NONFICTION - April 28, 1996

THE SECONDARY COLORS: Three Essays by Alexander Theroux (Henry Holt and Company: $19.95; 312 pp.). “The Primary Colors,” also by Theroux and published in 1994, opened, not for the first time, but perhaps with the most fanfare, the doors of the essay form to the craft of database management. An author gets an idea, fixes on a word, sits down at the computer and tracks down darn near every reference to that word or idea in literature. Like all science, the search must begin with a hypothesis, for example, orange is a relentlessly cheerful color, or else there is no glue to hold the references together. This puts big pressure on the hypothesis to be engaging and also to extend in meaning beyond its proofs, to be greater than the sum of its parts, and on he author to hold it all together. These essays, however, run away from their author, though it is charming, at the end of orange, purple and green, to see how the essential nature of the color influenced the quality of the writing and the corralling of the references. Orange, for example, is by far the most vigorous essay, purple is more distant, respectful and restrained and green provokes the oddest interlude of jealousy--a defensive attack against an author who once criticized Theroux in print--that goes on for several paragraphs!