If there’s a writer out there that can make a story about the color blue funny, it’s Moore. He’s got better comedic timing on paper than most stand-up comedians on stage and he has a wickedly absurd imagination to boot. Which is why I was disappointed with Sacre Bleu.In his Afterword, he briefly mentions how his quest to write about blue turned into his fantastical revisionism of the Impressionists. To his credit, this book could have turned into a pretentious, smirky, one-eyebrow raising bore. But it doesn’t. Moore still comes through with crassness and thinly-veiled innuendo. Mostly thanks to Toulouse-Lautrec. However, I think, at the risk of sounding like a total mouth-breather, the book is just too intelligent.
Not complicated intelligent, just a little too self-aware. It feels more like a research project than a story. I like how Moore incorporates the artist’s paintings into the plot, but at times it’s disjointed. It feels like an attempt to have history fit into the story rather than the story unfolding on its own.
Regardless, even a less than stellar Moore book is more enjoyable than most ways to spend a Saturday. And, no, I’m not going to list those above it. As always, he gets points on total creativity and appreciation for pushing the bounds of what a story can be. Sometimes things just don’t gel well.
