08 November 2006 19:56
well, what's done is done. i just read the Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. i didn't know if i was going to be able to make it, it was touch and go in a few places. it probably helped that there were about 30 pages missing out of the middle of the book. what's 30 pages amongst 570 other pages of fluff? heralded as his "masterpiece", a historical romance of world-renown, it likta kilt me. take this example from "the scout", who is supposedly the main character (we heard his name once in this book, i think). instead of saying something nice, simple and to the point like:them fought good.
he has to go and say:
Well did these barbarous warriors prove that they deserved those significant names which had been bestowed for deeds in former wars.
my goodness, this is a woodsman in the late 18th century. he's spent most of his life with indians (whom cooper is careful to portray as long on patience and short on words, their most frequent word of dialouge is "hungh!"), is this guy really going to be this verbose? regarding a veil that Cora was wearing when she was captured, a party is tracking them and the scout launches into this:
"That's manifest; and clearer than the heavens above our heads," regurned the undisturbed scout; "but either she, or they that have robbed her, have passed the bush; for I remember the rag she wore to hide a face that all did love to look upon. Uncas, you are right; the dark-hair has been here, and she has fled, like a frighted fawn, to the wood; none who could fly would remain to be murdered. Let us search for the marks she left; for to Indian eyes, I sometimes think even a hummingbird leaves his trail in the air."it's been some years since I've seen the 1992 film of the same name, and from the get go I was having trouble reconciling memory of the movie to what I was reading in the book. i understand that movies have to cut down story lines to fit inside of two hours viewing time, but this is one of the (very) rare books i've come across where i hands down think i prefer the movie to the book. and i don't even recall the movie being all that realistic...though the scenery was good. i looked up to jog my memory and wikipedia had these quotes:
The film's style-over-substance nature was not lost on Desson Howe of The Washington Post, who called the movie "glam-opera" and "the MTV version of gothic romance". Howe added that "Day-Lewis doesn't act so much as bare himself, fire flintlocks, and pose in picturesque positions". The Washington Post's Rita Kempley also recognized the heavy drama, writing that the film "sets new standards when it comes to pent-up passion", but she comments positively on the "spectacular scenery".ah yes, that fits with my memory of what the movie was like.
oh well. the book did one most excellent thing for me. it set me up perfectly for reading Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses by Mark Twain. this is probably funny as a stand alone, but having just read the book it's hilarious. it's like a star trek drinking game, Twain hits it on the head any number of times. try this one regarding my subject matter above:
The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.the last of the mohicans in reality was a rather long-winded series of short episodes strung together to form a novel. thus each chapter had a climax, and there was no over-arching climax for the entire novel. until the end when cooper decided it was time to wrap things up by suddenly killing off a couple lead charachters without preface or buildup. i think he did this primarily so that he could devote the last chapter to describing indian funeral customs, rather than create any sense of tradgedy. i never thought i'd read a book where the death of two principle protagonists would generate so little enthusiasm for the story-line. but then, charachters kept showing up at random throughout the book whilst others would disappear, or random things would change with out explanation. as Twain aptly says while dealing with a separate point of his own.
The color of the paint is not stated -- an important omission, but Cooper deals freely in important omissions....
now that i've bashed on it significantly, the last of the mohicans wasn't by far the worst thing i've ever read. just trying, verbose, and unrealistic. but reading it for the first time still was interesting enough that i going (after i've let this one settle on my brain a bit) to give a couple of cooper's other novels from this series (Leatherstocking Tales) a try. they're public domain, so you can get them at gutenberg.
19:56 email me permalink / commentary (0)
