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

"If it were possible to produce a high definition video of what goes on between a great writer and his words, it might look like this––exhibitionist, virtuosic, and true. A bad breath of misogyny kills the thrill every now and again, but the thrust of the argument still feels right. George Orwell (in 'Politics and the English Language') and David Foster Wallace (in 'Authority and American Usage') ask critics (particularly scholars and academics) not to abuse the language, but Gass, through his own fondling, invites us to show it some love."
— Eula Biss, National Book Critics Circle