Scope and Contents In the New York Times Book Review, William Ferguson writes, "Benjamin Zucker's first novel, Blue, is at once a spiritual challenge and a gorgeous typographic object. Echoing the style of the Talmud, the book presents a continuing narrative in the center of each right-hand page, where a passage from the Mishna - ancient commentary on the Torah - would ordinarily be placed...The central story is wreathed with commentaries, including those of Abe's mother and father, the impatient Rachel and a host of others both living and dead: Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Chief Crazy Horse, Modigliani, Isaac Luria, Bob Dylan, and dozens more. Their remarks all begin with a word or phrase taken from the main text; the words attributed to them are a mixture of direct quotation, in italics, and the author's expertly constructed inventions of what they might have said. The left-hand pages all bear illustrations - dazzling reproductions of Vermeers and Van Goghs, photographs of Kafka, Talmudic texts - that...