On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry

This small but memorable treatise, written "for all who live in the country of the blue," examines the color as state of mind, as Platonic Ideal, as a notoriously erotic hue, and as a color of our interior life. In a brilliant, extended meditation, Gass mulls over blue in literature and art, dance, music, and the popular press. No shade or variation escapes his engaged and engaging prose or his vertiginous asides. This is a witty, lyrical, highly original, and beautifully written book that demands to be read and redefines the meaning of a "philosophical inquiry." "Not since Herman Melville pondered the whiteness of Moby Dick has a region of the spectrum been subjected to such eclectic scrutiny. . . Gass gives philosophy back its good old name as a feast that can never sate the mind."Time BLUE PENCILS, blue noses, blue movies, laws, and stockings. The dumps, mopes, Mondays; the ocean, the sky, and the deep, deep ice. The Whale. Jay. Ribbon. Fin. The grass in Kentucky. [...]The china in Grandmother’s pantry. Of all the colors, blue has the widest range of associations, and the widest bandwidth of emotional tints and shades. It is therefore the most suitable color of interior life. Whether slick light sharp high bright and thin or low deep sweet thick dark and soft, blue moves easily among them all, and all profoundly qualify our states of feeling. This eccentric essay into the "world of blue" is the heart of the heart of Gass’s oeuvre.