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On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Published:
New York Review Books 2014
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Description
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 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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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
03/18/2014
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781590177327
ASIN:
B00FDS43F2
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

William H. Gass. (2014). On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry. New York Review Books.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

William H. Gass. 2014. On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry. New York Review Books.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

William H. Gass, On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry. New York Review Books, 2014.

MLA Citation (style guide)

William H. Gass. On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry. New York Review Books, 2014.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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591d40a6-21d0-0ee6-0119-c9c7d470d567
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 15:48:47
Date Updated:
Dec 06, 2020 02:41:41
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 24, 2024 07:10:42
Last Metadata Change:
Feb 21, 2024 05:35:56
Last Availability Check:
Mar 24, 2024 07:10:45
Last Availability Change:
Mar 17, 2024 11:22:06
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 28, 2024 02:11:39

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On Being Blue
fullDescription
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 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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      • source: Brian Dillon, The Guardian
      • content: "[On Being Blue] is a talismanic, self-contained kind of book that seems more giving, more delicious each time one returns."
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      • source: Jaun Vidal, NPR
      • content: "The mark of a good essay is its ability to span worlds -- illuminate complex ideas with a careful, personal touch. In On Being Blue there is life and death, pleasure, sadness, sex, personhood, theology -- worlds of words."
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      • source: The New Republic
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      • content: "Gass is a philosopher-voluptuary, someone who romances language with a roué's cunning, and isn't afraid to play with words and ideas for sheer sport."
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      • source: Gilbert Sorrentino
      • content: "On Being Blue is a luminous work, a tour de force on blue, that word (and color) reverberant with what is called experience. On Being Blue celebrates both language and that which it represents and carefully draws our attention to that difficult middle ground on which the writer finds himself in lifelong struggle to join the two without sullying or smearing the clarities of either."
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      • content: "This is a tour de force...a virtuoso performance of great imaginative force."
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      • content: "An enchanting book."
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      • source: Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post Book World
      • content: "A blue-black, slightly brackish beauty of a book, a philosophical essay written, for the most part, with the lilt of a Renaissance epithalamium."
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shortDescription
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 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...
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