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{{work|wppage=Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses}}
{{work}}
{{Infobox book
(Please don't edit Mr. Clemens' [[Sincerity Mode|deathless prose]], except to format and [[Blue Shifting|blue-shift]] it. Please ''do'' blue-shift as much as possible.)
| title = Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
| original title =
| image =
| caption =
| author = Mark Twain
| central theme = Why James Fenimore Cooper was, in Mark Twain's opinion, a bad writer.
| elevator pitch = An essay where Twain points out the innacuracy, inconsistencies, and several writing and characterization failures he found on Fenimore Cooper's novels.
| genre = Essay
| publication date = 1895
| source page exists = yes
}}
 
"'''Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences'''" is an 1895 essay by [[Mark Twain]], written as a satire and criticism of the writings of [[James Fenimore Cooper]], such as works from ''[[The Leatherstocking Tales]]''.
For the little-known Part II, see '''[http://www.strangebeautiful.com/papers/twain-coopers-prose-style.pdf Fenimore Cooper's Further Literary Offences]: [[Snark Bait|Cooper's Prose Style]].''' (1895) (PDF, 6 pg)
 
Twain, in a bitingly funny way, uses the essay to point and mock (but specially mock) every failure he perceived in Cooper's writing, which include, but are not limited to, [[Pacing Problems|poor pacing]], [[Purple Prose|overblown style]], [[Flat Character|flat characterization]], [[Plot Hole]]s galore, [[Cliche Storm|excessive clichés]], and [[Dan Browned|profound ignorance of the themes represented]]. Twain used to work as a steamboat pilot before turning into literature, so Cooper's shallow understanding (by his standards) in sailing, navigation, and dealing with nature irritates him as much as the incredibly bad way those are written about. He also mocks the [[Marty Stu]] nature of the protagonist of the ''Deerslayer'' novel, in what could be considered a proto-[[MST|sporking]].
For an opposite opinion, see '''''[http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/other/1988other-schachterle.html Fenimore Cooper's Literary Defenses.]'''''
----
== [[The Leatherstocking Tales|Fenimore Cooper's]] Literary Offences ==
=== by [[Mark Twain]] ===
 
The full essay can be read in the Source tab above; please [[Blue Shift]] it as much as possible.
{{quote|''The Pathfinder'' and ''The Deerslayer'' [[So Cool Its Awesome|stand at the head of Cooper's novels as artistic creations]]. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|scenes even more thrilling]]. Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole.
The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were pure works of art.|Prof. Lounsbury.}}
 
For the little-known Part II, see '''''[https://web.archive.org/web/20110125004010/http://strangebeautiful.com/papers/twain-coopers-prose-style.pdf Fenimore Cooper's Further Literary Offences]: [[Snark Bait|Cooper's Prose Style]].''''' (1895) (PDF, 6 pg). It explains the 114 offenses that, according to Twain, Cooper inflicted on the literary art with his writings, a point that wasn't explored in the original essay.
{{quote|The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention. ... One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty Bumppo....
[[Nature Hero|The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the delicate art of the forest]], [[Shown Their Work|were familiar to Cooper from his youth up.]]|Prof. Brander Matthews.}}
 
For an opposite opinion, see '''''[http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/other/1988other-schachterle.html Fenimore Cooper's Literary Defenses.]'''''
{{quote|Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction yet produced [[You Are a Credit to Your Race|by America.]]|[[Wilkie Collins]].}}
 
It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and [[Wilkie Collins]] to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature [[Praising Shows You Don't Watch|without having read some of it]]. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.
 
Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. [[Serial Escalation|It breaks the record]].
 
There are [[Long List|nineteen rules]] governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction--[[If My Calculations Are Correct|some say twenty-two]]. In ''Deerslayer'' Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:
 
# That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the ''Deerslayer'' tale [[Shaggy Dog Story|accomplishes nothing]] and [[No Ending|arrives in the air]].
# They require that [[Story Arc|the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale]], and shall help to develop it. But as the ''Deerslayer'' tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes [[Wacky Wayside Tribe|have no rightful place in the work]], since there was [[Filler|nothing for them to develop.]]
# They require that the personages in a tale shall be [[Shaped Like Itself|alive, except in the case of corpses]], and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the ''Deerslayer'' tale.
# They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall [[Law of Conservation of Detail|exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there]]. But [[Flat Character|this detail also has been overlooked]] in the ''Deerslayer'' tale.
# They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, [[Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic|the talk shall sound like human talk,]] and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, [[Seinfeldian Conversation|and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand]], and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the ''Deerslayer'' tale to the end of it.
# They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, [[Informed Attribute|the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description]]. But this law gets little or no attention in the ''Deerslayer'' tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.
# They require that when a personage talks like [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering]] in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not [[Funetik Aksent|talk like a negro minstrel]] in the end of it. [[Sophisticated As Hell|But this rule is flung down and danced upon]] in the ''Deerslayer'' tale.
# They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either [[Dan Browned|the author]] or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the ''Deerslayer'' tale.
# They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and [[Deus Ex Machina|let miracles alone]]; or, if they venture a miracle, the author [[Chekhov's Gun|must so plausibly set it forth as]] [[Fridge Brilliance|to make it look possible and reasonable]]. But these rules are [[Ass Pull|not respected]] in the ''Deerslayer'' tale.
# They require that the author shall make the reader [[Rule of Empathy|feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate]]; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the ''Deerslayer'' tale [[The Scrappy|dislikes the good people in it]], is [[Eight Deadly Words|indifferent to the others]], and wishes [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies|they would all get drowned together.]]
# They require that the characters in a tale shall be [[Character Development|so clearly defined]] that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the ''Deerslayer'' tale [[Character Derailment|this rule is vacated]].
 
