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:
...
Geoff Dyer had always wanted to write a book about D. H. Lawrence. He wanted, in fact, to write his "Lawrence book." The problem was, he had no idea what his "Lawrence book" would be, though he was determined to write a "sober academic study."...
The book is dedicated to the emerging socialist, revolutionary new art after the collapse of the USSR. The slogan of such art: "We take inspiration from the rich and give it to the poor." Oleg Leonov addresses important issues of private ownership...
The Case Against Wagner was one Nietzsche’s last books, and his wittiest. In Wagner’s music, in his doctrine, in his whole concept of art, Nietzsche saw the confirmation, the promotion, even the encouragement, of that decadence and degeneration...
Included in Library Journal’s "25 Key Indie Fiction Titles, Fall 2014-Winter 2015".
Within the writer's life, words and things acquire power. For Borges it is the tiger and the color red, for Cortázar a pair of amorous lions, and for an early...