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Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses · The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain

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Speaker 1: Cooper's literary offenses by Mark Twain quote, The Pathfinder and
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Speaker 1: The Dear Slayer stand at the head of Cooper's novels
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Speaker 1: as artistic creations. There are others of his works which
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Speaker 1: contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these,
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Speaker 1: and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared
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Speaker 1: with either of them as a finished whole. The defects
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Speaker 1: in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were
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Speaker 1: pure works of art. Unquote Professor Lounsbury quote, the Five
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Speaker 1: Tales reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention. One of the
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Speaker 1: very greatest characters in fiction, Natty Bumpo. The craft of
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Speaker 1: the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, or the delicate
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Speaker 1: art of the forest were familiar to Cooper from his
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Speaker 1: youth up Professor Matthews quote, Cooper is the greatest artist
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Speaker 1: in the domain of romantic fiction in America. Wilkie Collins.
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Speaker 1: It seems to me that it was far from right
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Speaker 1: for the Professor of English Literature at Yale, the Professor
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Speaker 1: of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver
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Speaker 1: opinions on Cooper's literature without having read some of it.
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Speaker 1: It would have been much more decorous to keep silent
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Speaker 1: and let persons talk who have read Cooper. Cooper's art
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Speaker 1: has some defects. In one place in Deerslayer, and in
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Speaker 1: the restricted space of two thirds of a page, Cooper
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Speaker 1: has scored one hundred and fourteen offenses against literary art
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Speaker 1: out of a possible one hundred and fifteen. It breaks
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Speaker 1: the record. There are nineteen rules governing literary art in
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Speaker 1: domain of romantic fiction, some say twenty two. In Deerslayer,
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Speaker 1: Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require one that
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Speaker 1: a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere, but the
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Speaker 1: Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air. Two. They
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Speaker 1: require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary
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Speaker 1: parts of the tale and shall help to develop it.
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Speaker 1: But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale and
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Speaker 1: accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful
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Speaker 1: place in the work, since there was nothing for them
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Speaker 1: to develop. Three, they require that the personages in a
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Speaker 1: tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses,
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Speaker 1: and that always the readers be able to tell the
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Speaker 1: corpses from the others, but this detail has often been
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Speaker 1: overlooked in the Dear Slayer tale. Four. There require that
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Speaker 1: the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall
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Speaker 1: exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there, but this detail
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Speaker 1: also has been overlooked in the Dear Slayer tale. Five.
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Speaker 1: There require that when the personages of a tale deal
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Speaker 1: in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk and
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Speaker 1: be talk such as human beings would likely to talk
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Speaker 1: in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also
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Speaker 1: a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain
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Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be
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Speaker 1: interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and
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Speaker 1: stop when people cannot think of anything more to say.
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Speaker 1: But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of
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Speaker 1: the Dear Slayer Tale to the end of it. Six
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Speaker 1: There require that when the author describes the character of
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Speaker 1: a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of
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Speaker 1: that personage shall justify said description, but this law gets
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Speaker 1: little or no attention in the deer Slayer tale, as
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Speaker 1: Natty Bumpo's case will amply prove. Seven. There require that
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Speaker 1: when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt edged tree
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Speaker 1: calf hand tooled seven dollar friendship's offering in the beginning
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Speaker 1: of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro
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Speaker 1: minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is
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Speaker 1: flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale. Eight.
