Mr. Blue. Myles Connolly.

Mr. Blue
Myles Connolly
Albany, New York: Richelieu Court. 1928 (1990)

Why read it? Novel. Mr. Blue is an unusual character. He is a Christian who loves life, who can sacrifice his own personal interests to help others with no promise of reward other than alleviating the plight of others. He is, in short, a replication of Christ in the modern world.

Mr. Blue is a complex character, who is described, and his story narrated, by a cynic who wonders if Mr. Blue is as sincere as he says he is. Mr. Blue searches for the Cross which God gives to his "friends," the tragedies, the human wrecks, the personal misfortunes of himself and others. But he also searches for joy in living, making the most out of such a simple pleasure as flying a kite.

In some ways, Mr. Blue reminds me of people who take on the wounds of Christ, the stigmata. He is looking for pain and suffering in himself and others and when he finds them, he feels successful. He has also discovered that he can convey Christ's message to the derelicts of the world by becoming their friends and fellow workers and sufferers and wanderers, not by preaching, although he does an awful lot of that, but by example.

He explains his life and goals to the narrator, but he does so cryptically, so that the narrator often does not know what to make of him. In the end, the narrator realizes that Mr. Blue was a unique human being who celebrated life--all parts of life, the good, but mostly the bad. Mr. Blue's model in living was Christ--as Mr. Blue interprets Christ's behavior, or as Mr. Blue interprets how Christ would want Mr. Blue to behave.

A touching note was Mr. Blue's respect for the Virgin Mary. I remember reading about the construction of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Men of all classes worked together to erect that memorial to the Virgin because Mary, unlike God who represents justice, is all forgiving. Blue respects her for the same reason. So do I.

Mr. Blue seems to be contradictory until you look at his entire life and thought. He may seem like a lot of wise men who, as he said of the successful conversationalist, do not say the stupid things they think, but do often say what people cannot readily understand. Much of what he says is arguable. So was much of what Christ said. Mr. Blue talks a lot, often cryptically [as did Christ] and provokes thought. He is a man who is thoroughly alive, who tries to convey his joy in living as he experiences it. The rest of us are too comfortable to be able to understand or follow his activism on behalf of God and the Virgin and the joy of life and the joy to be found in the sadness in life.

Contrast Mr. Blue to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Mr. Blue takes the Catholic religion as a serious message on how to live a dynamic life. Portrait views the Church as an intrusion into and an obstruction of the real experiences of life. Mr. Blue is a dynamic view of Christian living. Portrait is a against the formulaic, stultifying ritual and thought of the Church. Mr. Blue relies on the spirit of Catholicism, rather than the catechism, and Portrait rebels against the catechism and sees the Church as nothing more than the catechism--learned by rote. At issue is the essential meaning of Catholicism rather than its outward ritual and conformity of thought.

Mr. Blue is a creative view of Catholicism and the spirit of Catholicism, a spur to creativity and individuality, an attempt to live life as Christ lived it. Portrait is opposed to the Church's dulling conformity that seems to stifle the individual, destroying initiative and creativity.

For me, reading Mr. Blue was a disturbing, unforgettable experience.