GUIDE TO GOOD READING

vious novels on the turbulent life
of Scotland’s national bard, The
Wind that Shakes the Barley, and
The Song in the Green Thorn
Tree. Like these two very hu-
man portraits of a period in the
life of Robert Burns, THE WON-
DER OF ALL THE GAY WORLD
highlights the years 1786-88 in

‘Edinburgh, when Burns tasted
the cup of fame, drained it “to
the lees” -and. never for a

moment forgot, or regretted his -

class origin.

Acclaimed Caledonia’s -national
bard by the nobility, artisans, li-
terati and whores of Edinburgh,
Scotland’s seat of leaiming, James
Barke does a masterly job on the
poet’s many excursions among
those who revered his genius and
the knowledge that his true
friendship gave them immortality
in return, and those who “accep-
ted” him because it was the polite
thing to do, and brought to their
Sterile intellect and social circle
a& momentary  prilliance they
could never have otherwise at-

_ tained. i

Excursions in tempestuous love,

fleeting and permanent. Some like
the mists, vanishing with the
morning sun. One, permanent as
the rocks of Auld Reekie itself.
And the sincere and g§enuine pat-
Yronage of the Bard’s works by
the few in nobility’s ranks, who,
Seeing into the future, knew that
the immortal memory of this
heaven gifted ploughman would
shine when they were long for-
gotten,

In The Wonder of All the Gay
World, as in its predecessors,
there are unforgettable charac-
ters, symbolic of all that is best
and worst in humanity. William
Nicol, teacher of Latin, without
which no Scottish literati was
considered to be “educated”, al-
though ‘he might be abysmally
dumb in all else. And Nicol, him-
Self a brilliant scholar, faced with
the task of hammering Latin into
most of them, had no doubts as
to the futility of his task.

Creech, the bookseller, who
held the fate of Burns’ “second
edition”, and consequently the
very immediate _ “success” » or
“failure” of Burns as a poet, typi-
fies one of those character com-
binations, a cross. between a

a keen nose for profits,

The closing chapters of this
book Sees Scotland’s rebel poet
defying all the conventions of
“Auld Licht” Mauchline. Of tak-
already

ing his Jean Armour,

ROBERT BURNS

near her labor pains in childbirth,
and setting her up.in the heart
of Mauchline, right unden the
noses of the “Holy Willies” of

Barke’s_ third | book on Burns
tells of his Edinbu

JAMES BARKE’S, The Won-
der of All the Gay World (Col-
lins) carries further his two pre-

litevati, a lackey to nobility, and
above all, a book Publisher with

the Kirk Session. Saunders Tait
feverishly scribbling a scandal-
mongering poem against Burns
and his Jean, with Willie Fisher
(Holy Willie) snooping as never
before to Supply the Kirk Session
and “Daddy Auld” (Rey. William
Auld, minister of Mauchline),
with smutty evidence for the
“cutty stool”, :
But “Daddy Auld” had mellow-
ed, and like Scotland; had taken
Burns to his kindly heart, a fact
which troubles Holy Willie not
a little. : .
The curtain comes down like a
quiet sunset. Burns and his Jean
‘turn their faces toward a new
life at Ellisland Farm

sphere of hard toil, accompanied
by the music of one of Burns’
Sreatest love songs, “Of a’ the
airts the wind can blaw AGS orgs
The Wonder of All the Gay
World is a pleasing aria. It will
not disappoint those who -have
waited its appearance, and it will
compel many to return now and
again to its predecessors, It will
also create a longing for the final
book of James Barke, an author
who has captured the great hu-
manity that was Burns, and in-
terwoven his genius and his fail-
ings with a warm, honest sin-
cerity. —TOM McEWEN

80 DELEGATES ATTEND

Vancouver Book Fair

draws large

audience

THE THREE-DAY Book Fair and Literature Institute held

in Pender’ Auditorium here last weekend drew near-capacity audiences

to all sessions and, in the view of

the sponsoring committee, provided

the form for what it is hoped will become an annual affair of in-

creasing importance.

Eighty accredited delegates
and an unrecorded number of
visitors attended the book fair
to view the display of books, pos-
ters, paintings and pottery, and
to participate in the discussions
on five papers presented.

Largest attendance was at the
Saturday evening concert, at
which the newly-formed Vancou-
ver Theatre of Action, present-
ing A Streetcar Named Undesir-
able as its first production, was
given an enthusiastic reception.

Papers we1e presented at the |

Friday evening session by Sid
Zlotnik, on “The Growth of Mono-

poly in B.C.,” and Alf Dewhurst, :

STANTON.

SUITE 515, FORD BUILDING, 193 E. HASTINGS ST.

Barristers, Solicitors, Notaries _

(Corner Main & Hastings Sts.) MArine 5746

& MUNRO

E Pacific

_ PHONE: MARINE 5288

Re INSERT YOUR -
~ XMAS GREETINGS |
alee in the ~
Tribune
| SPECIAL RATES: $2.00 — $3.00 — $5.00
INDIVIDUAL NAMES — $1.00 EACH
Deadline: Dace mben 16th

650 HOWE ST.

er uc M1, of WANA SOY

on “Labor’s Tasks for 1950,” and
at the Sunday afternoon session
by Elgin Ruddell, on “Canadian
Imperialist Development,” Nigel
Morgan, on ‘Canada’s Foreign
Policy,” and Hal Griffin on “New
Trends in Canadian Culture.”

