Fenimore Coopers Literary Offences

Fenimore Cooper's Literary
Offences

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Offences
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Title: Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offences
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: September 16, 2004 [EBook #3172]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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FENNIMORE COOPER OFFENCES ***

Produced by David Widger

FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES

by Mark Twain

The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer 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 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.
The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention. . . . One of
the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty Bumppo . . . .
The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the delicate art
of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his youth up.--Prof. Brander
Matthews.
Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction yet
produced 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 Collies to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature 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. It breaks the record.
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:
1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But
the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

2. They require that 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 have no
rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.
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 that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall
exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been
overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation,
the talk shall 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.
6. They require that when the author describes the character of a
personage in his tale, 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.
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.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to
possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the
author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and
reasonable. But these rules