New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-12-11
Il TEAPOT TEMPEST.
Joseph Conrad ON a South american
Revolution.

NOSTROMO A Tale of the Seaboard. By Joseph
Conrad. 12mo. PIP. 631 Harper & Brothers.
BACCARAT By Frank Dandy. 12mo. PIP. 3l2
Philadelphia: ]. B. Lppincott Company.
In the fiction which has him his repute
Mr. Conrad has written a good deal of prose
poetry, wreaking himself on long and very
beautiful descriptions of natural phenomena.
There is some of his peculiarly original descrip-
tive writing in ''Nostromo." which opens. in
deed. with brilliant picture of South Amer
lean coast scene. But in leaving the Malay
Archipelago and those other strange exotic
places in which he has hitherto found his best
material for a country on our side of the globe
he has changed not only his sky but his meth
DDS. He is still the psychologist we know so
well, but he is more the teller of a story.
The Italian sailor who is his hero disputes the
centre of the stage with several other men anr
one or two women, all involved in one of those
revolutions for which the states to the south of
US are notorious. 1t is an old and positively
hackneyed theme, which Mr.. Conrad treats,
however, in his own way. Though the familiar
properties and actors are here-the rich mine
and its owner, the native patriots and rascas-
they all put to serious use where the con-
ventional novelist would have found in them
nothing save the substance of a conventional
and melodramatic yarn. The author of Nos
tromo" presents in the sailor aforesaid a really
remarkable type, ana IN handHng Ine events
characteristic of a South American revolution
he gives a close Interpretation of a people,
using incident only as a means of bringing out
elements of character. The men who take part
in such a drama as he sets before have never
before been painted in a novel with such knowl-
edge and understanding. They no longer
puppets, moving stitfly about on a stage They
are human beings, true to themselves and to
the spirit of the country in which they live
There is rather talk in the book than Is
necessary. In his solictude for the fidelity or
his study Mr.. Conrad has allowed himself to be
carried away from a strictly artistic conception
of what a novel should be, even an unconVen-
tional novel, and wand then he is dull
which for him is something new. The bulk OF
the book however, is written with as much
power as subtlety. In the romantic literature
Of revolution "Nostromo' should become
classic
"Baccarat" is well told, but we hesitate about
calling it good story It's heroine is the young
French wife of en- English lawyer who is highly
competent in the exercise of his profession but
knows TO better than to leave his Julie and
their children alone for a time at a French
watering place. in which a gambling casino forms
n conspicuous attraction. Poor Julie happens
to be the daughter of a confirmed haunter of the
card tables. She is promptly lured to destruc-
ton by an inherited propensity. and in the
process she falls a victim to the wies of a Bel
glan adventurer of the lowest type When the
husband and wife meet again it is in a situa-
ton or the most tragic misery. Perhaps Mrs
Frankau thought that in writing "Baccarat"
she was giving legitimate Illustration of the
influence of heredity, and was composing a
moving tract against the evils of gambling but
she SO piles horror upon horror that the reader