Mark Twain's life and literary legacy

¶ … Mark Twain's acidic commentary on James Cooper's writing style and skills. The paper studies his essay carefully to explain why Twain found Cooper's work less than brilliant and in total violation of literary rules that Twain himself observed.

MARK TWAIN: FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENSES (1895)

In the year 1895, Mark Twain wrote the acerbic essay on James Fenimore Cooper's books criticizing him rather ruthlessly for his numerous literary offenses. From the very beginning of the essay, it was clear that Twain seriously disliked the romantic tradition in writing. He was not particularly against Cooper; he was against the Romantic Movement for taking liberties with literary rules. Twain's chagrin was grounded simply in Cooper's inability to follow the rules as he asserted that in his work Deerslayer, the writer had "committed 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115." Twain's biting remarks did not end there. He examined almost 15 of the most commonly used literary devices or skills and charged Cooper with violating all of these. He also criticized others who had anything positive to say about Cooper's work. At one point, he mentions Brander Matthews who had said that Cooper's books "reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention." Twain took great offence to this positive comment and made a biting mockery of it: "Bless your heart, Cooper hadn't any more invention than a horse; and I don't mean a high-class horse, either; I mean a clothes-horse. It would be very difficult to find a really clever "situation" in Cooper's books, and still more difficult to find one of any kind which has failed to be rendered absurd by his handling of it."

It is difficult to understand why Twain had displayed such serious animosity against Cooper when others had been sympathetic to his work but Twain does a good job of making a strong case against Cooper's books. He gives examples from Cooper's work to justify his caustic criticism. He finds Cooper lacking in all areas of literary arts including dialogue as Twain writes: "Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue. Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many other enterprises of his life. He even failed to notice that the man who talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on seventh, and can't help himself. In the Deerslayer story, he lets Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other times the basest of base dialects."