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Speaker 1: There require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon
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Speaker 1: the reader as quote the craft of the woodsman the
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Speaker 1: delicate art of the forest unquote by either the author
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Speaker 1: or the people in the tale, but this rule is
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Speaker 1: persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale. Nine. There require that
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Speaker 1: the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities
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Speaker 1: and let miracles alone, or if they venture a miracle,
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Speaker 1: the author must so plausibly set it forth as to
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Speaker 1: make it look possible and reasonable, but these rules are
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Speaker 1: not respected in the Deerslayer tale. Ten. They require that
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Speaker 1: the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest
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Speaker 1: in the personages of his tale and in their fate,
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Speaker 1: and that he shall make the reader love the good
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Speaker 1: people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But
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Speaker 1: the reader of the Deer Slayer tale dislikes the good
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Speaker 1: people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes
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Speaker 1: they would all get drowned together. Eleven. They require that
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Speaker 1: the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined
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Speaker 1: that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do
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Speaker 1: in a given emergency, But in the Dear Slayer tale,
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Speaker 1: this rule is vacated. In addition to these large rules,
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Speaker 1: there are some little ones. These require that the author
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Speaker 1: shall twelve say what he is proposing to say, not
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Speaker 1: merely come near it. Thirteen, use the right word, not
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Speaker 1: its second cousin. Fourteen, assume surplusage fifteen not omit necessary details, sixteen,
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Speaker 1: avoid slovenliness of form, seventeen, use good grammar. Eighteen employ
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Speaker 1: a simple and straightforward style. Even these seven are coldly
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Speaker 1: and persistently violated in the Deerslayer Tale. Cooper's gift in
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Speaker 1: the way of invention was not a rich endowment, but
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Speaker 1: such as it was, he liked to work it. He
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Speaker 1: was pleased with the effects, and indeed he did some
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Speaker 1: quite sweet things with it. In his little box of
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Speaker 1: stage properties, he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks,
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Speaker 1: artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent
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Speaker 1: each other with. And he was never so happy as
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Speaker 1: when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go.
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Speaker 1: A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread
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Speaker 1: in the tracks of a moccasined enemy and thus hide
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Speaker 1: his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of
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Speaker 1: moccasins in working that trick. Another stage property that he
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Speaker 1: pulled out of his box pretty frequently was the broken twig.
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Speaker 1: He prized his broken twig above all the rest of
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Speaker 1: his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a
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Speaker 1: RESTful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't
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Speaker 1: step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds
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Speaker 1: and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a
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Speaker 1: Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth
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Speaker 1: four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on
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Speaker 1: a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier
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Speaker 1: things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper
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Speaker 1: requires him to turn out and find a dried twig,
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Speaker 1: And if he can't do it go and borrow one.
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Speaker 1: In fact, the leather stocking series ought to have been
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Speaker 1: called the broken twig series. I am sorry there is
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Speaker 1: not room to put in a few dozen instances of
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Speaker 1: the delicate art of the forest as practiced by Natty
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Speaker 1: Bumpo and some of the other Couperian experts. Perhaps we
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Speaker 1: may venture two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor,
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Speaker 1: a naval officer. Yet he gravely tells us how a
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Speaker 1: vessel driving towards the Lee shore in a gale is
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Speaker 1: steered for a particular spot by her skipper because he
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Speaker 1: knows of an undertow there which will hold her back
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Speaker 1: against the gale and save her for just pure woodcraft
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Speaker 1: or sailor craft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat?
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Speaker 1: For several years Cooper was daily in the Society of Artillery,
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Speaker 1: and he ought to have noticed that when a cannon
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Speaker 1: ball strikes the ground, it either buries itself or skips
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Speaker 1: a hundred feet or so, skips again a hundred feet
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Speaker 1: or so, and so on till it finally gets tired
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Speaker 1: and rolls now. In one place, he loses some females,
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Speaker 1: as he always calls women, in the edge of a
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Speaker 1: wood near a plain at night in a fog, on
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Speaker 1: purpose to give Bumpo a chance to show off the
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Speaker 1: delicate art of the forest before the reader. These mislaid
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Speaker 1: people are hunting for a fort. They hear a cannon blast,
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Speaker 1: and a cannon ball presently comes rolling into the wood
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Speaker 1: and stops at their feet. To the females, this suggests nothing.
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Speaker 1: The case is very different with the admirable Bumpo. I
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Speaker 1: wish I may never know peace again if he doesn't
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Speaker 1: strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon
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Speaker 1: ball across the plain in the dense fog and find
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Speaker 1: the fort. Isn't it a daisy? If Cooper had any
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Speaker 1: real knowledge of nature's ways of doing things, he had
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Speaker 1: a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For instance,
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Speaker 1: one of his acute Indian experts, jingach Gook pronounced Chicago,
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Speaker 1: I think has lost the trail of a person he
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Speaker 1: is tracking through the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost.
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Speaker 1: Neither you nor I could ever have guessed the way
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Speaker 1: to find it. It was very different with Chicago. Chicago
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Speaker 1: was not stumped for long. He turned a running stream
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Speaker 1: out of its course, and there in the slush in
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Speaker 1: its old bed were that person's moccasin tracks, the current
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Speaker 1: did not wash them away, as it would have done
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Speaker 1: in all other like cases. No, even the eternal laws
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Speaker 1: of nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put
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Speaker 1: up a delicate job of woodcraft on the reader. We
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Speaker 1: must be a little wary when Branda Matthew's tells us
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Speaker 1: that Cooper's books quote reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention unquote.
