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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