God’s Plenty

This season’s abundance of gift books is so fat and toothsome that we are almost beguiled into believing that they are worth what they cost. But money is one subject, books another; besides, it’s Christmas. Here’s a batch of what seem to be the superior ones, suitable for handsome gifts. The prices are pre-Christmas, usually some four dollars less than afterward.

Parker Tyler, the poet and film critic, has completed a labor of years in his The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelit- chew, a richly illustrated and fascinatingly explained study of the strange Russian painter who died in 1957, and whose “Hide and Seek” in the Museum of Modern Art is one of the most original pictures in the whole history of art (Fleet, $15). Grove has issued a facsimile edition of Georg Grosz’ famous (and unob-

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Guy Davenport

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This season’s abundance of gift books is so fat and toothsome that we are almost beguiled into believing that they are worth what they cost. But money is one subject, books another; besides, it’s Christmas. Here’s a batch of what seem to be the superior ones, suitable for handsome gifts. The prices are pre-Christmas, usually some four dollars less than afterward.

Parker Tyler, the poet and film critic, has completed a labor of years in his The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelit- chew, a richly illustrated and fascinatingly explained study of the strange Russian painter who died in 1957, and whose “Hide and Seek” in the Museum of Modern Art is one of the most original pictures in the whole history of art (Fleet, $15). Grove has issued a facsimile edition of Georg Grosz’ famous (and unob-