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Speaker 1: As a rule, I am quite willing to accept Branda
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Speaker 1: Matthews's literary judgments and applaud his lucid and graceful phrasings
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Speaker 1: of them. But that particular statement needs to be taken
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Speaker 1: with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart, Cooper
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Speaker 1: hadn't any more invention than a horse. And don't mean
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Speaker 1: a high class horse either, I mean a clothes horse.
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Speaker 1: It would be very difficult to find a really clever
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Speaker 1: situation in Cooper's books, and still more difficult to find
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Speaker 1: one of any kind which has failed to render absurd
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Speaker 1: by his handling of it. Look at the episodes of
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Speaker 1: the caves, and at the celebrated scuffle between Magua and
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Speaker 1: those others on the table land. A few days later,
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Speaker 1: and at Harry Harry's queer water transit from the castle
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Speaker 1: to the ark, and at Deerslayer's half hour with his
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Speaker 1: first corpse, and at the quarrel between Harry Harry and
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Speaker 1: Deareslayer later, and at but choose for yourself. You can't
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Speaker 1: go amiss. If Cooper had been an observer, his inventive
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Speaker 1: faculty would have worked better, not more interestingly, but more rationally,
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Speaker 1: more plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of situations
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Speaker 1: suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's protecting gift.
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Speaker 1: Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly.
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Speaker 1: He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye darkly.
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Speaker 1: Of course, a man who cannot see the commonest little
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Speaker 1: every day matters accurately if working at a disadvantage when
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Speaker 1: he is constructing his situation. In the Dislayer tale, Cooper
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Speaker 1: has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it
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Speaker 1: flows out of a lake. It presently narrows to twenty
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Speaker 1: as it meanders along for no given reason. And yet
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Speaker 1: when a stream acts like that, it ought to be
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Speaker 1: required to explain itself fourteen pages later, the width of
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Speaker 1: the brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty
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Speaker 1: feet and become the narrowest part of the stream. This
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Speaker 1: shrinkage is not accounted for. The stream has bends in it,
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Speaker 1: a sure indication that it has alluvial banks and cuts them.
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Speaker 1: Yet these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long.
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Speaker 1: If Cooper had been a nice and punctilious observer, he
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Speaker 1: would have noticed that the bends were oft nine hundred
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Speaker 1: feet long than short of it. Cooper made the exit
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Speaker 1: of that stream fifty feet wide in the first place
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Speaker 1: for no particular reason. In the second place, he narrowed
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Speaker 1: it to less than twenty to accommodate some Indians. He
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Speaker 1: bends a sapling to form an arch over this narrow
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Speaker 1: passage and conceals six Indians in its foliage. They are
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Speaker 1: laying for a settler's scow or arc, which is coming
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Speaker 1: up the stream in its way to the lake. It
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Speaker 1: is being hauled against the stiff current by a rope
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Speaker 1: whose stationary end is anchored in the lake. Its rate
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Speaker 1: of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour.
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Speaker 1: Cooper describes the ark but pretty obscurely in the matter
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Speaker 1: of dimensions quote, it was little more than a modern
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Speaker 1: canal boat. En. Let us guess then that it was
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Speaker 1: about one hundred and mins forty feet long. It was
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Speaker 1: of quote greater breadth than common. Let us guess then
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Speaker 1: that it was about sixteen feet wide. This leviason had
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Speaker 1: been prowling down bends which were but as sad as
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Speaker 1: long as itself, and scraping between banks were at only
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Speaker 1: two feet of space to spare on each side. We
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Speaker 1: cannot too much admire this miracle. A low roofed dwelling
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Speaker 1: occupies quote two thirds of the ARC's length. Uno A
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Speaker 1: dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide. Let us
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Speaker 1: say a kind of vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms,
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Speaker 1: each forty five feet long and sixteen feet wide. Let
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Speaker 1: us guess one of them is the bedroom of the
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Speaker 1: Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty. The other is the parlour
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Speaker 1: in the daytime. At night it is Papa's bedchamber. The Arkers,
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Speaker 1: arriving at the streams exit now, whose width has been
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Speaker 1: reduced to less than twenty feet to accommodate the Indian
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Speaker 1: say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on
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Speaker 1: each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that
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Speaker 1: there was going to be a tight squeeze there? Did
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Speaker 1: they notice that they could make money by climbing down
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Speaker 1: on the arched sapling and just stepping aboard when the
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Speaker 1: ark scraped by. No other Indians would have noticed these things,
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Speaker 1: But Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are
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Speaker 1: marvelous creatures for noticing. But he was almost always in
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Speaker 1: error about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one
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Speaker 1: among them. The ark is one hundred and forty feet long.
