Pink

by Gus Van Sant

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385493533
• ISBN13: 9780385493536
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

an ode to a lost friend

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

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.

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.

That guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Really. It's awesome