In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:
 
# Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
# Use the right word, [[Malaproper|not its second cousin]].
# [[Brevity Is Wit|Eschew]] [[Purple Prose|surplusage]].
# Not [[What Happened to the Mouse?|omit necessary details]].
# Avoid [[Bad Writing Index|slovenliness of form]].
# [[Grammar Nazi|Use good grammar.]]
# [[Purple Prose|Employ a simple and straightforward style.]]
 
Even these seven are [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|coldly and persistently violated]] in the ''Deerslayer'' tale.
 
Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage properties he kept [[Signature Style|six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices]] for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another [[Trope|stage-property]] that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was his [[So Much for Stealth|broken twig.]] He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. [[So Much for Stealth|It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around.]] Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, [[With Catlike Tread|he is sure to step on a dry twig.]] There may be a hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. [[Running Gag|Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig;]] and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.
 
I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of [[Scarily Competent Tracker|the delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo]] and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor--a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? <ref>Mark Twain worked as a steamboat pilot on Mississippi for years. These parts may well be what set him off in the first place.</ref> For several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet or so--and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place he loses some "females"--[[Insistent Terminology|as he always calls women]]--in the edge of a wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to show off the delicate art of the forest before the reader. These mislaid people are hunting for a fort. They hear a cannonblast, and a cannon-ball presently comes rolling into the wood and stops at their feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The case is very different with the admirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know peace again if he doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball across the plain through the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it a daisy? [[Dan Browned|If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of doing things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact.]] For instance: one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook ([[It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY"|pronounced Chicago]], [[No Pronunciation Guide|I think]]), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I could ever have guessed out the way to find it. It was very different with [[Only Known by Their Nickname|Chicago]]. Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a running stream out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were that person's moccasin-tracks. The current did not wash them away, as it would have done in all other like cases--no, [[Magical Native American|even the eternal laws of Nature have to vacate]] when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of woodcraft on the reader.
 
We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's books "reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention." As a rule, I am quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and applaud his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that particular statement needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart, Cooper hadn't any more invention than a horse; and [[Insult to Rocks|I don't mean a high-class horse]], either; I mean a clothes-horse. [[Cliché Storm|It would be very difficult to find a really clever "situation" in Cooper's books]], and still more difficult to find one of any kind which he has failed to [[Narm|render absurd by his handling of it]]. Look at the episodes of "the caves"; and at the celebrated scuffle between Maqua and those others on the table-land a few days later; and at Hurry Harry's queer water-transit from the castle to the ark; and at Deerslayer's half-hour with his first corpse; and at the quarrel between Hurry Harry and Deerslayer later; and at-- but choose for yourself; you can't go amiss.
 
If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" [[Fridge Logic|suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's protecting gift]]. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a "situation." In the Deerslayer tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to twenty as it meanders along for no given reason; and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the brook's outlet from the lake [[Series Continuity Error|has suddenly shrunk thirty feet, and become "the narrowest part of the stream."]] This shrinkage is not accounted for. The stream has bends in it, a sure indication that it has alluvial banks and cuts them; yet these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long. If Cooper had been a nice and punctilious observer he would have noticed that the bends were oftener nine hundred feet long than short of it.
 
Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty feet wide, in the first place, for no particular reason; in the second place, he narrowed it to less than twenty to accommodate some Indians. He bends a "sapling" to the form of an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its foliage. They are "laying" for a settler's scow or ark which is coming up the stream on its way to the lake; it is being hauled against the stiff current by a rope whose stationary end is anchored in the lake; its rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper describes the ark, but pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimensions "it was little more than a modern canal-boat." Let us guess, then, that it was about one hundred and forty feet long. It was of "greater breadth than common." Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen feet wide. [[You Fail Physics Forever|This leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as long as itself]], and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of space to spare on each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle. A low-roofed log dwelling occupies "two-thirds of the ark's length"-- a dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say a kind of vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms-- each forty-five feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime, at night it is papa's bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to accommodate the Indians-- say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when the ark scraped by? [[Failed a Spot Check|No, other Indians would have noticed these things, but Cooper's Indians never notice anything]]. Cooper thinks they are marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error about his Indians. [[Idiot Plot|There was seldom a sane one among them.]]
 
