Listen to the Wind by James Reaney, and: Colours in the Dark by James Reaney, and: The Ecstasy of Rita Joe by George Ryga, and: Captives of the Faceless Drummer by George Ryga, and: Rinse Cycle by Jackie Crossland & Rudy LaValle, and: Crabdance by Beverly Simons, and: Ashes for Easter and Other Monodramas by David Watmough (review)

122 BOOK REVIEWS which Fuegi brings to this thesis and in his insistence that Brecht as an artist has his own very individual physiognomy, which is largely unaffected by ideological and aesthetic considerations: "The essential Brecht has remained essentially the same" (p. 178). The characterization of this essential Brecht is not presented in a few short, abstract sentences, but emerges from the individual analyses of the works. Clearly, none of these interpretations exhausts its subject - they are too directed by the author's aim for that - but none of them fails to contribute new insights. This book can be recommended as an excellent introduction to the subject, but even the Brecht specialist can read it with great profit. HELGE HULTBERG University of Copenhagen LISTEN TO THE WIND by James Reaney. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1972. 119 p. $2.50 & $8.00. COLOURS IN THE DARK, by James Reaney. Vancouver: Talonbooks, with Macmillan of Canada, 1971. 94 p. $2.50. THE ECSTASY OF RITA JOE, by George Ryga. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1972. 90 p. $2.50. CAPTNES OF THE FACE].:..ESS DRUMMER, by George Ryga. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1972. 117 p. $2.50. RINSE CYCLE, by Jackie Crossland & Rudy LaValle. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1972. 79 p. $4.00. CRABDANCE, by Beverly Simons. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1973. 119 p. $2.50. ASHES FOR EASTER AND OTHER MONODRAMAS, by David Watmough. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1972. 183 pp. $4.00. The first ambition of a Canadian playwright will not be to see his work in print. A single performance by a local amateur group would be more immediately welcome. However, since lasting reputation depends on scripts being available not just for an adventurous director, but among the discerning readers of the general public as well, appearance in book form will be an ultimate hope. How many readers the discerning clerisy comprises is anyone's guess, but reading plays may not be at present their chief interest. This makes Talonbooks of Vancouver's foray into Canadian drama all the more farsighted. Each Talonplay is equipped to catch the eye with an arresting and individual design and, where applicable, with an introduction and performance history. Reaney's Listen to the Wind can p~rticularly attract a reader by virtue of its roots in an early Rider Haggard romance - Dawn - and because of the poems and other echoes of the Brontes. The framework story of a sick boy trying to reconcile his parents through the device of a play in which they and his young cousins take part shows his imagination in treating the harshness of BOOK REVIEWS 123 the outer world with the medicine of poetic justice. Characters in the inner story resemble in essence himself and the people around him, who are revealed through this make-believe as they truly are. For a reader the merging of characters crossing between the outer and inner worlds can be confusing, but this is not really important, because through its immediate appeal the play offers a compelling invitation to the reader to act in it. Colours in the Dark is another magnet, with the outer world appearing through the imagination of a boy whose eyes are bandaged against measles. On a winter day the sick boy's inward eye begins a free association of colours with the world's phenomena, when un"der the banner of each colour the world offers him its ways and wares as from a giant play-box. By the time he has endured his forty days in the wilderness of the blind and sees the world again in the green of Spring, all the menace of life has been tamed; for "love and patience do quite change the scene" in a play which declares itself, through its zestful make-believe, an antidote against our Age of Dread. To turn to Ryga is to quit a much-loved countryside for the bleak and unknown city. The tragedy of Rita Joe and Jamie Paul speaks out eloquently for the rights of Indians who want neither white charity nor white justice. Whites, seen as an urban rash on the Indian homeland, bear the guilt of martyring Rita Joe in one of their centres of civilisation, where she is as helpless as an imprisoned Joan of Arc...