“ROVKA 3g;

Anoy, by Julian Semy-

Ambassador, $5.

POLICEMAN is found mur-

ed. His gun is stolen.
fet a Ba shop is robbed,
Wk y Ore, then a bank. The
Pride the same gang? Un-
Y. And the chase is on.

f re

iy enough situation
Tite at of thrillers, but the
Pie, ; IS'that this is a Soviet
Behone. Petrovka 38 is the
by Cp Number of the Mos-

Ni :
bing 22°¥ Is a 35 year old
J script Several travel books,
emt + and plays. His first
Pional 4 Crime novel is pro-
Pgh he 4nd fast-paced. Al-
Ne Bee feavily on dia-
i merican style,
fh oy clearly owes ays to
Voa a y than the Erle Stan-
My. e His characteriza-
Oth criminals and
Te ang poe action switches
Fe thro Orth) is vivid. They
Ihlems pee as people, with
» f0Ves, desires, hates.

Net
he “Ourse of his book

BOOKS

Soviet

Semyonov deals with aspects of
Soviet life:

- “Roslyakovy was always: per-
plexed when people said: ‘Only
doubtful characters go to res-
taurants. ‘What of it? he
thought. ‘Is a restaurant a
Soviet institution or is it not?
If you’re going to regard a res-
taurant as a den of iniquity,
wouldn’t it be better in that
case to get rid of them altoge-
ther? It’s ridiculous. And there
are lots of other ridiculous
things here — trivial in them-

selves but extremely irritating.

se?ter to a

By JOHN WEIR
MOSCOW

VON thes

” Will pir combined ages
Bue pach the century mark.
M counr Well Kent, who at
of th Was great-grandfa-
“Molo ee Calls 4th Grade
 attigy» Isha Stolbov “fel-
shin A strong bond of
[se °9d creative inter-
he 9 *tches from the ranch-

the Canadian border

Pin he Where the Stolbovs

Pitt, 4 City of Perm in the

Ti ) € Ural Mountains.
Phen .

: ae “d this way,

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mo
ef
i,
a
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n
fe}
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Paper, Pioners-
{ » COnducted an art
fd a entries were re-
Pty -™ all parts of the

 vear
‘he Mpan:.© the Soviet Union,
; atd eft, PY his charming
wt He cient helpmate Sally
frtithea “8S one of the dis-
pid for Participants in the
Pthe .™ held in Kiev, un-
We Joint auspices of the
MScg “lters’ Union and
sty of ®n the 150th anni-
if the birth of the Uk-
M0crat Taras Shev-

ay
iy

Ppin
b 8e0,° Ver for a few days
By ‘itorig, Nt was invited to
fh, Prag Offices of Pioner-
fe the .2 Where he was
Shildree CK Of the entries in
S art contest.

x, vas i
Min gclighted with them,
* inste them closely and
i ‘w to Eve comments.
Pitoeisy “ct the one he liked
fy * ane Kent's choice fell
Ni Was 2 by Misha Stol-
took itr; sented to him

: You © America.

Pie, Cn imagi :

Te, Up in i: RE the joy that
The 'sha’s heart when

titted ge is
i felioy iS: And the pride

| Mag YOuth townsmen. The
y by ees Molodaya
him \ytled a write - up

Of an, Voile his talent. and
i} ———- Pointed to painting

ents in New York >

ih Visitin Rockwell Kent

becoming his calling in_ life,
Misha was described as an all-
round boy, good at his studies,
an ardent sportsman and a lad
with various hobbies and inter-
ests.

Friends sent a ‘copy of that
article to Rockwell Kent across
the ocean. He had become
acquainted with a sample of his
work, and now he learned about

thriller

What can a young courting
couple do on a Saturday? In
summer it’s all right. You can
go to the park or simply stroll
about Moscow. As Sadchikov
says, it brings you closer toge-
ther. But what about winter?
Why don’t they build more
dance halls’ and inexpensive
cafes with smal! bands? Why
not let cafes stay open at night
not just till eleven but till one
or two in the morning? If a
chap’s working on the second
shift at a factory, why shouldn’t
he be allowed to take his girl
to a cafe at eleven?’ It seeméd

to Roslyakov that this question
was beset by inertia. The peo-
ple in the Ministry of Trade and
the town councils who were
responsible for this question
thought that sitting in cafes was
unnecessary and useless waste
of time. They had families, of
course, and then their.age was
different, but what were young
courting couples to do? Rosly-
akov was indignant: young peo-
ple in Poland. or Czechoslova-
kia, for example, could dance
gaily, sit in tiny cafes and drink
wine or strong coffee and talk
about what was dear and com-
prehensible to them. But what
about our lads? They also want-
ed to spend their evenings the
way people did in the Polish
and Czech films.

