More information, for those of you who are afraid to read something unless they can find someone to tell them it's OK to read it. :-) There are quotes from three such "authorities" on this page:
http://www.chrismoore.com/sacrebleu.html <http://www.chrismoore.com/sacrebleu.html> And here's the ultimate authority, Chris himself, in a blurb he wrote for Amazon explaining why he wrote the book: I suppose it started when I learned the circumstances of the suicide of Vincent van Gogh; how he had finished a painting, then walked into a corn field and shot himself, and not in the manner one thinks of a suicide. He shot himself in the abdomen, then walked over a mile on a rough trail through the woods above the village of Auvers, France, to the home of his friend, Doctor Gachet, for help. It seemed clear to me that this was not the behavior of a suicidal man. (Particularly when you see how well he was painting at the time.) Vincent had been murdered, and for some reason, I guess from looking at his paintings, I thought that the color blue might be a clue to the circumstances of his murder. So I decided to write a novel about the color blue. When it first occurred to me, I had no idea what a can of paint of I was opening. I've written historical novels before, but I'd always picked periods and stories that had huge blank spots in them, spots that I could fill in with my story. But I was about to write about the period in which the French Impressionists rose to prominence, and unlike the life of Jesus or the court of King Lear, where very little was known about what actually happened, I could pretty much look up what each of the Impressionists had for breakfast every morning. It was a curse of riches. There was more material than I could ever cover in a single story, unless I found a way to constrain it. So, to pursue my murder mystery, my tale of an art movement, my portrayal of the Belle Epoche in Paris, I had to find a point of view that would help me cover the time period, from 1863 to 1891 and beyond, so I invented, Lucien Lessard, the baker of Montmartre, Paristhe baker who wants to be a painter, whose father was a patron of Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne when they were at their poorest, and who attended art school with Vincent van Gogh and his best friend, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Lucien and Henri would be my detectives, and with them, we would discover not only Vincent's killer, but the secret and magic behind the mysterious shade of "sacred blue" (Sacré Bleu), and how it had inspired and haunted artists all through history. Four years after the notion first occurred to me, I turned in the manuscript to Sacré Bleu, and I think it is what I had hoped it could be: a mystery, a fantasy, a romance, a comedy, a history, and an appreciation. I didn't have an art education going into this book, but I certainly do coming out, and I hope that the reader will painlessly and joyfully, share some of the enthusiasm I have for the subject. Or, as it says in the prelude: "Blue is glory and power, a wave, a particle, a vibration, a resonance, a spirit, a passion, a memory, a vanity, a metaphor, a dream. Blue is a simile. Blue, she is like a woman." --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb wrote: > > I finally had time to sit and read on my vacation, and thus finished > Christopher Moore's "Sacre Bleu." I highly recommend it to anyone who 1) > loves Paris, 2) loves art, especially the Impressionist period, and 3) > loves occasionally laugh-out-loud humor, disguised as a serious mystery > about the circumstances of Vincent Van Gogh's murder. > > The best part is the dialogue, between artists such as Henri de > Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro, Manet, Monet, Whistler, Seurat, and the > other giants who changed the face of art while leading entertainingly > dissolute lives at the turn of the 19th century. The next best part, at > least for me, is the way Chris "fleshed out" (so to speak) what the > Paris of that time would have been like for someone living there. > Naturally, being the sensitive, highly evolved soul I am, I enjoyed > Henri's exploits in the maisons closes of Paris quite a bit, and did not > find them at all superfluous or out of place. After all, if you're hot > on the heels of a serial killer who is tens of thousands years old, you > *need* a break every so often, and the girls of the original Moulin > Rouge provided such a break. > > They also served "double duty" and became his models and muses, and thus > will be remembered and revered FAR longer than anyone reading this, > especially those who get uptight at even the mention of "houses of > pleasure." For them, to help "make their day" and set them off on > another round of self-righteous righteous indignation, here's one of my > favorite classic Messy Nessy Chic articles. > > http://www.messynessychic.com/2012/12/11/inside-the-paris-brothels-of-th\ \ > e-belle-epoque/ > > he-belle-epoque/> >