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Speaker 1: The dwelling is ninety feet long. The idea of the
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Speaker 1: Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the arched
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Speaker 1: sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under
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Speaker 1: it at the rate of a mile an hour, and
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Speaker 1: Butcher the family. It will take the ark a minute
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Speaker 1: and a half to pass under. It will take the
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Speaker 1: ninety foot dwelling a minute to pass under. Now, then,
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Speaker 1: what did the six Indians do? It would take his
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Speaker 1: thirty years to guess, and even then you would have
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Speaker 1: to give it up. I believe. Therefore, I will tell
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Speaker 1: you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person of
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Speaker 1: quite extraordinary intellect, for a Cooper Indian warily watched the
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Speaker 1: canal boat as it squeezed along under him, and when
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Speaker 1: he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the
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Speaker 1: right shade as he judged, he let go and dropped
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Speaker 1: and missed the boat. That is actually what he did.
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Speaker 1: He missed the house and landed in the stern of
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Speaker 1: the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet
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Speaker 1: it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious. If the
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Speaker 1: house had been ninety seven feet long, he would have
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Speaker 1: made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The
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Speaker 1: error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was
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Speaker 1: no architect. There still remained in the roost, five Indians.
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Speaker 1: The boat has passed under and is now out of
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Speaker 1: their reach. Let me explain what the five did. He
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Speaker 1: would not be able to reason it out for yourself.
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Speaker 1: Number one jumped for the boat, but fell in the
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Speaker 1: water astern of it. Number two jumped for the boat,
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Speaker 1: but fell in the water, still further astern of it.
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Speaker 1: Number three jumped for the boat and fell a good
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Speaker 1: way astern of it. Then number four jumped for the
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Speaker 1: boat and fell in the water away astern. Then even
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Speaker 1: number five made a jump for the boat, for he
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Speaker 1: was a Cooper Indian. In that matter of intellect, the
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Speaker 1: difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands
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Speaker 1: in front of the cigar shop is not spacious. The
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Speaker 1: sco episode is really a sublime burst of invention, but
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Speaker 1: it does not thrill because the inaccuracy of details throws
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Speaker 1: a sort of air of fictitiousness and general improbability over it.
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Speaker 1: This comes of Cooper's inadequacy as observer. The reader will
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Speaker 1: find some examples of Cooper's high talent for inaccurate observation
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Speaker 1: in the account of the shooting match. In the past
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Speaker 1: finder quote, a common wrought nail was driven lightly into
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Speaker 1: the target, its head having been first touched with paint.
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Speaker 1: The color of the paint is not stated an important omission,
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Speaker 1: but Cooper deals freely in important emissions. No, after all,
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Speaker 1: it was not an important omission, for this nail head
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Speaker 1: is a hundred yards from the marksmen and could not
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Speaker 1: be seen at that distance, no matter what its color
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Speaker 1: might be. How far can the best eyes see a
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Speaker 1: common house fly a hundred yards It is quite impossible,
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Speaker 1: very well eyes that cannot see a house fly that
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Speaker 1: is a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nail
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Speaker 1: head at that distance, for the size of the two
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Speaker 1: objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to
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Speaker 1: see a fly or a nail head at fifty yards
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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty feet. Can the reader do it?
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Speaker 1: The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called.
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Speaker 1: Then the Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first
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Speaker 1: marksman tipped an edge of the nail head. The next
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Speaker 1: man's bullet drove the nail a little way into the
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Speaker 1: target and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone
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Speaker 1: far enough? Now? Not to suit Cooper? For the purpose
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Speaker 1: of this whole scheme is to show off his prodigy
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Speaker 1: deer slayer hawkeye, long rifle, leather stocking, path Finder bumpo
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Speaker 1: before the ladies quote be all ready to clench it, boys,
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Speaker 1: cried out, path Finder, stepping into his friend's tracks the
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Speaker 1: instant they were vacant. Never mind a new nail. I
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Speaker 1: can see that though the paint is gone, and what
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Speaker 1: I can see, I can hit at a hundred yards
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Speaker 1: though it were only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench.
