You ever pick up a book and feel like the main character is judging your entire life? Not in a mean way, but in a "why are you so obsessed with your 401k" kind of way? That’s basically the experience of reading Mr. Blue.
Written by Myles Connolly and published in 1928, this slim novel is weird. It’s loud. It’s wildly impractical. Honestly, it’s the exact opposite of every "hustle culture" TikTok you’ve ever seen. While everyone else in the Roaring Twenties was chasing the Great Gatsby dream, Connolly decided to write about a guy who gets a two-million-dollar inheritance and treats it like a hot potato he needs to drop immediately.
Who Exactly Is Mr. Blue?
J. Blue—we never really learn his first name—is what people in the 1920s called a "mystic." Today, we’d probably call him a professional disruptor or maybe just eccentric. He’s a guy who lives in a packing crate on a New York City rooftop. He spends his days flying kites, hiring brass bands to play for no reason, and befriending people that polite society usually ignores.
The story is told through an unnamed narrator. This guy is a level-headed businessman who thinks Blue is absolutely nuts but can't look away. It’s a classic setup: the pragmatist versus the dreamer.
Blue isn't just "poor" because he’s lazy. He’s poor on purpose. He calls it marrying "Lady Poverty," a direct nod to St. Francis of Assisi. He believes that having money actually makes you less free because you spend all your time worrying about losing it.
Myles Connolly: The Man Behind the Machine
You can’t talk about the book without talking about Myles Connolly himself. The guy was a powerhouse. Before he was a novelist, he was a journalist for the Boston Post. But he’s most famous for being one of the guys who shaped the "Golden Age" of Hollywood.
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Connolly was close friends with Frank Capra. If you’ve ever cried while watching It’s a Wonderful Life or felt a swell of patriotism during Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, you’ve felt Connolly’s influence. He was an uncredited writer on those films and even served as the godfather to three of Capra's kids.
He was a big dude—6’3”, 230 pounds—and reportedly a fierce debater. Capra once described him as looking like a "dyspeptic water buffalo." He brought that same intensity to his writing. Mr. Blue was his first novel, and while he wrote others like Dan England and the Noonday Devil, Blue remains the one everyone talks about.
The Anti-Gatsby Connection
It’s no accident that Mr. Blue came out just three years after The Great Gatsby. Literary types love to point out that J. Blue is the "Anti-Gatsby."
- Jay Gatsby: Builds a mansion to impress a girl and dies lonely.
- J. Blue: Gives away a fortune to help the poor and dies saving a life.
Both characters are obsessed with a "green light" of sorts, but for Blue, that light isn't a girl across the water; it’s a radical, joyful version of Christianity that actually takes the "give away your possessions" part seriously.
That Dystopian Movie Scene (Yes, Really)
There is a segment in the book that feels totally out of place but is actually the best part. Blue describes a movie he wants to make. Keep in mind, this was 1928.
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In his "movie," the world has become a giant, soulless machine run by a global government. Christianity has been wiped out. The last man on earth—a priest named Father White—is hiding in a desert, trying to grow a few stalks of wheat so he can perform one last Mass.
It’s dark. It’s apocalyptic. It’s basically Mad Max meets the Vatican. For a book that’s mostly about a guy being happy on a roof, this section is a gut-punch. It shows that Blue’s joy isn't because he’s naive; it’s because he’s chosen joy over a world he thinks is becoming a factory.
Why People Still Read This Today
Most "religious" books from a hundred years ago feel like a lecture. Mr. Blue feels like a party. It’s only about 120 pages, so you can finish it in an afternoon, but the ideas stick.
There’s a scene where Blue is jumping up and down on a ledge 30 stories up, just shouting about how beautiful the world is. It's terrifying and inspiring at the same time. He challenges the narrator—and the reader—to realize that most of our "problems" are just us being bored or greedy.
He doesn't hate technology (he actually loved the movies), but he hated how technology makes people smaller. He wanted people to be "Spies of God," people who go around doing secret acts of kindness just to mess with the cynicism of the world.
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The Ending That Hits Hard
Without spoiling too much, the book doesn't end with Blue becoming a billionaire again. It ends with a sacrifice. He lives among the poorest of the poor in a lumberyard district and eventually dies because he tries to save someone else.
The narrator is left standing there, looking at this "failure" of a man, and asking the question that haunts the whole book: "Why are all of us here and not Blue?"
Basically, if the "normal" people are the ones who survived, maybe the world is missing something vital.
How to Approach Mr. Blue Right Now
If you're going to dive into this, don't look for a complex plot. There isn't one. It’s a character study. It’s a vibe.
- Read it as a counter-culture manifesto. Forget the religious labels for a second. It’s a book about sticking it to the Man by being excessively happy.
- Look for the Hollywood DNA. You can see the seeds of those big, emotional Capra endings in these pages.
- Check out the Cluny Media edition. If you want the deep background, Stephen Mirarchi (a professor at Benedictine College) put together an annotated version that explains all the 1920s slang and the theological inside jokes.
Ultimately, Mr. Blue is for anyone who feels like they’re just "going through the motions." It’s a reminder that being "prudent" is sometimes just another word for being scared. Connolly’s hero wasn't a saint because he was perfect; he was a saint because he was "hilariously and outrageously happy."
Actionable Next Step: Pick up a copy of the 1928 original text (or the Mirarchi edition) and read the "Last Man on Earth" chapter first. It’s a standalone masterpiece of speculative fiction that explains why J. Blue’s radical optimism is actually a form of battlefield courage. Afterward, contrast Blue's view of wealth with your own current "must-haves" to see which ones are actually keeping you from being free.