The Primary Colors

Three Essays

The Primary Colors is Alexander Theroux’s collection of essays on the three primary colors: blue, yellow, and red. A fascinating cultural history, these splendid essays extend to the artistic, literary, linguistic, botanical, cinematic, aesthetic, religious, scientific, culinary, climatological, and emotional dimensions of each color. Humorous, highly readable, and anecdotal, the book is virtually encyclopedic in aim. There is poetry here; there is also song, fable, opinion, literary criticism, gossip, history, and fascinating fact – a fund of curiosa, gleanings of a witty and penetrating mind. Swift is here, so is the lexicographic Dr. Johnson.

The widest of readers, Theroux is raconteur, art historian, and pop culturalist, all at the same time. His book is a rich and totally captivating tour de force, a virtuoso performance of a kind that offers nothing less than a liberal education. This is a work for artist and art historian, designer and graphic artist, student and teacher, and anyone sensitive to the many and vivid nuances of color–but, best of all, it remains a complete feast for the general reader.