Never has a creative intelligence laid itself bare as Vincent Van Gogh does in his letters to his brother Theo. We see him grappling with all the essential problems; his work, his family, his love objects, and historic and contemporary art and literature. He appears to us from the inside out, day-by-day, week-by-week, forging the vocabulary of modernism, painting, “not as I see things, but as I feel them.” Van Gogh appeals to us because he is the perennial lost soul, a young person trying to find his way in the world, trying to figure out the meaning of his existence, and of how he can be of use to the world.