On Being Blue: A Philosophical InquiryOn 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 and 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. |
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aesthetic ANDREY PLATONOV artificial birds bloody blue noses bluecap blueness breasts breath called chew color consciousness curse dark deep difficulties dirty ELAINE DUNDY ELIZABETH HARDWICK Ellen’s Essays feel fiction field figure fill final finally find fingers fire first fish flame flesh flowers fuck a duck Gass Gass’s girls gondola gray green GREGOR VON REZZORI hair hand hear HENRY JAMES J.G. FARRELL kind KINGSLEY AMIS kiss language legs LEONARDO SCIASCIA light lips look meaning melancholy mention mind mouth NANCY MITFORD never nipple ofthe once orgone energy PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR pencil perception pink Plato poet preparing salad prick qualities reflected Rilke sense sentences sexual shade shape SIGIZMUND KRZHIZHANOVSKY sink skin sound speech stones Stories sucking sweet taste TAYEB SALIH there’s things thought tion tongue TOVE JANSSON turn VASILY GROSSMAN VICTOR SERGE violet words yellow