How to Get Rich

by Felix Dennis

If you happen to read biographies, as I do (scores of them every year), you will find a thread that runs through almost any story of success against the odds. Whether money comes into it or not. Whether the person succeeded or failed. Or even, most sadly of all, when they did succeed, but did not live long enough to learn of their success. In one of the finest such books in the world, Letters to My Brother by the artist Vincent van Gogh, collected and published long after his death, you will find unbearable heartbreak, madness, rejection, hunger, passion, nightmare terrors and a tale of a man who never gave in. Who would not give in, though it cost him his life. Van Gogh’s obsessions and talents drove him mad. And he knew it. They goaded and scourged him. He said himself that he had given his life and half his sanity to his art. There was only one shining star of kindliness in his universe. His brother, Theo. Theo, despite the sensible entreaties of his sensible wife (who could scarcely abide, let alone understand, her husband’s wastrel brother), kept sending what little he could afford for Vincent to purchase brushes, canvas and paint. These acts of charity, which Theo could not easily afford and which grieved Vincent to receive, changed the course of the history of art. Because Vincent often had no money. None at all. He would sell his paintings to peasants or inn-keepers in exchange for food and board. Canvases that would later sell for tens of millions of dollars were ...