Mark Twain really hated the writing of James Fenimore Cooper, who was famous for the creation of his character, Natty Bumppo of the Leatherstocking Series. The actor Daniel Day Lewis played Nathaniel "Hawkeye" Bumppo in the film "Last of the Mohicans" where he saves the day for a prettily distressed damsel captured by some rough-looking, sociopathic Indians. As Twain says of a Cooper Indian, "there was seldom a sane one among them."
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| Cooper Indians also lurk obviously between portrait-framing trees while Natty & Friend nonchalantly chill beside their sinking canoe |
We first meet Monsieur Le Bumppo as a remarkably capable woodsman in The Pathfinder and next The Deerslayer. As a kid, my sister had these books on her shelf, and I would really hate to ruin harmless stories for anyone. Also, I'm not sure that Twain carried a personal dislike of Cooper, as a person. Maybe he was just galled by Cooper's fame and even critical acclaim, as some begrudge the popularity of Charles Dickens, J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer.
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| Portrait of J.F. Cooper in a naval uniform by John Wesley Jarvis |
I have wanted to read this book of "offenses" even before I knew it existed, from the moment the first clunk of dialog hit my ear by way of the movie trailer. It shows a scene of Daniel Day Lewis in fringed leather revealing tanned chest muscles, crooning through long windblown and rain-soaked locks, "Stay alive, no matter what occurs. I will find you." I winced at "occurs." Why say a crusty "occurs" which belongs in phrases about natural elements, accident reports, or sudden thoughts; instead of the commonplace and fateful "happens"? And why say such a word to a beloved as she is about to be stolen away at night in a storm? Of course, the important part of Natty Bumppo's-- er, Hawkeye's communication is not that he will keep searching until she is found, simply because he loves her. Rather, he will inevitably find her because he is Natty Bumppo and nothing can stay hidden from him. This must have been a relief to the young male readership of a "Romantic" novel because, you know, mushy stuff. But Daniel Day Lewis saves the film's day by elevating the unrealistic dialog and action scenes by sheer physicality and strength of his own will as an actor. I imagine that even Mark Twain would commend his ability to accomplish that.
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| The American tale heard 'round the world |
Critics who were also fans of Fenimore Cooper's books found each of them to be a "pure work of art" proclaiming Señor El Bumppo to be "one of the very greatest characters in fiction", which he could hardly fail to be if he did indeed possess "the craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the delicate art of the forest… familiar to Cooper from his youth up" as a Professor Brander Matthews described him. If this weren't enough for Twain to swallow, he had to hear a fellow prominent writer proclaim that Fenimore Cooper was "the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction yet produced by America."
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| N.C. Wyeth illustrated a blonde Bumppo displaying the "delicate art of the forest". |
As a contemporary of them all, Mark Twain was having none of it. When I first came across the title, The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper, I promised myself that I would read it someday. Who else could get away with such carefully outlined snark, and so publicly? On a short flight recently, I thought that it would be the perfect time to finally open it up because of its short length. I soon had the feeling of trying not to laugh in church. Twain's humor often creeps up like a crafty serpent, until I'm not exactly sure why I'm laughing, but I'm sure that something uncharitable and naughty, yet inarguably true has been said. The man just got away with stuff. I really did try not to let my shoulders shake as I silently read. I could imagine how potentially offensive it could be to sit beside someone flying solo, laughing over a private joke.
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| Stronger than your average bear |
So, here are my favorite Offenses of poor James Fenimore Cooper (who really should have thought through how a one hundred and forty foot barge can round a thirty foot bend in the stream, if he was going to take the trouble to give us the measurements):
"There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction-- some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer, Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:
2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.
3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be 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.
4. They require the the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail has also been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk should sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, 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.
7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled seven dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale.
8. 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 the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale."
"In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These rules require that the author shall:
12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14. Eschew surplusage."
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| Young Mark Twain, sharing a resemblance with Woody Harrelson, who likes to play him |
I'll leave you with my favorite example of an offense. By uttering the following lilting phrases regarding his absent damsel: "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!", Natty Bumppo reveals that he must have wandered over from another famous romantic tale, Cyrano de Bergerac, where he can play both roles of poetic Cyrano and the inarticulate friend as he pleases, by also uttering, "It consarns me as all things that touches a fr'ind consarns a fr'ind."
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| Interesting, and I… um… what? |
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