Working at a small library I'm the person who processes all the books and enters their data into the library catalog.
A problem I have, every once in a while, with doing this is that I end up looking at all the books, not just a casual look to get the title and other information needed but very often I leaf through books and get somewhat sidetracked.
Here is one book that most definitely derailed my job this morning. The title is "They Went That-Away: How the Famous, the Infamous and the Great Died" by Malcolm Forbes. Many might think this is gross but, holy kamoly, it's interesting. For instance I knew that Vincent Van Gogh killed himself but I didn't know the "rest of the story".
| Starry Night Vincent Van Gogh |
Van Gogh was an artist for only the last ten years of his life. Before that he was an art teacher and a lay preacher. It is now surmised that he suffered from epilepsy and schizophrenia which eventually caused him to commit himself to an asylum at St. Remy, where he painted "Starry Night" and many of his other important works. Van Gogh, after leaving the asylum, moved to Auvers, outside Paris, to be near his brother Theo. He lived with a Dr. Paul Gachet who was taken with Van Gogh's art, Suffering from ongoing hallucinations, Van Gogh could no longer handle it and while Dr. Gachet was away on July 27, 1890, he took a gun with him to the fields and behind a manure pile in a farmyard where he often painted, shot himself in the chest. He didn't die immediately and staggered back to his room in Dr. Gachet's home. When Gachet found him. To Gachet Van Gogh murmured, "I missed myself." He smoked his pipe through the night and into the next day he developed a very high fever and became delirious.
At 1 a.m. on July 29th he died. His very last words were; "There is no end to sorrow."
