RAMON GUTHRIE KALEIDOSCOPE.

Edited, with a foreword, by George E.Diller. Lunenburg, Vt.: The StinehowPress, 1963. 149 pp., illustrated. $5.00.

There can be no doubt in the mind of anyone who opens this book that it was a labor of love. The love which radiates from the delightful end-papers (shirt-cardboard drawings Ramon did for Malcolm Cowley's children years ago), and from the warm informal portrait of Ramon at the Deux Magots which welcomes us from opposite the title page, is reflected throughout the volume, in the tributes paid him by students, colleagues, fellow-artists, who are all his friends. Their variety demonstrates the continuing richness of Ramon's life and career.

Kaleidoscopic it is, indeed. The tributes include poems by Tristan Tzara, Dilys Laing, and Philip Booth; art work by Alexander Calder and Peter Blume (and Stella Bowen's lovely portrait of the young Ramon); essays by Alexander Laing and M. L. Rosenthal; reminiscences by Norman Fitts (of S4N days), Malcolm Cowley, George Seldes. ... Alan Cooke's impressive "Attempt on Ramon Guthrie's Bibliography," which belies the modesty of its title, is not the least of these tributes. If I have omitted many names represented in the volume, let that not be taken as a judgment, but only as the dictate of necessity. I would hate to see anything removed from the book: the range of interests, eras, memories and talents represented gives it its really original flavor, and its faithfulness to the originality of its subject. I thought I knew Ramon pretty well from student days, association as a colleague, and friendship. It was only after reading the Kaleidoscope that I began realize how much more there is to him than I suspected — or than any one of his friends might. And yet we all suspected, and knew, a great deal.

Thanks are due to all who participated in this volume — as they are to the man who inspired it. If Ramon Guthrie's friends did not exhaust all the possibilities - each reader who has been touched by his personality will have his own suggestions — it is only because the possibilities are inexhaustible. The Ramon Guthrie Kaleidoscope is a beautiful book, chosen by the American Institute of Graphic Arts as one of the 50 books representing the best of American book design and painting in 1963. It is a took to have and to cherish.

Assistant Professor of French