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Kurt
Mohicanite
USA
Bumppo's Patron since [at least]:
September 27 2003
Status: offline
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 Posted - September 27 2003 : 08:30:06 AM
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I prefer the book but I will admit there are a few tricks to make the reading more enjoyable.
When Mr. Cooper was writing, books were the only mass produced home entertainments. One trick is to approximate the time as much as possible. Shut off the TV and any other mechanical sound reproduction equipment. Mr. Cooper's writing will take all of your concentration.
Most books at the time were sold "by the chapter" to magazines. Don't expect to finish in one sitting (unless it's a long, long snowstorm).
Many times I will skip to and read the descriptions of the landscapes like the description of the Escapment Trail near North South Lake campground and launch into daydreams of my last visit or plans for the next time.
Just because life today is rush-rush-rush doesn't mean entertainments have to be also. |
Yr. obt. svt.
Kurt |
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Miss Munro
Pathfinder
Sweden
Bumppo's Patron since [at least]:
May 04 2004
Status: offline
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Posted - May 06 2004 : 3:53:34 PM
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I read the book few years before I saw the movie.It's so much different,but not in the bad way...
I like the movie more but I also like the book (I didn't like only the way it was writen,I mean the old fashioned way;litle bit too hard to read;I don't undrestand how they put it under childrens books category?!?)
I'm deffenetly going to read the book again some day...
So the book is good,but the movie is much better 
Hawkeye  Cora
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"Do you love me? Or you're not the loving kind?" |
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Lurking Huron2640
Anonymous Guest
Bumppo's Patron since [at least]:
November 27 2002
Status: offline
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Posted - May 22 2004 : 8:25:18 PM
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I found the following critique by Twain to very rough, but interesting:
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
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.
-Professor Lounsbury
The five tales reveal an extraordinary fullness 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.
-Professor Matthews
Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction in America.
--Wilkie Collins
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It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature at Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins 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 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in 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 air.
2. They require that the episodes in 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. The 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 circomestances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at 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 the 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 |
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