In addition to these papers, an
address on “The Trial of the
Twelve” was given by Tom Mc-
Ewen at the Saturday afternoon
Session. |

New format for

National Affairs

COMMENCING with the Janu-
-ary issue, National Affairs Month-
ly will appear in a new 64-page
pocket-sized format, it is announc-
ed in Toronto, :

“The new National Affairs
Monthly will be an exciting new
handbook and source of know-
ledge and inspiration in the work
of every progressive,” the an-
nouncement stated. “It will con-
tain many new monthly features,
including an analysis of the
month’s most significant news,
entitled ‘The Month in Review,’
book reviews, campaign notes,
questions and answers, as well as
theoretical articles.” .

New price of National Affairs
Monthly, published at Room 238,
73 Adelaide Street West, Toron-.
to, Ont., will be 15 cents a copy,
$1.50 a year. 2
t

“EAST END 3?
AGO Deciae og

UNION DRIVERS
24-Hour
Service

Vancouver

Fully
Insured
81L E. Hastings -

ACTION AROUSES STORM

civil rights for five years,
It means that his

£5 ($15) fine,

the miners’ strike

persons.

Aragon denied rights .

WHILE COLLABORATORS go free, exercising full civil
rights in the country they betrayed to the Nazis, Louis Aragon, —
France’s outstanding poet and novelist, hero of the resistance
movement and Communist journalist, has been deprived of his

name has been struck from the voters’
list and that he is. ineligible to stand as a candidate.
Pretext for this astonishing decision, which has aroused 2
storm of protest throughout France, was a sentence in March
of 12 days’ imprisonment (which was later suspended) and @

He was alleged to have “spread false news” in an article on

Action was taken by the government under a law of 1852,

modified by a decree signea by General de Gaulle in 1945.
This provides that for. certain sentences the government
“must”) withdraw the civil rights of condemned

eat

WHAT‘S NEW ON THE SCREEN

to the plough and the Aree es Harmful ideas subtly oa

presented by ‘Pinky’ —

PINKY 15) disappointing film—disappointing because at
could have been another Fury or I’ Was a Fugitive from a Chain

Gang instead of

a picture whose vicious

i

purpose is concealed behind

a number of incidents which, taken by themselves, are presented in a

progressive way.

The story is that of Pinky, a
Negro girl who could if she chose,
“pass” as white, and it relates her
problems as a graduate nurse,
educated in the north, when she
returns to her home in the south.
The part is beautifully played by
Jeanne Crain.

The other principal charac-
ters are Tom, the young white
doctor from Boston, played by
William Lundigan, who has asked
Pinky to marry jhim, without
knowing that she is a Wegrc
‘and Miss Em, who owns the huge
colonial mansion opposite Pinky’s
shack home, an eccentric 80-year-
old played to perfection by Ethyl
Baiwymore. Pinky’s grandmo-
ther, a washerwoman who has
scraped and slaved to pay for her
education, is portrayed by Ethel
Waters ag an “Aunt Jemima”
type, an all too familiar Holly-
wood characterization. .

Miss Em dies and eaves the
huge mansion, grounds and fur-
nishings to Pinky. Though this

_ is improbable, it could have hap-
_ pened, and had it been carried

to the logical conclusion we could
Overlook it. It is fiom here on
that the picture really goes awry.

A well-done court case, where
the remote white relations of Miss
Em. fight the will, goes in Pinky’s
favor, and the judge solemnly
warns that any interference with
Pinky or her property will be
severely dealt with by the law.

Then Pinky refuses to marry
Tom because he insists they go
to Denver where no one knows
them, and she can “pass” for
white. Movie goers will have to
decide for themselves whether
this neat trick is Hollywood’s way
of keeping a “mixed” marriage
off the screen, but nevertheless
in this situation, it is the right .
thing to do. Why should she try
to pass? That suggestion to
Negroes is the most subtle form
of race prejudice. oe Sd

judice with which it deals, —

The picture, with a deceptively
humanistic touch, turns the old
house into a clinic for NegrQ
children.

Sosa aeaee ‘

LET’S TAKE it back to the
court room scene, where the pic--
ture goes off the track. The de- -
fending lawyer warns that this
case is important not only to the
little town itself, or the country,
but the eyes of the whole world,
are on them.

This, to my mind, is one of the
significant statements in the pic-
ture.. The wotlld is becoming’
aware of all the horrors of “Jim
Crow” in the United States and
the picture is therefore ‘an at-
tempt to show that though ‘there
is prejudice, still, the judges, at
least, are capable of dealing out
Justice. ‘ \

Had a southern judge so nuled
in everyday life, in favor of Neg-
roes, who would have upheld the
law? In a country where a Ne-
8ro veteran and. his wife are
hauled off a train by a sheriff for
sitting in a “white only” coach,
and he is shot; where a street
car conductor shoots three Neg-
woes for daring to sit in the
“white” section, the inexorable
tules of the decadent south would
have led to the lynch murder of
the two Negro women for daring
to take a case to law, and even
more for winning it. The house
would undoubtedly have been
burned down, and the tand held

_ against any Negro inheritors.

Pinky could have been a great
picture, had the makers shown
this. As it is, although we can
applaud «the bringing to the at-
tention of Canadians and other
people who do not know _ just
what the atmosphere of the south
is like, the inhuman treatment
and a few of the indignities the
Negroes suffer, we must condemn.
the film as promoting concep-
tions as harmful as the racial pre-

~

ff

SOVIET DOUBLE BILL —_

STATE THEATER |
RUSSIAN BALLERINA oh
| NaSiiey Nok weabO Ne actrniccaid 5
CITY THAT STOPPED HITLER ee
p Pialoh Tales Teenie, ane el

a = S|

Heh agi

ntek

_ PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 2%, 1919 — PAGE 1073

a

icine ik oi Uy