“Hypocrisy’s got into us,
thought Roslyakov. ‘All we
think about is whether this will
distract our youth from what is
most important. It won’t dis-
tract them at all. On the con-
trary. They'll see then that
they’re understood, that they’re
being cared for, and this would
be an enormous plus for every-

body. Otherwise the 20-year-
olds will disperse to their rooms
and be beyond our centrol’.”

The above example illustrates
the commentary on Soviet life
which runs through the book.
The author manages to present
us with believable people think-
ing believable thoughts, rather
than the cardboard heroes so
prevalent in past Soviet fiction.

The weakness of the book in
my opinion, is that the back-
ground of the two main crimin-
als is a little too pat. One is the
son of a sadistic Major-General
executed in connection with the
Beria affair... . “he bore the
blood of many honest Commu-
nists on his hands.” The second,
the master-mind of the gang,
was “a _ counter-revolutionary
secrét police spy from Vlasov’s
Army” who commits crimes not.
so much for gain, but rather as
acts against the state. a

This is only a minor flaw,
however, in what is in all other
ways an honest, well-plotted,
Satisfying thriller.

—Monica Whyte.

‘fellow artist’

the lad himself. The description
of the Russian youngster clearly
took him back 70 years to his
own childhood when he too not
only liked to draw but was a
“real boy”, his mind hungry to
learn, his muscles wanting to
try every kind of sport, his
hands longing to do things...

Rockwell Kent wrote Misha
Stolbov an affectionate letter.

Dear Misha:

interests.

your life,

Ausable Forks,
New York,
March 4, 1965.

As a fellow artist, I should long ago
have written you telling you how much I
appreciate the little picture that was given
me last summer. But now, having read the
article, by Lena Grayevskaya, about you
in Young Guard I must congratulate you
not only as an artist but as an all-round
athlete and a young fellow of innumerable

Art, as you will come to know, is prop-
erly founded upon an active experience of
life — on all the experience that you could
possibly get and still have time and ener-
gy left for painting pictures. I know this,
for, like you, I, as a boy, was active in
many of the sports that are now part of
for I played football, hockey, the
American game of baseball, and I loved
swimming and _ particularly. diving. And I
came later to want to visit far away places
where life was primitive. But, above all, I
became a workman, working with my
hands at every kind of job. And all that I
did eventually became part of me; and
what I became became at last my art.

So,. knowing all that you are doing I can
only say: “Good for you, young fellow!
and wish you great success in what will
finally became your life’s work.

Affectionately,
Rockwell Kent

1?

He managed to point out in one
paragraph the sign-posts on the
road to true success that not
only a budding schoolboy artist
but many a mature worker in
the arts and literature would do
well to follow.

Born in 1882, Rockwell Kent
was exhibiting his works in the
National Academy when he was
barely 23 years of age—exactly

60 years ago. His natural gifts
did not flower in any “ivory
tower” hothouse; the things he
painted were not “dreamed up”.
He was living among the people,
one of them, working with his
hands while creating on canvas.

He entered American arts
from the very first as a power-
ful realist because his interests
and experiences were grounded
in the reality of life. He has
worked as a common laborer, as
a fisherman and as a carpenter,
He worked — and still does as
much as he can — as a farmer.

He has lived in many places,
on the wind-swept shores of
Maine and Newfoundland, in
Greenland and in Tierra del
Fuego at the other end. of the
hemisphere. He has visited many
countries, everywhere finding
the rapport with the nature and
people of each that in turn made
his paintings and _ illustrations
so special.

Rockwell Kent loves nature
because he loves life, people,
and therefore, it was just as
natural and necessary for him to
take his place in the world con-
test for peace and liberty as it
was to paint.

Rockwell Kent — the artist,
the member of the World Coun-
cil of Peace, the champion of
civil liberties
States — is a model not only
for Misha Stolbov, but to boys
and girls and people generally
everywhere. :

_ The precious letter arrived in
Perm only several days after
Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Belayev
and Aleksei Leonov (the first
human being actually to “walk
on space’’) landed the Voskhod-2
not far from that city. The two
events are not entirely unrelat-
ed — they are, each in its way,
part of humanity’s progress into
the beautiful world of tomorrow.

‘World Sorrow’ by Rockwell
Kent shows the realist style of the
American artist's painting.

August 27, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5

in the United. ~