“Fenimore Coopers Literary Offences and Fenimore Cooper’s Further Literary Offences” By: Mark Twain
As it’s title, “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences,” has already suggested, its writer Mark Twain relentlessly criticizes James Fenimore Cooper and denies in intelligence on literature writing. Twain breaks down “The Pathfinder” and “The deer slayer,” in which they both literary works are regarded as Cooper’s famous masterpiece. Twain says that Cooper violates eighteen literary rules and “has scored 114 offences against literary art of a possible 115” (Twain 4) Twain tries to convince the reader that they have every strong reason to believe Fenimore Cooper is the most horrible writer ever. Before Twain started to state his opinions about the work of Fenimore Cooper, he quoted three quotes from the Professor of English Literature at Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins. They all complimented Cooper on his work and seemed to be very fond of it. Unlike Mark Twain who stated that “It seems to me that it was far from right for them (the three professors)to deliver opinions on Cooper’s literature without having read some of it.” (Twain 1) Mark believes that these men did not read Cooper’s work. If they did they wouldn’t have spoken so highly of it. It seems to be that Mark Twain is extremely bitter towards Cooper. As the articles goes on, Twain comments on Cooper’s intelligence. He makes a point many times to say that Cooper was not an observer. Which was part of the reason why his information in his books was inaccurate. Twain states, “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" 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.” (Twain 3) In the Deerslayer Mark Twain says that Cooper violated many rules. Eighteen to be exact. Some of the rules are as follows. The first rule is that a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But I agree that the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere. The second rule is require that the parts of a tale shall all be necessary, help to develop it. The fourth rule is that they require that the characters 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 book The Last of the Mohicans when Cooper explained the swiftness of the flight and the way the Indian was struck with an arrow. The fifth rule is that the character in a tale, both dead and alive should show a sufficient reason for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the book The Last of the Mohicans. They require that when the personages of a tale engage in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and have a discoverable meaning, also an obvious 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. That is just a few of the many rules that Fenimore Cooper has disobeyed throughout his work. The book The Last of the Mohicans was one of the most famous and most admired of Cooper’s books. I agree with Twain when he says that Cooper explains lost of little unimportant details
