On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry
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Book Overview
On Being Blue is a book about everything blue--sex and sleaze and sadness, among other things--and about everything else. It brings us the world in a word as only William H. Gass, among contemporary American writers, can do. Gass writes: Of the colors, blue and green have the greatest emotional range. Sad reds and melancholy yellows are difficult to turn up. Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, overhead and inside caves, covering fruit and oozing out of clay. Although green enlivens the earth and mixes in the ocean, and we find it, copperish, in fire; green air, green skies, are rare. Gray and brown are widely distributed, but there are no joyful swatches of either, or any of exuberant black, sullen pink, or acquiescent orange. Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life. Whether slick light sharp high bright thin quick sour new and cool or low deep sweet dark soft slow smooth heavy old and warm: blue moves easily among them all, and all profoundly qualify our states of feeling.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1590177185
ISBN13:9781590177181
Release Date:March 2014
Publisher:New York Review of Books
Length:112 Pages
Weight:0.33 lbs.
Dimensions:0.3" x 5.0" x 8.1"
Customer Reviews
5 ratings
Softly touching
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 14 years ago
...beautiful even when I had no idea what was going on for the first several pages. I don't know if this problem was an aesthetic or intellectual challenge. However, I think I found another writer that will take up considerable space on my shelves. My first Gass book is not my last _On Being Blue_ is a light, ethereal piece of beauty with the density of elemental lead. The price of admission is low, but you can take away so much. Don't limit yourself and open your arms and mind.
Women Readers Beware
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
Linguistic creme brulee. Rich, ornate, evocative; more than a philosophical inquiry, a an almost stream-of-consciousness meditation on the ways in which the word blue has been used by literature and culture in the twentieth century. A mood piece. Be forewarned: Gass's standards are utterly bizarre, and his "blue period" is misogynistic in the extreme. He relishes the tumescent meanings of blueness, but the only good "blue" scenes, in his view, are those that describe violent rape or abuse. Only if a woman is black and blue and bleeding does the blueness of the language succeed. Not for the faint-hearted, and far more Sade than sexy. Expect no wisdom, but read it for what it is: a peculiar man's lyrical virtuosity.
Keep At It
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
If I am any sort of example, you will not be sure what this book is about, until you're through. Keep at it. On the way, it's one of the most wondrous pieces of writing I've encountered. When you're there, if I am any sort of example, you will weep (for the joy of affirmation, mostly) and start again.
Thoroughly enjoyable!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
A great read! This interesting study on language has the added benefit of shocking anyone who rudely reads a few lines over your shoulder.
A book about the eroticism in writing and of writing.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 27 years ago
Sadly often difficult to find; thankfully recently reprinted, On Being Blue stands as a must read for anyone who loves language--writer or reader. Gass' prose instructs as it entertains and enlightens. This gem of a book purports to be about a single word. Blue. Yet it manages, in a very few pages, to speak cogently of how all words gather meaning "like lint in a deep pocket," of the blueness (eroticism) in writing and of writing
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