12 AAT Books and People oe | By KAY GREGORY LM MM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MMMM MT pte new film, Lifeboat, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, has ~ _ set all the critics buzzing like a nest of hornets. Purported to be symbolic of the present war, the original outline was written by John Steinbeck and he is so credited on the present film. Now, however, after indignation has been expressed. at the film’s alarming theme of the Nazi superman theory, it is reported that Steinbeck’s orig- inal idea was completely changed by Jo Swerling who wrote the screen version. John Steinbeck is said tobe considerably agi- tated by what is now appearing: in the film; and no wonder. In Hitcheock’s story the Nazi submarine survivor “turns out to be the strongest and most re- sourceful man in the group.” In Steinbeck’s version, the Nazi is “a cowering character with a broken arm who only became a menace once when he was given the tiller one night and turned the boat around.’ Hitcheock’s story implies that Salvation of the shipwrecked group depends solely on a “high- er body.”” Steinbeck’s has a char- acter, qa Combination deckhand and radio operator, who rigged. a sail, knew celestial navigation and headed the boat for the’ mainiand. Es So even though Steinbeck’s name is on the film, don’t blame shim for its worst parts. Se WVIELE Some discrepancy be- eo tween original versions and the finished film is understand_ able in small details, yet it is not to be overlooked that this has happened in a number of eases where books have been made into films—to the detri- ment of the author’s version. Lillian Hellman, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning film, Watch on the Rhine, made it public that she had consderable reservatsons as to what had been made from her seript for The Worth Star. The picture she en- visioned was not the picture which had come to the screen, she said. Producer Samuel Gold- wyn-and Director Lewis Mile- stone had completely altered its tone. @ f*HEAP editions and reprints are really coming to the fore in these days of wartime paper rationing. Pocket Books and Penguin have some of the best titles in any of the cheaper books. The former =. ¥ has now issued Walter Lippman’s U.S. Foreign Policy, and John Herseys story of Guadalcanal— Into the Valley, two ‘Imperative’ books designated by the Council on Books in Wartime. Hersey, by the way, has now written another book, this time of Sicily—A Bell for Adano, a story of the United States forces and the work of AMGOT there. Penguin has issued Guadalean- al Diary by Richard Tregaskis and two of John Steinbeck’s noy- els; Pastures of Heaven and The Moon Is Down. All of Quentin Reynolds’ books can be obtained in the Blue Rib- bon series, at about $1; Only the Stars Are Neutral, Convoy, The Wounded Don’t Cry, and his re- cent story of the Dieppe raid, Dress Rehearsal. First edition of his new one, The Curtain Rises, will be published very shortly. The Tower Fiction series, at 80 cents, has several good buys. First is the great Chinese novel, Village in August by T’ien Chun. This is one of the best novels I have read in a long while and it marks a turning point in Ghina’s history since it was the first to be written in the new Renais- Sance movement to educate Chi- na’s illiterate masses by provid- ing books written in a simple style that could be understood by the ordinary peasant. Tower Books also has issued a John Steinbeck novel hiterto un- available except in one small edition, To g God Unknown, and a very good publication of Rich-— ard Wright's Uncle Tom’s Chil- dren, which includes Bright and - Morning Star. Another new re- print in this series that will be popular is Howard Fast’s novel on Valley Forge, Conceived in Liberty, a forerunner to his best- selling Citizen Tom Paine. e ONTEMPORARY Publishers have announced another pamphlet by Dyson Carter, The Crime Against the People, to be published this spring, and de- seribed by -the publishers as “very important. IN PEACE AND WAR By Stanley Ryerson @ WHAT IS MARXISM? By Emile Burns @ THE BALTIC RIDDLE By Gregory Meiksins HERE 105 Shelly Building For Your Bookshelf THE SOVIET UNION TODAY An Outline Study { Prepared by the American-Russian Institute 1.00 And These Two New Progressive Books: @ SOVIET ECONOMY AND THE WAR - - @ SOVIET PLANNING AND LABOR Still on Our Bestselling List are: @ FRENCH CANADA - SOON! Our New Frontier — Alaska and the Canadian Northwest By HAROLD-GRIFFIN THE PEOPLE BOOKSHOP Vancouver, B.C. 1 119 West Pender Library aciities