The Primary Colors (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

This book is an unstructured monologue on the subjects of blue, yellow, and red, delivered by an extremely well-read, well- traveled, well-connected man with an insatiable appetite for information of any kind and an astonishing ability to absorb and recall it. Blue, Theroux says in his first essay, is “the symbol of the baby boys in America, mourning in Borneo, tribulation to the American Indian, and the direction South in Tibet...Chows have blue tongues. Potato spray in Ireland is blue...It is the solid endearing color of the locomotive in Watty Piper’s THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD.” He names twelve songs by Duke Ellington with some shade of blue in the title. He provides the reader with the formula for the blue paint that covers his own bedroom walls, as well as the recipe for a “Blue Devil” cocktail. He celebrates the use of blue in painting from Mayan murals to Andy Warhol’s BLUE LIZ AS CLEOPATRA, in poetry from Vergil to Ezra Pound. He relates an anecdote in which Liberace inadvertently turned a lasagna blue by mistaking Comet cleanser for Parmesan cheese. It’s as though Theroux has made a concordance of everything he had ever experienced and was able to pull out all of the references of blue and relate them to a good friend over Stilton (“King of the English Blues”) and port (“oh, in wines, the splendiferous varieties of reds”).

Theroux’s observations are sometimes a page or two in length, sometimes packed by the score into one paragraph. If this were a scholarly work that required a reference list, this list would be many times longer than the text itself. His comments frequently begin with “You’ll recall that,” “Of course,” “Who can ever forget,” and other phrases that assume a kindred erudition in the reader. Yet his delivery is so affable that he will not alienate the majority of readers who will have to take his word for it.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. XC, August, 1994, p. 2017.

Chicago Tribune. August 28, 1994, XIV, p. 6.

Kirkus Reviews. LXII, June 15, 1994, p. 832.

Library Journal. CXIX, August, 1994, p. 84.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIX, December 4, 1994, p. 90.

The New Yorker. LXX, October 17, 1994, p. 121.

Publishers Weekly. CCXLI, June 6, 1994, p. 48.

San Francisco Chronicle. September 25, 1994, p. REV8.

The Washington Post Book World. XXIV, September 11, 1994, p. 9.