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A review by lookhome
On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry by William H. Gass
4.0
'So a random set of meanings has softly gathered around the world the way lint collects. The mind does what. A single word, a single thought, a single thing, as Plato taught.' (7)
A whimsical stroll down the dark alleys of colour theory and thought.
This had way more references and word play than I expected and thought I read it in a single day I feel it might be best digested in smaller sittings.
It's incredibly dense in allusion and its sprawling sentences kind of suck you in and carry you in a way that, while exhilarating, might leave you looking back, asking yourself, in the immortal words of Talking Heads 'how did I get here?'.
I've since done a bit of research on the writer and now I'm very curious as to his other novels, has anyone read The Tunnel, thoughts?
'What seems to line our life with satin? what brings the rouge to both our cheeks? Loneliness, emptiness, worthlessness, grief... each is an absence in us. (11-12)
Being without Being is Blue (12)
Without plan or purpose we slide from substance to sensation, fact to feeling, all out becomes in, and we hear only exclamations of suspicious satisfaction: the uhms, the ohs, the ahs. (17)
Art, like light, needs distance, and anyone who attempts to render sexual experience directly must face the fact that writhings which comprise it are ludicrous without their subjective content (19)
I would like to suggest that a least on the face of it a stroke by stroke story or a copulation is exactly as absurd as a chew by chew account of the consumption of a chicken's wing. (20)
I am firmly of the opinion that people who can't speak have nothing to say (25)
We have a name for the Second Coming but none for a second coming (25)
I saw not the forbidden image but the forbidden object of that image, the great mystery itself (38)
If any of us were as well taken care of as a the sentences of Henry James, we'd never long for another, never wander away. (44)
Crude as it is, the case allows us to separate what is meant from what is said, and what is said from what is implied, and what is implied from what is revealed' (48)
It is the color consciousness becomes when caressed (57)
Colors flood our space so fully that there isn't any (61)
perception was a process in which a felt effect, in the moment of its existence, was nevertheless always experienced as if it were occurring in the space of its cause (65)
perceptions are always profound, associations deceiving. (77)
A whimsical stroll down the dark alleys of colour theory and thought.
This had way more references and word play than I expected and thought I read it in a single day I feel it might be best digested in smaller sittings.
It's incredibly dense in allusion and its sprawling sentences kind of suck you in and carry you in a way that, while exhilarating, might leave you looking back, asking yourself, in the immortal words of Talking Heads 'how did I get here?'.
I've since done a bit of research on the writer and now I'm very curious as to his other novels, has anyone read The Tunnel, thoughts?
'What seems to line our life with satin? what brings the rouge to both our cheeks? Loneliness, emptiness, worthlessness, grief... each is an absence in us. (11-12)
Being without Being is Blue (12)
Without plan or purpose we slide from substance to sensation, fact to feeling, all out becomes in, and we hear only exclamations of suspicious satisfaction: the uhms, the ohs, the ahs. (17)
Art, like light, needs distance, and anyone who attempts to render sexual experience directly must face the fact that writhings which comprise it are ludicrous without their subjective content (19)
I would like to suggest that a least on the face of it a stroke by stroke story or a copulation is exactly as absurd as a chew by chew account of the consumption of a chicken's wing. (20)
I am firmly of the opinion that people who can't speak have nothing to say (25)
We have a name for the Second Coming but none for a second coming (25)
I saw not the forbidden image but the forbidden object of that image, the great mystery itself (38)
If any of us were as well taken care of as a the sentences of Henry James, we'd never long for another, never wander away. (44)
Crude as it is, the case allows us to separate what is meant from what is said, and what is said from what is implied, and what is implied from what is revealed' (48)
It is the color consciousness becomes when caressed (57)
Colors flood our space so fully that there isn't any (61)
perception was a process in which a felt effect, in the moment of its existence, was nevertheless always experienced as if it were occurring in the space of its cause (65)
perceptions are always profound, associations deceiving. (77)