nacequate. T least six branch library buildings, fully equipped and staffed, and about 380,000 additional books are essential if the city’s library service is to. be extended to-do the job required of it, according to E. S. Robinson, librarian at Vancouver Public Library. “The last city bylaw which al- lotted a grant to the libraries Was passed in 1930,’ Robinson told The People this week. “Since then, except fer the gift of two outdated and vacant municipal halls which are now partly in use as branches, absolutely noth- ing has been done by the city to make good reading material available to citizens. There is no question but that present library service is woefully inadequate, yet not one dollar has been spent to improve library buildings by the city council. It is not an en- viable record for a city almost 60 years old’ At present there are only enough books on library shelves to provide one fer every three citizens. This should be increased to provide an average of one and a half books a person, believes Robinson. ’ “& cits this size should have li- brary facilities to serve 40 per- cent of the population,’ he de- clared. “Throughout Canada, one eut of every two persons has no access to a library. In England only one out of ten is unable to obtain library services. And in the Soviet Union library services have been extended to a remark- able extent.” = He pointed out. as an example, the case of a Soviet town of 50,- 000 people, where 30 fulltime Ii- brarians and “reading special- ists” were employed. “Yet here in Vancouver,’ he declared, “with a population six times as great, we have only 50 fulltime library wofkers. “Tn our plan for reconstruction, which we were asked to submit to the government, it was speci- fied that to provide adequate fa- cilities here would require open- ing of a new main building and the establishment of six branches, at a total cost of approximately Gne and a half million dollars.” When such facilities were avail- able. it would be possible to fol- low the Soviet example of “carry- ing the book to the job.” Special services should be provided at onee for shift workers, said Rob- inson. “Reading tastes have changed since the beginning of the war,” he maintained, “and with branch libraries in plants and union halls We could serve the reader much more intelligently by understand- ing his specific needs. The beginning of the war saw a great inerease in interest in technical books. During the last year there has been great inter- est in history, particularly Euro- pean history since the French Revolution. I believe that people are taking an intelligent view of events of the present period and are seeking a precedent fr them. There has been a srowins de- mand, too, for books about the Soviet Union, particularly about the Soviet social system. Along with this trend is a revival of interest in the Russian novelists of the past, as well as inereasing interest in new books by Soviet writers.” Reviewed This Week | Women In Industry MOTHERS IN OVERALLS— —by Eva lLapin—Workers Li- brary Publishers—10 cents. Ate the problems v7hich beset women who try to do two jobs—work in industry and keep their homes and families fed, clothed and sheltered—are set forth in this timely pamphlet with the solutions to most of them gleaned from experiences in the industrial plants of our own and other countries. “Eva Lapin covers in detail the tremendous contribution women are making in the winning of this war because of “their apti- tude, quickness to learn and abil- ity to handle machines. The old, earefully-nurtured tradition about women not being - mechanically minded has certainly been prov- en false.” Absenteeism and turnover are_ the two big hurdles to overcome in employment of women, and as Miss Lapin points out, both these are a result of home prob- lems, “rounding up the kids, shopping, cooking, cleaning and doing the laundry.” American surveys, according to Miss Lapin, show that 50 per- cent of the women now employed intend to keep their jobs. after the war. Consequently the prob- lem of providing nursery schools communal _kitchens, centralized shopping centers, nousing and equipment, will not end with the War, aS some imagine. _ The answer to all these prob- lems is not, as Mrs. Tilly Rol- ston recently declared in the pro- vineial legislature, “to pay wo- men to: stay home and rear their children.” Déy nurseries, in her opinion, would “work against the fundamental purpose of mothers’ pensions.” Despite such attempts to rele- gate women to relative ignorance and the mind-drugging monotony