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Speaker 1: The rifle cracked, the bullet spared its way, and the
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Speaker 1: head of the nail was buried in the wood and
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Speaker 1: covered by the piece of flattened lead. Here you see
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Speaker 1: is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle
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Speaker 1: and command a ducal's salary in a Wild West show
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Speaker 1: to day if we had him back with us. The
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Speaker 1: recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands, but
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Speaker 1: it is not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch.
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Speaker 1: He has made path Finder do this miracle with another
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Speaker 1: man's rifle. And not only that, but pass Finder did
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Speaker 1: not even have the advantage of loading it himself. He
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Speaker 1: had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot,
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Speaker 1: and not only made it, but did it with absolute confidence,
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Speaker 1: saying be ready to clench now. A person like that
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Speaker 1: would have undertaken the same feat with a brick bat,
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Speaker 1: and with Cooper to help, he would have achieved it too.
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Speaker 1: Pasthfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies, his
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Speaker 1: very first feet, a thing which no Wild West show
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Speaker 1: can touch. He was standing with the group of marksmen,
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Speaker 1: observing a hundred yards from the target. Mind one jasper
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Speaker 1: raised his rifle and drove the center of the bull's eye.
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Speaker 1: Then the quarter master fired the target exhibited no results.
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Speaker 1: This time there was a laugh. It's a dead miss,
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Speaker 1: said Major Lundy. Path Finder waited an impressive moment or two,
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Speaker 1: then said, in that calm, indifferent knowed all way of
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Speaker 1: his No, Major, he has covered Jasper's bullet, as will
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Speaker 1: be seen if any one will take the trouble to
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Speaker 1: examine the target. Wasn't it remarkable? How could he see
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Speaker 1: that little pellet flies through the air and enter that
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Speaker 1: distant bullet hole? Yet that is what he did, for
21:43
Speaker 1: nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of
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Speaker 1: those people have any deep seated doubts about this thing? No,
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Speaker 1: for that would imply sanity, And these were all Cooper people. Quote.
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Speaker 1: The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his quickness and
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Speaker 1: accuracy of sight, was so profound and general that the
22:05
Speaker 1: instant he made his declaration, the spectators began to distrust
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Speaker 1: their own opinions, and a dozen rushed to the target
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Speaker 1: in order to ascertain the fact. There. Sure enough, it
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Speaker 1: was found that the Quartermaster's bullet had gone through the
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Speaker 1: hole made by Jaspers, and that too, so accurately as
22:23
Speaker 1: to require a minute examination to be certain of the circumstance, which, however,
22:29
Speaker 1: was soon clearly established by discovering one bullet over the
22:32
Speaker 1: other in the stump against which the target was placed.
22:37
Speaker 1: They made a minute examination. But never mind, how could
22:41
Speaker 1: they know that there were two bullets in that hole
22:43
Speaker 1: without digging the latest one out? For neither probe nor
22:48
Speaker 1: eyesight could prove the presence of any more than one bullet?
22:52
Speaker 1: Did they dig No, As we shall see, it is
22:55
Speaker 1: the pathfinder's turn. Now he steps out before the lady's,
22:59
Speaker 1: takes aim and fires. But alas here is the disappointment,
23:04
Speaker 1: an incredible, an unimaginable disappointment, for the target's aspect is unchanged.
23:11
Speaker 1: There is nothing there but that same old bullet hole. Quote.
23:16
Speaker 1: If one dared to hint at such a thing, cried
23:19
Speaker 1: Major Duncan, I should say that path finder has also
23:22
Speaker 1: missed the target quote as nobody has missed it yet
23:27
Speaker 1: the also was not necessary. But never mind about that,
23:30
Speaker 1: for the path finder is going to speak quote no, no,
23:34
Speaker 1: Major said he confidently that would be a risky declaration.
23:39
Speaker 1: I didn't load the piece and can't say what was
23:42
Speaker 1: in it, but if it was led, you will find
23:44
Speaker 1: the bullet driving down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper.