The ark is one hundred and forty feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety foot dwelling a minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? [[What an Idiot!|It would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it up, I believe]]. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person of [[Overly Narrow Superlative|quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian]], warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house! That is actually what he did. He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.
 
There still remained in the roost five Indians.
 
The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did-- you would not be able to reason it out for yourself. No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it. Then [[Idiot Ball|No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it]]. Then [[What an Idiot!|No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern]]. Then [[Too Dumb to Live|even No. 5 made a jump for the boat]]-- for he was a Cooper Indian. In the matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious. The scow episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill, because [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief|the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of fictitiousness and general improbability over it]]. This comes of Cooper's inadequacy as an observer.
 
The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for inaccurate observation in the account of the shooting-match in ''The Pathfinder''.
 
{{quote|"A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its head having been first touched with paint."}}
 
The color of the paint is not stated--an important omission, but Cooper deals freely in important omissions. No, after all, it was not an important omission; for this nail-head is a hundred yards from the marksmen, and could not be seen by them at that distance, no matter what its color might be.
 
How far can the best eyes see a common house-fly? A hundred yards? It is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that cannot see a house-fly that is a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nailhead at that distance, for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see a fly or a nailhead at fifty yards-- one hundred and fifty feet. Can the reader do it?
 
The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then the Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman chipped an edge off the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little way into the target--and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone far enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is to show off [[Marty Stu|his prodigy]], [[I Have Many Names|Deerslayer--Hawkeye--Long-Rifle--Leather-Stocking--Pathfinder--Bumppo]] before the ladies.
 
{{quote|"'Be all ready to clench it, boys!' cried out Pathfinder, stepping into his friend's tracks the instant they were vacant. 'Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though it were only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench!'
 
"The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead." }}
 
There, you see, is [[Improbable Aiming Skills|a man who could hunt flies with a rifle]], and [[Mundane Utility|command a ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day]] if we had him back with us.
 
The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands; but it is not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made Pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rifle; and not only that, but Pathfinder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself. He had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot; and not only made it, but did it with absolute confidence, saying, "Be ready to clench." Now a person like that would have undertaken that same feat with a brickbat, and [[Boring Invincible Hero|with Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too.]]
 
Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very first feat was a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was standing with the group of marksmen, observing-- a hundred yards from the target, mind; one Jasper raised his rifle and drove the centre of the bull's-eye. Then the Quartermaster fired. The target exhibited no result this time. There was a laugh. "It's a dead miss," said Major Lundie. Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two; then said, in [[Insufferable Genius|that calm, indifferent, know-it-all way of his]], "No, Major, he has covered Jasper's bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trouble to examine the target."
 
Wasn't it remarkable! [[Bullet Time|How could he see that little pellet fly through the air and enter that distant bullet-hole]]? Yet that is what he did; for nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people have any deep-seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply sanity, and these were all Cooper people.
 
{{quote|"The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his ''quickness and accuracy of sight''" (the italics are mine [i.e., Twain's]) "was so profound and general, that the instant he made this declaration the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact. There, sure enough, it was found that the Quartermaster's bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper's, and that, too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly established by discovering one bullet over the other in the stump against which the target was placed."}}
 
They made a "minute" examination; but never mind, [[Fridge Logic|how could they know that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one out?]] for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any more than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the Pathfinder's turn now; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and fires.
 
[[Sarcasm Mode|But, alas! here is a disappointment; an incredible, an unimaginable disappointment]]-- for the target's aspect is unchanged; there is nothing there but that same old bullet-hole!
 
{{quote|"'If one dared to hint at such a thing,' cried Major Duncan, 'I should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target!'"}}
 
[[Grammar Nazi|As nobody had missed it yet, the "also" was not necessary]]; but never mind about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.
 
{{quote|"'No, no, Major,' said he, confidently, 'that would be a risky declaration. I didn't load the piece, and can't say what was in it; but if it was lead, you will find the bullet driving down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper, [[Or My Name Isn't|else is not my name Pathfinder.]]'"
"A shout from the target announced the truth of this assertion." }}
 
Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder speaks again, as he "now slowly advances towards the stage occupied by the females":
 
{{quote|"'That's not all, boys, that's not all; if you find the target touched at all, I'll own to a miss. The Quartermaster cut the wood, but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger."}}
 
[[Up to Eleven|The miracle is at last complete.]] [[Super Senses|He knew--doubtless saw--at the distance of a hundred yards]]--that his bullet had passed into the hole without fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that one hole-- three bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of the target. [[X-Ray Vision|Everybody knew this--somehow or other-- and yet nobody had dug any of them out to make sure.]] Cooper is not a close observer, but he is interesting. He is certainly always that, no matter what happens. [[Giftedly Bad|And he is more interesting when he is not noticing what he is about than when he is.]] [[So Bad It's Good|This is a considerable merit.]]
 
