Primary Colors

Handwritten changes to the manuscript of the novel "Primary Colors," the wildly successful satire of the 1992 Clinton campaign by an author known only as "Anonymous," appear to match the handwriting of Newsweek columnist and CBS commentator Joe Klein.

Reviewers of "Primary Colors" have at least one reason to be thankful to the book's unidentified author: They won't need to use up much space familiarizing their readers with the plot. As advertised, this roman a clef is so blatantly an insider's account of the 1992 Clinton campaign that practically all of its principal characters are instantly recognizable, from doughnut-scarfing, touchy-feely "Gov. Jack Stanton" and his redoubtable (and mostly just touchy) wife, "Susan," on down.

Regarding Peter Rainier's review of Alexander Theroux's "The Primary Colors" (August 28): An art instructor years ago said that the reason Picasso went through his "Blue Period" was that blue was the cheapest pigment and Pablo didn't have much money at the time. So when I read the quote from Alexander Theroux's essay "Blue" saying that blue was always the most expensive pigment I had a good chortle. Also I remember spending more for vermilion than cobalt 20-30 years ago. Not since reading Rollo May say in "The Cry for Myth" that Lindbergh flew the Atlantic in a biplane have I had as good a laugh at someone trying to be serious.

"It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent." This quote from "Middlemarch"--the frontispiece to Alexander Theroux's "The Primary Colors"--is the most apt of intros for this playfully profound, one-of-a-kind book. Theroux's lengthy essays on blue, yellow and red--one essay per color--seem to spring from an almost pagan worship of everything that color can inspire in us.

Fashion, as we know, is fickle. Styles change. Trends come into flower, and are gone in a few short weeks like gladiolus withering on a grave. What's in goes out, and when it's back again, it has a brand-new name. Take color. A building block of the style world. There was a time when fashion hues had names as plain as crayons: Violet. Rust. Blue-green. Burnt orange. That time of straight talk is gone forever, drowned by the swelling tide of euphemism that has swamped the marketing world.

Over the past year, American Film Technologies, the leader in the film colorization business, has moved to Southern California, hired--and subsequently pushed out--a new president and started to switch its primary business to animation. The changes had better work. The company, now in North Hollywood, expects a loss of $700,000 to $1.2 million for the quarter that ended Dec. 31.

When Fred Levine, a newly divorced clothing retailer, asked architect Frederick Fisher to design a house for him and his two sons in Marina del Rey, his instructions were simple: "I just want you to have a good time." Fisher had a wonderfully inventive time with Levine's new home, completed last summer. On a tight, narrow lot, Fisher contrived an airy three-story home. A central, sky-lit atrium rising through the house's full height floods its interior with light. The bright space is very male and playful, roughly finished with raw concrete block, exposed timber framing and splashes of primary colors.