This is the way it was for Ame

ricans in Havana before the revolution.

CUBA: a novel before...

FLUSH TIMES, by We ren Miller, Published by Miller, Brown & Co. Avail- able at People’s Co-op Book Store, 341 W. Pender.

Bees MORE than any other prose writer, Warren Miller is preoccupied with the Cuban revolution’s meaning for Americans. First, in Nine- ty Miles From Home, he at- tempted to convey the essence and flavor of Cuba by means of mixed reportage and fan- tasy. Though often acuie and funny, that volume was rather disfuse and, I believe. not successful as a whole. His novel Flush Times works much better. The rea- Son, I think, is that Miller fo- Cuses on Cuba through the person of a single American, a hero with whom we sympa- thize and whom we under- Stand as he blunders down to Cuba and into the revolution.

What in Ninety Miles From Home was merely reported - with more or less tiair is i this case experienced by Juxua-

than Weller, whose itlook interprets the revolution. Weller is a young New Yorker who finds no purpose to his life, either in his occu- pation of drawing TV cartoon ads or in his family record of enterpreneurial achievement.

The ancestral example merely increases his sense of futility. Jonathan’s pregnant wife leaves him. Intent on di- vorce, she goes to Cuba for an abortion. Jonat!.7 goes along hoping to dissuaie her. The time is a few months before Batista’s downfall.

The abortion completed and the divorce transacted, the abandoned Jonathan is left to drift into the distractions of Havana emigre life.

The discards of other de-

clined civilizations already live here; so does a writer strongly suggestive of Hem- ingway, who talks tough but hasn’t the nerve to write of the revolution when it comes.

Letters from home tell Jon- athan of ‘apathy at the grass roots, inertia in high places,

standees at the bar.” “Are we

too old and tired to rouse our-

sels +d join the dance?” he

asi self. *& a i

Ile takes up a charming Fi- delista of mixed blood. When the Batista police brutally kill her Jonathan’s reaction is wholly personal: he feels his last chance for a new life and for having children has been taken from him, and he be- comes literally impotent.

We see little of the revolu- tion as it comes to power, only what Jonathan sees: two thin bodies in a_ gutter; a young man who stores gren- ades in Jonathan’s cupboards; the militant girl who is killed.

The spiritual exhaustion of Jonathan and America remain the focus. Jonathan is barred by his national origins from participating in revolutionary vitality. At best he can live out an absurd existence against its background.

His lassitude and death, so devoid of. significance and ‘dignity, say a good deal about what America has become and where it may go..

—LEE BAXANDALL

...atale of the present

aul Rodriguez was selected as

the most valuable worker in the paper and pasteboard industry of Cuba for the year 1962.

Raul had been ‘‘on his’ own’’ Most of his life. “Por la libre’ — as the Cubans say graphically Mm Spanish. Raul glued a leg of a chair here and a drawer there, 4s the years piled up on him.

As he came across various kinds of wood and other materials that Were given to him to put together, he experimented with different Kinds of glues until he developed Some paste formulas that he could Claim as the product of his vast €xperiments and experience.

* * * Raul was not old, but neither

Can it be said he was young any More.

~~ WORTH _ READING

Silent Spring, by Rachel Car- Son. Price $5.95. For as long as man has dwelled co this planet, spring has been Ne season of rebirth, and the Singing of birds. het now, in some parts of pao spring is strangely : ent, for many of the birds are ch — incidental victims of our “less attempt to control our ee cumin by the use of chemi- ; ey that poison not only the in- Ex S against which they are di- ected but the birds in the air, € fish in the rivers, the earth Which Supplies our food, and in. Vitably, man himself.

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In the meantime he heard that in the paper and eardboard fac- tory _where millions of _ card- board containers, CUPS and paper bags were being made, they were having trouble with glueing these products so that each of these articles of daily necessity for holding liquids and foods would not come. apart in the hands of the buyer.

* * *

The special glue used in the container and bag industry used to be imported from the U.S. at 36 cents a pound. This Cuban in- dustry used to spend $80,090 a year for the special glue needed.

At the beginning of 1962, the glue which had been stored up for years when importation from the U.S. was still possible, be- gan to give out.

Raul applied for a job in one of the paper products factories. For the first time in his life he was part of a team. The itiner- ant furniture mender was trans- formed into a factory worker.

Raul tride to solve the number one problem of the industry: a product that would be an ade- quate substitute for the fast- diminishing U.S. glue without which no containers and many other paper and cardboard ar- ticles could be made.

® * *

It had to be a glue that could dry almost instantly, keeping pace with the high speed of the machines through which the paper and cardboard material was pass- ing. At the same time, the glue had to seal the paper or card. board permanently.

Raul brought to bear all his

ios — s ae Skok

long experience of working with all kinds of pastes ;and glues; soon he discovered the exact kind of glue that was needeed. And he did it with ingredients that could be produced in_ his native Cuba, at a cost of 13 cents © a pound instead of the 36 cents a pound paid to the Yankee traders. When asked how the formula for the new glue was found, Rau! answered modestly: “It was all done through collective work. We all made many experiments. Everybody came with new ideas. I was amazed. I was working there only a few days, and I felt as if I had known my fellow-

workers all my life.”

