On being blue, a philosophical inquiry by William Gass

On Being Blue is a remarkable piece of rumination: it toes, wades, pulls its skirt up and immerses itself in the word 'blue.' Blue noses, blue laws, blue devils, blueblood; Gass begins by producing wonder, and we say: / didn't know the word 'blue' could be used in so many different ways. Bluebird, blue coats, blue collar, bluing. . . . Gass' work is first, then, an homage to the word 'blue'-a celebration of it, in all its astonishing multiplicity. Much of the book consists of just this: in bathing in the word 'blue':