood glory, and deal with the death of his friend and favorite infomercial presenter, teen idol Felix Arroyo. Enter two young aspiring filmmakers, Jack and Matt, whom Spunky finds strangely familiar--especially as Jack bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Felix. But Jack and Matt are not what they appear to be; they are messengers from a dimension beyond time known as Pink, and they invite Spunky to join them on their voyage of transcendence and recovery. Using a delirious array of voices signified by different typefaces, a flip cartoon that animates the novel's action, footnotes and line drawings, Gus Van Sant turns the novel into an explosively visual experience, a captivating combination of texture and text. As original and involving as any of Van Sant's films, Pink is both a hip, comic deconstruction of our image-obsessed culture and a genuinely tender story on the classic themes of love, time, and loss.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0385493533
ISBN13:9780385493536
Release Date:November 1998
Publisher:Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Length:272 Pages
Weight:0.55 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"
Related Subjects
Contemporary Fiction Gay Literary Literature & Fiction Science Fiction Science Fiction & FantasyCustomer Reviews
4 ratings
an ode to a lost friend
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
I was drawn to this book because I'm a Gus Van Sant fan, and I knew it dealt with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves and the filming of "My Own Private Idaho", one of my favorite films. I'm a shameless queer culture junkie, and anything suggesting salacious real-life happenings grabs my attention instantly. Van Sant takes us on an interesting trip through his attempts to cope with the loss of River, who was a close friend. There are characters based on River, Keanu, Kurt Cobain, Flea, and others, and it's fun to try to guess who's who, and how much of the backstory is true and how much is, as the book is classified, fiction. There's no doubt that Van Sant took liberties with his thinly-veiled characters, but if I had the chance to write about having a long-standing affair with Keanu Reeves, I probably would too, so I can't judge Gus too harshly for that self-indulgence. What's clear is that Van Sant cared a great deal about the people he's written about, and that facing a sudden, senseless death of a close friend makes for difficult times.
Great Great Great
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
It's pretty rare to find something original, something that makes you think about something besides yourself (while providing insights into your own life), something that's worth reading again and again and again (1)...I think pink is like that. Like his movies, you have to let yourself get caught up in it...take Psycho, for example. It wasn;t scary, it didn;t really work, but that was the POINT: art that was brilliant a paltry three decades ago doesn't work now, even when recreated frame for frame, line for line. Maybe it's self-indulgent, but Pink does work. You get introduced to new...and you're missing out if you can't stop making yourself the center of everything you experience. I don;t know, I loved it, especially the end. (1) the footnotes are the best example of how good this book is
Kirkus is stupid.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 27 years ago
This book is remarkable for what it tries to do. Of course it won't appeal to fans of less experimental literature, but what do expect from Gus Van Sant? If you like anything he's ever been involved with before, you'll like the book.
Screw the Kirkus review. This book rocks.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 27 years ago
That guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Really. It's awesome
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