: * * *

At the factory affair, Che Guevara, Minister of Industry,

presented Raul Rodriguez with a diploma. ~

“When J received. the diploma,” Raul said, “I felt one of the great emotions of my life. I lived through so much misery. insults and exploitation before the revolu- tion that I could not really be- lieve my eyes—all these honors that were being conferred upon me.”

Now Raul Rodriguez is being sent to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. _

“What will you do there?’’ Raul was asked.

“Rist, I will try to see and know more about those brother countries that have helped us so much. And secondly, I will visit some of the paper, card. board and glue. factories to ac- quite more knowledge that I can use when I come back.”

: -—JESUS COLON

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At a U.S. sit-in

A. NOON in the staid old rotunda of Califernia’s Capi-

tol building the young people join- ed hands under the battle flags of the state’s Civil War regiments, faced the polished balustrade and sang, ‘‘We shall overcome one aay.

Legislators and lobbyists, caught up in the traditional closing rush of a legislative session that was to end June 21, paid little atten- tion to the group, which—in vary- ing numbers—had been sitting- in since May 29.

Yet the cause that brought these members of the Congress of Ra- cial Equality (CORE) here was perhaps the hottest issue before this somewhat lacklustre session

the fate of Assemblyman William Byron Rumford’s fair housing bill was still very much in doubt. But win or lose, the sit- inners had left their mark upon Sacremento.

* * *

“No matter what happens,”’ said Danny Gray, first vice-president of Los Angeles CORE, ‘“‘this dem- onstration in itself is a victory for us.”

The Negro freedom movement had pierced the protective armor of ritual and tradition by which legislators and lobbyists attempt to insulate themselves from the public.

There was the day (June 11) when—to the vast interest of the hundreds of stenographers work- ing in the Capitol—screen stars

‘Marlon Brando and Paul New-

man had visited the sit-ins.

Brando touched on what was new about all this when he said he had come ‘“‘to assist the Negro in doing something we should have done in the first place.”

One of the children, a girl in

the fifth grade, said, “I didn’t like sleeping here, but I think it’s very important, and I'll re- port about it in school.”

A young woman from San Fran- cisco said, ‘I’ve been up here three weekends. I can’t stay dur- ing the week because of my job. I am just tired of the old ways of discrimination and not having the chance to a decent life.”

A young man volunteered, “Ne- groes should be able to buy homes if they can pay for them. We are tired of living in ghettoes.”’

oo * *

These were the kind of people who, on June 15, were dragged forcibly from the entrance to the state senate chambers by state police when they staged a lie-down at the doors in protest against senate inaction on the housing bill.

There were sneers from legis- lators and lobbyists. Sen Luther Gibson (Democrat Vallejo County), the man most responsi- ble for delaying the fair housing bill, barked, “I don’t care what they do. They’re nitwits.”

But the demonstrators sitting on limp air mattresses on the cold floor continued to talk about the struggles in the South, about man’s moral responsibilities, about the frustration of being un- able to get a job.

“All we want,” said one, “‘is to make our country a decent place in which to live.”

—MARGRIT PITTMAN

Ed. Note: The fair housing bill {sponsored by Assembly- man. William _Byron _Rum- ford) referred to above, has subsequently been passed by the State Legislature of Cali- fornia — six minutes before the deadline which closed the legislative session).

Screen stars Marlon Brando (kneeling, left) and Paul New- man (seated against the railing) chat with Congress of Racial Equality sit-inners in arotundaof the state Capitol in Sacra-

mento, California.

Books for summer reading

ummer is a time for catching S up on reading and re-reading books. The following inexpensive paperbacks are ideal campanions in a cool shady spot during these hot summer days.

There is “Over Prairie Trails’ ($1) and ‘‘Master of the Mill” ($1.25). Both are high spots in Canadian writing by Frederick Phillip Grove.

A variety of titles by Stephen Leacock and Gabrielle Ray make for pleasant reading at $1 and $1.25 a copy.

“King Leopold’s Soliloquy” by Mark Twain ($1.25), “‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ by Wm. Shirer ($1.65), ‘“‘The Alder- son Story’’ by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn ($1.80) and the popular story about Dr. Norman Bethune “The Scalpel, The Sword” ‘by Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon (98c)

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.by Pushkin,

can add many a pleasant hour to your summer.

For the energetic vacationer there are folk-song and labor-song books to loosen up and relax with. Take your pick: the Lead- belly Song-book ($2.15) ,‘‘Favorite American Ballads’’ by Pete Seeg- er ($2.15), ‘Songs of Work and Freedom”’ by Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer ($3.50), ““Negro Songs From Alabama’’ and many more.

If you like getting your nose into classics, there’s “The Be- witched Tailor’ by Sholem Aleich- em ($1.25), or any of the books Gogol, Chekhov, Shakespeare and others, are read- ily available.

Sixty-four varieties of edi- ble mushrooms have been ap- proved for marketing by Czechoslovakia’s health min- istry.

"July 12, 1963--RACIHGTRIBUNEPage 5