My edition of this book by Myles Connolly is a really cute, small paperback, and delightful to carry around, but the contents disappointed me. I think it was the loneliness of the main character that left me empty.
He is a young man in New England who takes the commands of Jesus seriously, to sell everything you have and give to the poor, to forsake the normal path of security and comfort for a greater purpose. You sense that he is well-liked by everyone, but you hardly ever meet any of the people that he helps. Most of the author’s encounters with him involve long speeches from Blue about his wild and unrealistic dreams, the kind of talk you may have heard from people in your own life who are mentally unstable.
The introduction to this book compares Mr. Blue to Jay Gatsby. The narrator can’t agree with Blue’s lifestyle, and he doesn’t always understand him, but he still always admires him. To me, Blue just seems incomplete.
