Does anyone remember J. Blue?:
Cecala, Kathy Petersen
Does anyone remember J. Blue? KATHY PETERSEN CECALA Mr.Blue popped into my brain rather un-expectedly one day, when I was having a very ordinary conversation with my husband. Actually, it was more...
...Forget the sofa," I told my husband...
...What are you talking about?'' he demanded...
...And I read the book and reread it, burned with all the boundless idealism of a twelve-year-old, feeling certain that my life had been changed...
...Actually, it was more argument than conversation: I wanted to replace our old living-room sofa with something new and stylish, while my spouse expressed concern that I might not be sated with this one mere purchase...
...I'm not sure why...
...I didn't...
...But I went on to new books, new heroes and heroines, new goals...
...A crazy man, a fool for God, Blue flew kites...
...Connolly himself-who came bursting out at me, as clearly as Blue did to my twelve-year-old self...
...He made the pursuit of wealth and status seem ridiculous and meaningless...
...When I first read Mr...
...This man seemed far more real and believable than his rather fantastic friend-a "normal" workaday man, patient, sympathetic, at turns wry and irritated and admiring, but always genuinely concerned, caring, about his unorthodox friend...
...I still possessed the book, but hadn't cracked it open since high school, when I had my last attack of rebellious religious fervor...
...The book was still wonderful, engaging, and quirky...
...I laughed, delighted to recall this funny obscure book from my girlhood...
...I found myself strongly identifying this time with the book's narrator...
...I wondered what my reaction would be to him now, I, in my early thirties, a married suburbanite working on Wall Street, preoccupied with sofas and other such material comforts...
...The brand of hair color I use tells me I'm "worth it," the women's magazinessl read tell me I deserve to be pampered, I'm entitled to the best...
...Two sofas, two coffee tables, four end tables...
...It's just a slip of a story, more an outline than a real book, a scanty work of a hundred pages or so about a young man- colorful, eccentric, and thoroughly Catholic-who dies young and tragically in the embrace of Lady Poverty...
...I was a different sort of creature then, a bookworm who thought not of sofas or redecorating, but simply thought, a great deal more than I do now about questions of faith and morality, about visions and dogma and heroic sanctity...
...That was in 1969, a time of social ferment and change...
...I wanted to be saintly, forever pure...
...In the book, episodic in nature, there is mention of a mansion Blue briefly owned, in which he capriciously doubled the amount of furniture he found in each room...
...Blue fiction, or is he real...
...I remember him, and I wasn't even born until after the book's sixteenth printing...
...Blue, for all his holy speeches and ultimate act of charity- giving up his life to save another's- seemed a little self-absorbed, turned inward...
...Or was he just a brief bright star in popular Catholic literature, burning brightly in the thirties and forties before disappearing into obscurity...
...I couldn't wait to be an adult, to take my turn at changing the world in a wild and glorious way...
...And what else do you want...
...I bet Blue went sockless, too...
...Blue to anyone...
...And it took me a long minute to figure out where this came from...
...How about two sofas...
...In today's era of yuppies and power investments, he merely seems lunatic...
...it was a surprisingly long mental journey, which took me back to my parochial school days...
...He also hired a bunch of out-of-work butlers and servants to occupy the house...
...I would think of Blue's homemade garments (many decades before the Don Johnson look...
...Let's double the amount of furniture we have in each room: two double beds and four dressers in the bedroom, two tables and eight chairs in the dining area, and so on...
...I thought I'd find him boring now, completely implausible...
...Here was a departure from the usual models of Catholicism we were presented: staid, severe saints and martyrs I was trying anxiously to emulate...
...Perhaps this was the real lesson of Mr...
...The book is sixty years old this year, yet its message of joyful poverty is especially timely for this cold, sensible, acquisitive decade...
...Francises, but also brothers and sisters who look out for such people, who care and nurture and simply put up with them...
...But no...
...It was this unseen, unknown friend-presumably Mr...
...But in the middle of seventh grade, I read a book which knocked me for a loop, and completely turned upside-down my thoughts and ideas about conventional Catholicism...
...I cannot remember any other tale I read in my youth that has continued to haunt me as that of Mr...
...every few years I'd have a random thought about him whenever I would see a kite or balloon fluttering in the breeze, or a shabby young man in a wrinkled, hempen suit...
...Blue never completely disappeared from my mind or heart, though...
...After that sofa conversation with my husband, I returned to Mr...
...I was amazed at how much I remembered, and delighted by the passages I'd forgotten: that compelling weird story about the end of the world...
...How things have changed...
...Blue-it was actually one of the first "adult" books I ever was completely enthralled...
...he made up bizarre stories...
...I blurted out...
...Blue squandered an entire fortune...
...Certainly, we need more St...
...Still, his charm-for me, anyway-persists...
...There was a crucial difference, however, in this re-reading...
...he loved balloons...
...Chairs, carpeting...
...Let's go live in a packing crate, atop a skyscraper in New York...
...Blue: tolerance, patience, enduring friendship...
...A modern Saint Francis" a quote on the back cover proclaimed...
...Blue was quite a shock...
...But there's only one thing I long to know: Is Mr...
...Written and published in the 1920s (first by Mac-millan, then reprinted by Image Books), the book focuses on a character who, in retrospect, seems more a hero for the Age of Aquarius, the nonconformism of the sixties and early seventies...
...Does anyone else remember J. Blue...
...Haven't most of us had such a "crazy" friend or relation whom we loved to distraction, whose drives and ambition and flaws unnerved us, yet made us ache with pity and concern...
...The narrator cared about his friend, and worried over him...
...I wish I could report that J. Blue changed my life, skewed it in a crazy, colorful, and profoundly altruistic direction...
...It was Mr...
...reading it was a joy, like revisiting a favored old vacation spot or chatting with a long-lost friend...
...I still remembered him fondly, but with a touch of grownup impatience...
...But am I? Blue, I reflected, would have nothing but disdain for this modern, demanding me...
...And it all made me think sadly about the old idealism and hope I once possessed, about that noble desire to reject materialism and greed and selfishness...
...I would recommend Mr...
...Blue by Myles Connolly...
Vol. 115 • November 1988 • No. 19