The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.
 
Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue. Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many other enterprises of his. He even failed to notice that the man who talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on the seventh, and can't help himself. In the ''Deerslayer'' story he lets Deerslayer talk [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|the showiest kind of book-talk]] sometimes, and at other times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks him if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his majestic answer:
 
{{quote|"'[[Purple Prose|She's in the forest-hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain--in the dew on the open grass--the clouds that float about in the blue heavens--the birds that sing in the woods--the sweet springs where I slake my thirst--and in all the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!]]'"}}
 
And he preceded that, a little before, with this:
 
{{quote|"'[[Funetik Aksent|It consarns me as all things that touches a fri'nd consarns a fri'nd.']]'"}}
 
And this is another of his remarks:
 
{{quote|"'[[Sophisticated As Hell|If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; or if my inimy had only been a bear']]"-- and so on.}}
 
We cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander-in-Chief comporting himself in the field like a windy melodramatic actor, but Cooper could. On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort:
 
{{quote|"'Point de quartier aux coquins!' cried an eager pursuer, who seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.
 
"'Stand firm and be ready, my gallant 60ths!' suddenly exclaimed a voice above them; wait to see the enemy; fire low, and sweep the glacis.'
 
"'Father? father!' exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist; 'it is I! Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!'
 
"'Hold!' shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and rolling back in solemn echo. ''[[Large Ham|Tis she! God has restored me my children!]] [[Rousing Speech|Throw open the sally-port; to the field, 60ths, to the field! pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs! Drive off these dogs of France with your steel]]!'" }}
 
Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied with the approximate word. I will furnish some circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called ''Deerslayer''. He uses [[You Keep Using That Word|"verbal," for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for "marvels"; "necessary," for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated," for "primitive"; "preparation," for "expectancy"; "rebuked," for "subdued"; "dependent on," for "resulting from"; "fact," for "condition"; "fact," for "conjecture"; "precaution," for "caution"; "explain," for "determine";]] "mortified," for "disappointed"; "meretricious," for "factitious"; "materially," for "considerably"; "decreasing," for "deepening"; "increasing," for "disappearing"; "embedded," for "enclosed"; "treacherous;" for "hostile"; "stood," for "stooped"; "softened," for "replaced"; "rejoined," for "remarked"; "situation," for "condition"; "different," for "differing"; "insensible," for "unsentient"; "brevity," for "celerity"; "distrusted," for "suspicious"; [[Long List|"mental imbecility," for "imbecility"; "eyes," for "sight"; "counteracting," for "opposing"; "funeral obsequies," for "obsequies."]]
 
There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English, but [[Take That|they are all dead now]]-- [[Take That, Critics!|all dead but Lounsbury]]. I don't remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still he makes it, for he says that Deerslayer is a "pure work of art." Pure, in that connection, means faultless-- faultless in all details-- and [[Captain Obvious|language is a detail]]. If Mr. Lounsbury had only compared Cooper's English with the English which he writes himself-- but it is plain that he didn't; and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's is as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our language, and that the English of ''Deerslayer'' is the very worst that even Cooper ever wrote.
 
I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me that ''Deerslayer'' is [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?|just simply a literary delirium tremens]].
 
A work of art? It has no invention; [[Random Events Plot|it has no order, system, sequence, or result]]; it has no lifelikeness, [[Holy Shit Quotient|no thrill, no stir,]] no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that [[Informed Attribute|they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are]]; [[Dude, Not Funny|its humor is pathetic]]; [[Narm|its pathos is funny]]; its conversations are--oh! [[Seinfeldian Conversation|indescribable]]; [[Strangled by the Red String|its love-scenes odious]]; its English a crime against the language.
 
{{Needs More Tropes}}
Counting these out, [[Damned By Faint Praise|what is left is Art]]. I think we must all admit that.
{{Tropelist}}
* [[Bad Writing Index]]: According to Twain, these stories were a potpourri of all these tropes.
* [[Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy]]: According to Twain, you felt no good feeling for anyone in the work.
* [[Informed Attribute]]: Twain mentioned the way characters sounded rarely matched what their characters were supposed to be like.
* [[Overused Running Gag]]: The snapping of a dry twig to alert everyone in the area.
* [[Praising Shows You Don't Watch]]: Twain accuses the critics that praised Cooper's work of not having actually read his books.
 
{{reflist}}
[[Category:NineteenthLiterature Centuryof Literaturethe 19th century]]
[[Category:Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences]]
[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Books on Trope]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
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