The evocative reminiscences of one of America's great men of modern American culture focuses on Kirstein's youth and early struggle for identity, from his childhood in Boston to his world travels, culminating in his 1933 attempts to bring Balanchine to the U.S. Mosaic, originally meaning "pertaining to the muses" and later referring to the process of producing pictures or patterns by cementing bits of glass, stone, or wood, is an apt title for this episodic and anecdotal reminiscence. Ballet director, writer, and dance historian Kirstein recalls his unique coming-of-age. Centered around the development of artistic taste and the search for a vocation, these autobiographical writings describe a privileged youth in the mansions of old Boston, New England prep schools, Harvard University, and Bloomsbury. The memoir ends at the onset of Kirstein's public career, when he meets George Balanchine and makes arrangements for the choreographer to come to the United States. Given Kirstein's contributions to the arts and his compelling if somewhat enigmatic writing style, this book will have an audience among those interested in biography, dance, and Modernism. Recommended for public and academic collections. Joan Stahl, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. How and why does someone become an impresario? Kirstein, known best for his work with George Balanchine as general director of the New York City Ballet, reveals all the vague desires and serendipitous meanderings that propelled him toward this usually unheralded yet vital calling. Kirstein was raised in Boston and indulged by his wealthy parents in spite of some concern about how his fascination with art reflected on his masculinity. He wanted to be a painter, a poet, a dancer; he was a "hopeless" student, hated sports, and was given to grand, even dangerous, infatuations. His poor academic performance didn't keep him out of Harvard, but once in, he was devoted not to course work but to founding and publishing the influential literary and arts magazine Hound & Horn , and to the trend-setting Harvard Society for Contemporary Art. A revelatory if brief interlude with the controversial guru Gurdjieff and an illuminating if quirky relationship with Nijinsky's wife set the stage for his fruitful association with Balanchine and, ultimately, his immense influence on the world of dance. Kirstein has written elsewhere about his mature years; here, in this congenial, witty, and frank memoir, he fills in the blanks. Donna Seaman This memoir by the octogenarian Kirstein (Portrait of Mr. B, 1984) displays a Proustian sensibility in its wholesale allegiance to art and the senses and in its nostalgic tableau vivant of times and places past. From its astonishing, sensual opening sentence (``The pear was plump, ripe, juicy, palm jade''), this is the story of the education of Kirstein's aesthetic sensibility and its fulfillment in his most lasting achievement, the founding of the New York City Ballet. Despite its revealing tone, it is not intimate (due partly to sometimes stuffy prose), yet it is almost always engaging. This self-portrait shows the young Kirstein to be by turns charming and expansive, self-deprecating and confused as he learns that, contrary to his hopes, he is not destined to be an artist. Kirstein is the son of German Jews who penetrated the upper reaches of Boston society. Gifted with what he calls ``nervous energy'' and a wealthy, supportive papa, the self-described hedonist pursues his artistic and amorous fancies from Harvard to Paris to New York City. The strange highlights of Kirstein's life shine through: An encounter with the mystic Gurdjieff is at once chilling and comic; pursuing the low life, Kirstein conceives an unrequited love for a gritty sailor. The chapters dealing with Kirstein's precocious founding of Hound & Horn and the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art are oddly devoid of passion; but the grand spectacle of his life, narrated in this volume's last chapter, begins in 1933. In Paris, where he seeks out the ballet, the intrigues and jealousies of artists, dancers, and stage mothers are topped only by the supreme wiles of Romola Nijinsky, in whose service Kirstein finds himself. Kirstein, now an impresario-in-training, courts George Balanchine, hoping he will found a ballet school and company--in Hartford, Connecticut. Of course, a Balanchine-led Hartford Ballet was not to be. One hopes that Kirstein's elliptical ending is the promise of another volume to complete his colorful mosaic. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.