of housework, thousands of wo- men are retermined to get out into the fields of endeavor for which they have any talent or ability. As even. a private sur- vey in Qntario showed, between 50 and 80 percent of women em- ployed in a group of factories declared they wished to continue working after the war. Mrs. Nancy “lodges, speaking at a conference of the School for Citizenship in Vancouver last year, pertinently remarked that unless women gave some thought to their status in society now it would be too late after the war. Are we going to organize so that everyone, including women, who wants to may work at a chosen trade, or are we going to drift back so that only those who must can get jobs? she asked. Senator Iva C. Fallis recently Advance Of Science WONDER STORIES OF THE SCIENGE WORLD—by Dyson Carter — Contemporary Publish- e€rs—15 cents. 4 PEL latest booklet by Dyson Carter is a series articles on the scientific of value to the average men and women—in the home, in the garden, and everyday life. Tt even tells you how to make the bnew wonder drug, penicillin, in your Own kitchen, but of course, its use is a matter for doctors only. _ Research into ways of prolong- ing life holds promise of men being able to live from 125 to 150 years, with even no limit at this age! Dyson Carter gives seme examples and tells how in the future “it is well within the range ef possibility for the Aver- age persons to live for five hun- dred and fifty years.” Why more men go bald than women, what cur after-the-war cars will be like, how to make more flowers of short advances industry or who are compelieg | ‘the airplane, blood plasma, su declared in the Senate that =| men should be given equal portunities with men: for post § employment. , E Immediately the ery goes — that the family is doomed. that there will be no more vidual home life. The old f that home and family life be lost if the mother work: + another carefully nurtured 1% What individual mother We} compete in providing hot lung for children when the comm scheme, such as_ Britain’s, | provide them for 22 cents, org? the time, patience and atten}: in education obtained say, Ze day nursery. : 14 “Women who want to a | sant ONE do so by necessity must be) ~ lowed to do so without fe: accused of taking men’s jo] - Miss Lapin says. “Freedom i | want applies to women’ as ¥y as men.” - | “Tf we plan a peacetime e¢ omy for fulltime development our resources, there will be jj | for all—not only to satisfy American appetites for big.” and better refrigerators—pbut © supply the demands of wa markets. And what about { panded services in our post world—more nursery schools, -— braries, cultural and recreatio — activities—ali these will need :- skilled minds and hands of 1 men.” it In an article in the New ¥ Times last December the pope author, Dorothy Canfield Fist | had quite a lot to say on this § * ject: : “The concern now felt ab whether women who have i the experiences of indusirial ¢ Ployment will ‘go back to sume their role as homemak is based on the idea that, unk they go ‘back’. no homes willl | made. . .. The plain dow | barreled fact is . . . that won | will go forward to share ¥- those they love whate ~ rewards come to them with th new industrial, commercial professional skills. .. .” } But before we can fully cc sider the delightful prospects ~ the postwar era, there is Sk a big job to be done and won - are helping to do it. They a proven equal fighters against action fascism. As Miss La quotes from one woman shipy: worker: 2 ee “lm glad 'm a woman welt I know actuaily I don’t do mo. But it’s the little I do multiph |p by 70,000 in this yard alone @ 90,000,000 in the whole coun! ja: that is winning this war and makes me feel good to know | a part of it."—Kay Gregory. | a : : jel and vegetables grow in yi Sarden, all these things and 1 of others are in this pamphlet Particularly interesting 7 now is the story of how scier has been able to: reduce easy ties in this war, to bring mw back from the edge of death ¢ | self to useful life because of fal creased knowledge. “Of eyi thousand wounded soldiers w Teric in the Great War, would he L perished, the Angel of Resurr |~8 tion is today miraculously | storing more than eight hundi of these men to life and hom Dyson Carter says. Such ‘oré ary things to us nowadays, mn drugs, devices for saving sk’ ir wrecked men are all the res) re of years of patient research ¢ f are now available to humaw 3 for war. How much better ¢ hreader such scientific advan | could make life during peaceti. is worth thinking about. af