23:48
Speaker 1: Else is not my name pasth finder. A shout from
23:52
Speaker 1: the target announced the truth of this assertion unquote. Is
23:58
Speaker 1: the miracle sufficient as its does not for Cooper. The
24:02
Speaker 1: pathfinder speaks again, as he quote now slowly advanced towards
24:07
Speaker 1: the stage occupied by the females unquote. Quote. That's not all, boys,
24:14
Speaker 1: that's not all. If you find the target touched at all,
24:17
Speaker 1: I'll own to a miss. The quartermaster cut the wood,
24:21
Speaker 1: But you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger unquote.
24:26
Speaker 1: The miracle is at last complete. He knew, doubtless sore,
24:31
Speaker 1: in the distance of a hundred yards, that his bullet
24:34
Speaker 1: had passed into the hole without fraying the edges. There
24:38
Speaker 1: were now three bullets in that hole, three bullets embedded
24:42
Speaker 1: processionally in the body of the stump back of the target.
24:47
Speaker 1: Everybody knew this somehow or other, and yet nobody had
24:51
Speaker 1: dug any of them out to make sure. Cooper is
24:55
Speaker 1: not a close observer. But he is interesting. He is
24:58
Speaker 1: certainly always that, no matter what happens, and he is
25:02
Speaker 1: more interesting when he is not noticing what he is
25:04
Speaker 1: about than when he is. This is a considerable merit.
25:11
Speaker 1: The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound
25:14
Speaker 1: in our modern ears. To believe that such talk really
25:17
Speaker 1: ever came out of people's mouths would be to believe
25:21
Speaker 1: that there was a time when time was of no
25:23
Speaker 1: value to a person who thought he had something to say,
25:27
Speaker 1: When it was the custom to spread a two minute
25:29
Speaker 1: remark out to ten, when a man's mouth was a
25:32
Speaker 1: rolling mill and busied itself all day long in turning
25:36
Speaker 1: four foot pigs of thought into thirty foot bars of
25:39
Speaker 1: conventional railroad iron by attenuation, when subjects were seldom faithfully
25:44
Speaker 1: stuck to but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere,
25:48
Speaker 1: when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there irrelevancy,
25:54
Speaker 1: a relevancy with an embarrassed look as not being able
25:57
Speaker 1: to explain how it got there. Cooper was certainly not
26:01
Speaker 1: a master in the construction of dialog. Inaccurate observation defeated
26:06
Speaker 1: him here, as it defeated him in so many other
26:08
Speaker 1: enterprises in his life. Hin failed to notice that the
26:13
Speaker 1: man who talks corrupt English six days in the week
26:16
Speaker 1: must and will talk it on the seventh, and can't
26:19
Speaker 1: help himself. In the Deerslayer story, he lets deerslayer talk,
26:24
Speaker 1: the showiest kind of book talk sometimes and at other
26:27
Speaker 1: times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some
26:32
Speaker 1: one asks him if he has a sweetheart, and if so,
26:35
Speaker 1: where she abides, this is his majestic answer, quote. She
26:40
Speaker 1: is in the forest, hanging from the bowers of the trees,
26:43
Speaker 1: in a soft rain, in the dew, on the open grass,
26:46
Speaker 1: the clouds that float about in the blue heavens, the
26:49
Speaker 1: birds that sing in the wood. The sweet springs were
26:52
Speaker 1: a slake my thirst, and in all the other glorious
26:55
Speaker 1: gifts that come from God's providence. And he preceded that
27:02
Speaker 1: a little before with this quote, it concerns me as
27:06
Speaker 1: all things that touches a friend concerns a friend unquote.
27:12
Speaker 1: And this is another of his remarks, quote, if I
27:16
Speaker 1: was injin born, now I might tell of this, or
27:18
Speaker 1: carry in the scalp and boast of the explight to
27:21
Speaker 1: for the whole tribe of if my enemy had only
27:23
Speaker 1: been a bear unquote, and so on. We cannot imagine
27:29
Speaker 1: such a thing as a veteran Scotch commander in chief
27:32
Speaker 1: comporting himself like a windy melodramatic actor. But Cooper could,
27:38
Speaker 1: on one occasion, Alice and Cora were being chased by
27:42
Speaker 1: the French through a fog in the neighborhood of their
27:44
Speaker 1: father's fort. Quote poen Carthieu Coquin cried, an eager pursuer
27:50
Speaker 1: who seemed to direct the operations of the enemy. Stand
27:53
Speaker 1: firm and be ready, my gallant sixtieths, suddenly, exclaimed the
27:57
Speaker 1: voice above them. Wait to see the enemy, fire low
28:01
Speaker 1: and sweep the glacis. Father, father exclaimed a piercing cry
28:06
Speaker 1: from out the mist. It is I Alice, thy own Elsie, spare,
28:11
Speaker 1: Oh save your daughters. Hold, shouted the former speaker, in
28:15
Speaker 1: the awful tones of parental agony, the sound reaching even
28:19
Speaker 1: to the woods and rolling back in a solemn echo.
