BOOKS

pss not since the time of
Mark Twain has there been

a novelist on this, continent who
used satire so devastatingly as a
weapon in the fight against re-
action as Ring Lardner, Jr. has
done in his remarkable first novel,
The Ecstasy of Owen Muir.

Two of Twain’s books come to
mind when reading Lardner: The
Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg

_ Both have in recent years been
_ under fire from the McCarthyites,
and Catholic forces succeeded in
banning Connecticut Yankee from

damaging attack on the political
machinations of that powerful
church.

Lardner’ s Ecstasy of Owen Muir
will undoubtedly earn, on the
basis of merit, the same kind of
persecution. .

Of his novel, the author, says:
_ “The shining horizon of man’s
_ destiny is shrouded in a fog*of
_ mystical obscurantism. I have
chosen in this book to deal with
a character so hopelessly lost in
that fog that he makes his way
into the past instead of Sag fu-
ture.”

‘Lardner’s achievement is that
he has rescued satire from the
sterile embraces of cynics and
dead-enders of the New Yorker
tribe, who have monopolized it

and The Connecticut Yankee. |

New York schools because of its

these many years. In doing so,
he has added a new, rapier-like
weapon to the arsenal of progres-
sive forces in America.

One of Karl Marx’s outstand-
ing traits was his sardonic humor,
and Paul Lafargue records that
Marx’s admiration for Robert
Burns centred mainly on the
Scottish bard’s satirical poems
and love songs.

“I regard nothing human as
alien to me,” was Marx’s favorite
maxim, and in his choice of read-
ing matter, according to Franz
Mehring, he “did not scorn to
read productions which would
have made scholarly aesthetes
cross themselves with horror.’
People who confuse dullness with
depth and gravity with profun-
dity should take note.

xt $og 53

The Ecstasy of Owen Muir (ob-
tainable in Vancouver at the Peo-
ple’s Cooperative Bookstore, 337
West Pender, price $3.41) is the
story of a man who is constantly
seeking the essence of truth, the
“real” truth, only to find it slip-
ping past him. His quest for
social justice efids in futility be-
cause he never arrives at the
point of poking, “Justice for
whom?” x

Our “hero” evolves — or re-
volves — from an ardént pacifist

.to an enthusiastic soldier; from

wear would Charles Dick-
} ens say if he were alive
now? Charles Chaplin gave
‘his views on the subject last
week.
- Proposing a toast to “The
immortal memory of Charles
Dickens” at a London dinner,
Chaplin. declared: “I have re-
servations politically — I al-
ways have reservations, and
_ naturally you can’t make a
Tory out of a lad from Lam-
. beth, not even with living at
‘the Savoy Hotel.” .

The occasion was the 143rd
anniversary dinner organized
by the Dickens Fellowship, to
attend which the world-famous
film actor made a_ special

_ flight from. Switzerland.

“Were Charles Dickens alive

times and critical ef our West-
era democracy which, in my

out its hypocrisy and double
talk—wanting peace and at
the same time an urgent race

“We do not want to have
any more promises of ‘Sweat,
blood and tears.’

“eal of the cold war because
it has achieved nothing and
| has not deterred anything,
_only to make the whole world

feelings to our youth.

matrix of hate; suspicion and
fear, and they are bad things
to have in this day of nuclear
invention and these horror
weapons.

“He would have been criti-
cal of the scientists and their
lack of moral responsibility in
handing on their atomic power
to the military, the mere con-
ception of which is a black
mark against the human race.

‘Chaplin pri Dickens

he would be critical of our |

humble opinion, is not with.
for rearmament,” Chaplin said.

“I think he would be criti- _

-neurotic and to give hopeless :

“We have been cast into a -

“If we are to survive in this
day of nuclear energy and
these weapons of destruction
we must develop a tolerance
and kindness for our fellow
man. It is not enough to be -
we must have

intellectual,
feeling.

“It is a beautiful aca ofs
both feeling and intellect by
which we can survive this

~ CHARLIE CHAPLIN:

es
civilization and make of it
with its nuclear age a grand

ae ‘glorious adventure for us
all.

“It was this beautiful bal-
ance of intellect and feeling
that was the soul of Charles
Dickens. It was the essence _
of his work.”

=

/

‘same Danbury institution, on a

4

First novel by Ring Lardner, Jr.
uses satire as people's weapon

an opponent of the profit system
to a factory owner; from a non-
practising Protestant to a fan-
atically devout Catholic; from a
middle class liberal to activist
in a group called Catholic Action
Council Against Communism and
Creeping Socialism; and finally,
from the search for truth in life
to the living death of a monk’s
cell.

- It is a painful process all the
way for poor Owen, but while
telling his story, Lardner intro-
duces a host of interesting peo-
ple, who come alive under his
penetrating but humanistic treat-
ment.

