OLD QUOTES AT HOME.
By EdwardDarling '29. Illustrated by Gobin Stair'33. Boston: Beacon Press, 1965. 115 pp.$4.95.
If you have ever listened to apt quotations, all properly identified, neatly peppering a conversation, and wished that you could remember just a single appropriate one, the solution is at hand. Even if quotes have never been one of your habits, it can easily be so from now on. Settle down and enjoy yourself as the author, with tongue firmly in cheek, has squarely faced the fact that most of us are utterly unable to produce the right quotation at the right split second. To be able to do so, especially if properly backed up, can be completely devastating.
Plunge at once into this problem, which is neatly dissected for you. You no longer have to remember either a suitable quotation or its source. You create the whole works; the only limit is your imagination. Think of the joy in silencing a too vocal conversationalist with a devastating quotation, supported by chapter and verse, and the whole thing fabricated on the spot!
As in any "Do It Yourself" book, the chapters cover the main fields where these inventions are most needed, which are politics, organized religion and scholarship, and shows how to concoct not only a fitting quote but how to back it up with an imaginary author and a supporting publication. The examples given are so fascinatingly incredible and are so seriously treated, it takes a double look to be sure this is not a genuine dissertation. Supporting this implausible theory are superb footnotes, an appendix (with a good summary of the material offered), bibliography (which is non-existent) and an index that is totally useless. These add to the general delightful madness of the volume. The whole world of words is now opened to the imagination and goodness knows where it will get you.
The illustrations, in gray and red, show a contemporary use of line, which varies in width and intensity. The range is impressive as the subject matter is treated in an abstract, representational, or linear manner. The artist has a partiality for birds and for a tri-partite face in which a left and right profile back up to form a full face. His diversity is amazing.
The artist and author have worked together with complete co-ordination, each one thoroughly enjoying his own medium and using it to embellish the work of the other. The paper, type, and illustrations all blend together to produce a small, handsome volume with a stunning cover which will look more impressive on the coffee table than the new expensive art books.
Probably the only genuine quote in the whole book makes a suitable end, to both the book and the review -
"Toutes choses sont dites déjà" - Gide.
Now retired, Miss French was Art Librarian at Dartmouth from 1928 to 1963.