28:23
Speaker 1: Tis she God has restored me my children. Throw open
28:28
Speaker 1: the sally port to the field, sixtieth to the field.
28:31
Speaker 1: Pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs. Drove
28:35
Speaker 1: off those dogs of France with your steel. Cooper's word
28:41
Speaker 1: sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor
28:44
Speaker 1: ear for music, he will flat and sharp right along
28:48
Speaker 1: without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but is
28:50
Speaker 1: not the tune. When a person has a poor ear
28:53
Speaker 1: for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping.
28:57
Speaker 1: You perceive what he is intending to say, but he
29:00
Speaker 1: also perceives that he does not say it. This is Cooper.
29:04
Speaker 1: He was not a word musician. His ear was satisfied
29:08
Speaker 1: with the approximate words. I will furnish some circumstantial evidence
29:12
Speaker 1: in support of discharge. My instances are gathered from the
29:16
Speaker 1: half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He
29:21
Speaker 1: uses verbal for oral, precision for facility, phenomena for marvels,
29:27
Speaker 1: necessary for predetermined, unsophisticated for primitive, preparation for expectancy, rebuked
29:36
Speaker 1: for subdued, dependent on for resulting from fact for condition,
29:43
Speaker 1: fact for conjecture, precaution for caution, explain for determine, mortified
29:49
Speaker 1: for disappointed, meretricious for factitious, materially for considerably, decreasing for deepening,
29:58
Speaker 1: increasing for disappearing, embedded for enclosed, treacherous for hostile, stood
30:04
Speaker 1: for stooped, softened for replaced, rejoined for remarked, situation for condition,
30:12
Speaker 1: different for differing, insensible for unsentient, brevity for celerity, distrusted
30:19
Speaker 1: for suspicious, mental, imbecility for imbecility, eyes for sight, counteracting
30:26
Speaker 1: for opposing funeral obsequies for obsequies. There have been daring
30:32
Speaker 1: people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English.
30:36
Speaker 1: But they are all dead now, all dead. But Lonesbury,
30:40
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. Lonesbury makes the claim in so
30:42
Speaker 1: many words. Still he makes it, for he says that
30:46
Speaker 1: Dear Slayer is quote a pure work of art, unquote.
30:52
Speaker 1: Pure in that connection means faultless, faultless in all details,
30:57
Speaker 1: and language is a detail. If mister Lounsbury had only
31:01
Speaker 1: compared Cooper's English with the English he writes himself, but
31:05
Speaker 1: it is plain that he didn't, and so it is
31:07
Speaker 1: likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's is
31:11
Speaker 1: as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure,
31:15
Speaker 1: deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the
31:18
Speaker 1: poorest English that exists in our language, and that the
31:21
Speaker 1: English of Deesleyer is the very worst that even Cooper
31:25
Speaker 1: ever wrote. I may be mistaken, but it does seem
31:29
Speaker 1: to me that Deesleyer is not a work of art
31:31
Speaker 1: in any sense. It does seem to me that it
31:34
Speaker 1: is destitute of every detail that goes to the making
31:37
Speaker 1: of a work of art. In truth, it seems to
31:40
Speaker 1: me that Deesleyer is just simply a literary delirium tremens
31:45
Speaker 1: a work of art. It has no invention, It has
31:48
Speaker 1: no order, system, sequence, or result. It has no life likeness,
31:54
Speaker 1: no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality. Its characters
31:58
Speaker 1: are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words, they
32:02
Speaker 1: prove that they are not the sort of people the
32:04
Speaker 1: author claims that they are. Its humor is pathetic, its
32:08
Speaker 1: pathos is funny. Its conversations are oh indescribable, Its love
32:14
Speaker 1: seems odious, its English a crime against the language. Counting
32:20
Speaker 1: these out, what is left is art. I think we
32:23
Speaker 1: must all admit that. End of Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
32:32
Speaker 1: by Mark Twain, read by Gazina in October two thousand six.