The Washington times. (Washington [D.C.]) 1901-1902, 1901-08-25
Recent Fiction.

| Recent Fiction.
THE Supreme Surrender is a novel of
| Washington life. by A. Maurice Low. 1t
has been a matter of marvel for some
time that nobody has as yet put Wash
ington into fiction. In some ways 1t is
the most fascinating city in the United
States, and offers the most interesting
field for character study; but while other
| fields have been sowed and reaped and
| even planted with rotation of crops,
| novelists have left Washington alone, or
only worked a little around the edges.
The reason for this curious phenomenon
| may be that those who know the city
best do not know how to write and those
| who know how to write do not know the
city. 1t only remains to put the new
| novel into one class or the other and in
| this case ii seems to belong to the first
| Mr.. Low certainly knows his ground, but
he is not exactly an adept at novel writ
ing.
| OF course, it is rather a risky business
to try to put Washington society into a
| book. One must use the characters of
| people who are still alive. for there
| is not enough ancient history about the
town to make it possible to do anything
else, and the Lincoln novel is used up
| In using the unwrtten history OF the
Capital, and there is enough of it for a
| whole library of fiction. one must be ex-
tremely careful to dodge references to
passages which are too interesting, es-
pecially if one is likely to want anything
of the people to whom they refer. Mr..
| Low has constructed his story in such
a way that the chronology is a mixture
of at least three Administrations, posi-
bly, more, and his cutting cynicisms and
/ m heS
BILE to write political novel without
making it brilliant-are thus to some ex-
| tent shot into the safe medium of the
| circumambient atmosphere. He has used
| Speaker Reed and little incident in the
| life of the late Senator Davis and Lord
| Pauncefote and one or two other well
| known characters, but he has done 1t in
| way not likely to hurt their feelings.
For the rest, he has so mingled his char
| acter studies that the effect is something
| like that of a well made French soup
one is morally sure that 1t has certain
vegetables in it. but cannot tell Just how
| the knowledge came.
In one essential respect, however, the
author has failed emphatically. He has
left out his realism. No live people in
| Washington, and people in love any
where at any time, ever talked as his
| lovers do. One suspects that they are
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The Land of Cockayne" by Matilde
Serao, is q story of Neapolitan life, deal
ing with the lottery and the balefuI in
fiuenoe which it exerts over all classes of
this population. Italy, it would seem, has
felt the subtle tendency of the present
age of fiction-making, which leads the
novelist to construct his work around
some Institution of the country, making
this the central figure. as it were. aud
the human characters scarcely more than
marionettes This does not preclude the
narionettes any, moro ,ba, u 5oos In raoI
life Fate may rule ones circumstances
without changing ones character.
The title of this book refers to a mvthi-
cal Land of Cakes a country of idle
ness and luxurious ease; and il is some
thing like this which the lottery offers
to ,o,rnt tho .,ia. lC,,ino, Nao,oIi,o,
~, ~ .,'. 'e ~,
ne characters range through an classes
of society, from the Marquis di Formosa,
last of the ancient house of Cavalcanti.
and his daupbtar F2iapca Mari. in ,ybon,
.he saihoiihs lever rises 10 the helgh.s Oh
Tragedy 10 'he "retcnedly poor cigar
makers ana street peoolers' III Whom IL
becomes squalo ana erotesque misery
They are all Neapolitans good and bad,
rich and poor. possessed of the character
iStiIS VI t"eii idce' ou' eaen 10 s'fohsy
iiiui anu 'he uii''i ing
- Pc liap9 ''ie mus iNinS piOoi Vi tiie
author genius some Oh the descriptive
passages are also extremely fine, notably