Sometimes a certain book - like a song, a line of poetry, the face of a stranger in the street - has the power to evoke powerful memories of the past. While recently browsing the “new book” shelves of the West Asheville Public Library, I came across Gerhard Gruitrooy’s Van Gogh, a book filled with paintings that brought back memories of many visits to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Those visits to the Boston museum - I was clerking in the Old Comer Book Store, had little money but lots of time, and went weekly on the free admission afternoons - made me aware of how strong great art is, how it possesses the power to alter the way we view the world around us. I have mentioned before in this column the effect of those paintings on me, of leaving the museum and seeing with different eyes the autumn foliage, the sunlight, the pavement and traffic, as if they had been created by an impressionist.

Van Gogh brought up those memories, and so I checked the book out and carried it home with me. It is not, of course, the sort of book you read cover to cover; I flipped back and forth at random through the pages, stopping at whatever particular text or painting caught my attention. I had forgotten how beautiful Van Gogh painted blues and yellows; “The Langlois Bridge,” for example, with its cerulean intensity, brings a delightful tranquility to the viewer. Nor had I ever realized how quickly Van Gogh could paint at times, producing 200 paintings and an additional 100 drawings and watercolors in the 14 months he spent in Arles.

Guitrooy’s narrative is lively and easily read, and his explanations of the individual paintings help explain their background and how Van Gogh came to paint them. There is some psychoanalysis of Van Gogh, some of it apparently valid, some ridiculous, as in the idea that Van Gogh cut off a portion of his ear because he had a ringing of the inner ear, or that Van Gogh’s great failing was a lack of self-esteem. Guitrooy does put these sort of theories into the context of Van Gogh’s life, and has the common sense to discount some of them.

My Mississippi
A second coffee-table book pulled from the shelf that day was My Mississippi. With text by the late Willie Morris and photographs by his son, David Rae Morris, this book gives us a look at a state that many people living outside Mississippi have never understood. Friends are always shocked when I tell them that Mississippi is one of the three places in the United States other than North Carolina where I wouldn’t mind settling; I can never give very good reasons for this selection except to say that I like Mississippi writers, Mississippians themselves are truly friendly, and many parts of the state are gorgeous, the Delta in particular being so lovely and alien to my Carolina eyes that it seems a foreign country.

Although the book is not Willie Morris at his best - he wrote it in failing health - he nonetheless imparts to readers an enormous array of information. His descriptions of Mississippi’s ethnic groups demolishes the stereotype of Mississippians as either white rednecks or black fieldhands; there are many ethnic groups in Mississippi, ranging from the Choctaw tribe to the Chinese. His accounting of sports in Mississippi, where football and baseball matter almost as much as church membership, is both detailed and interesting. Included in the sport section are looks at cheerleading clinics, high school bands, and baton twirlers. In just one of many anecdotes, Morris writes that

Here is a fact that not many people know, even in Mississippi. Up until his senior year in the newly integrated Columbia High, when he decided to go out for football, Walter Payton, probably the greatest football player of all time, was the drum major for the high school band.

My Mississippi ends with a collection of photographs by David Morris. What struck me about these photographs was the joy and exuberance displayed by the subjects. Gone are Walker Evans’ stark images of the Depression South. Here is Mississippi at the millenium, blacks and whites, young and old, all giving the reader a sense that they are moving into the future without giving up the best of the past.

Near the beginning of this book, Morris relates a story that perhaps sums up what Mississippians feel about their state. Recently diagnosed with a rare liver disease, Walter Payton was appearing on the Larry King Live show:

A call came in from Jackson, obviously a white man, who told Payton that the thoughts and prayers of the entire city were with him and that his illness had stirred renewed interest in organ donations throughout Mississippi. The camera was on Walter, who was so moved he could not respond except by crying. After a moment of poignant silence Larry King said, “That’s home,” and Walter repeated through his tears, “That’s home.”

(Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars Bookstore on Main Street in Waynesville.)

 

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