These are not contrived char-
acters such as John Steinbeck
gives us in CaMnery Row, but
real people drawn from life,
ranging from Owen’s Catholic
wife—whose wholesome common-
sense and her logical develop-
ment in the opposite direction
from Owen are very refreshing
—to an FBI informer in the Com-

‘munist party who sends his own

mother to jail.

Lardner’s satire is linked with
realism, and his own passion for
justice is just as keen as Owen’s,
but based on the firm foundation
of a knowledge of the social
forces at work in America today.
That is why his hilariously fun-
ny dissections of thought control,
McCarthyism, business _ ethics,
cafe society and “mature” atti-
tudes to sex problems contain
so many biting truths.

x bos so

As a Hollywood writer, Lard-
ner is remembered for the 1941
Academy Award comedy, Woman
of the Year, which he ‘wrote in
collaboration with Michael Kanin.

In Hollywood and elsewhere he

‘is’ even better remembered for

his appearance before the House
un-American Committee in 1947,
where ‘he declined to answer
questions about his personal be-
liefs and associations. Taking
this stand resulted in his being
blacklisted in Hollywood and —
(three years later) having to
serve nine -and one-half months
in prison. ~

He must have derived not a
little amusement from the coin-
cidence that “doing time” in the

criminal charge, was ex-Congress-
man J. Parnell Thomas, the com-
mittee chairman whose questions
he had courageously refused to
answer.

Lardner’s first novel leads, us
to hope that this is only the be-
ginning of a brilliant new career.
in the ranks of those people
whose historic mission it is to
change mS world. :

—BERT WHYTE

“Oscar

SUC P MOC MUT TTT Tw a0 nTT ooo ey

Critics praise film

Hailed by critics as a sensitive interpretation of Shakespeare's
immortal play, the film version of Romeo and Juliet is currently
showing at provincial theatres. Laurence Harvey and Susan Shen-
tall (above) have won high praise for their performance.

Acting shines through —

Hollywood

MERICAN propagandists often
tell us that the day when the

Negro was a second-class citizen
is long past. Carmen Jones re-
minds us that this is yew far
from being the case.

It is a movie version of the
Broadway stage success in which
( Hammerstein translates
Bizet’s Carmen into terms of
American Negroes in wartime.

Instead of Spain it is set in the

\ deep South and in Chicago. The

toreador becomes a prize-fighter,
Carmen -is a worker at an army
base, and Bizet’s lively music is

set to such words as “Beat Out

That Music on the Drums.”

Heading an all-Negro cast of |

talent and vitality, Dorothy Dan-
dridge, as Carmen, serves up sex
sizzling hot and has no difficulty

New Frontiers makes

NO entering its: fourth year
and one of the few remaining

Canadian cultural magazines,

New Frontiers this month is ap-
pealing to its supporters for a

$1,500 sustaining fund to cover
its annual deficit. It hopes to
make its objective by the end of
the month.

‘The appeal issued by editor
Margaret Fairley and ‘business
manager Lil Carson declares:

‘During the past three years
we believe the magazine has be-
come a modest but increasingly

sustaining fund appeol —

vibrant expression of Canada’s
awakened national pride. At the
same time we have been enrich-

ed in our understanding of peo-

ple in other lands.”

The — quarterly magazine at

present depends solely on income

from subscriptions ($1.50 a year).
Although editors, administration

staff and contributors serve vol- .

untarily, subscription income
does not quite cover the full cost.

. Contributions may be sent to

New Frontiers, 153 Dunn Ave-

nue, Toronto, Ont.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 18, 1955 — PAGE 8

distortions —

at all in persuading us that she

is the sort of girl men fight over.
She has more sex appeal and —

vitality than any three Holly-
wood stars and with the dubbed
voice of Marilynn Horne she

gives us a Carmen to remember.

Pearl Bailey’s warm, life-loving ee

voice and personality as Carmen’s

friend Frankie, Joe Adams as the —
_prize-fighter, and a dozen other

vibrant performances make one
wonder whether the average Hol-
lywood movie cast isn’t half.

asleep while the cameras are
turning.

Of course we are delighted to .

‘see such artists. But take a look

-at the conditions under which we

are allowed. to do so.

In the first place, this is segre-

gated art. If the Negroes have

the screen for a moment no white ©

artist must appear with them.

\ f }
This is in accordance with a

tendency which has been growing
in Hollywood of applying an even
stricter segregation than the Jim
Crow fanatics have been able to
apply in the country as a whole.

Yet although Carmen Jones has —

an all-Negro cast it is not a
Negro picture. Produced and di-
rected by Otto Preminger, and
written by Oscar Hammerstein, it

is a white man’s fantasy of Negro

life, distorting it and caricatur-
ing it for the amusement of its
social “superiors.”

These Negroes are made to ap-
pear feckless, amoral and given
to childish yulgar displays.. They
are never lower the stature of
nobility or tragedy.

—THOMAS SPENCER

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