Mark Twain on Fenimore Cooper’s Offences to Literature

   When the people think of Mark Twain they think of his regionalist/realist writing style, his interesting stories with colorful characters, and voyages on the Mississippi River. I imagine, however, that his literary criticisms do not come to mind first, if at all, but literary critic is another of the many trades in which Mark Twain excelled. One, rather humorous, example of Twain’s witty criticism chops is titled “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences,” in which Twain holds Cooper to task on the importance of observation, research, and accurate details to support a narrative’s believability.



   Fenimore Cooper was a 19th century, American author responsible for novels such as Last of the Mohicans and Deerslayer. He was praised by many in his time (Literature Professors from both Yale and Colombia, for example) for “fullness of invention” and thrilling scenes and similar merits but Mr. Twain was unimpressed. In fact he starts his criticism by listing 18 literary rules that the novel Deerslayer violates.A few of these violated rules include:

Monocle Cat approves of these rules.

1.      “That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.” (Twain 378)
4.   “They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.” (378)
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.” (379)
Number 8 there is a little specific but most of the literary rules Twain names are good solid rules for storytelling. 

Click on Monocle Cat to see the rest of the rules as well as the entire critique.

   Twain goes on to discuss the small bag of literary tricks and plot devices that Fenimore Cooper frequently resorts to in his writing. To clarify, a limited number of tricks leads to stale, uninspired writing; also writers should not rely on tricks but rather determine the most natural and organic way to tell a story and do that (my words not Twains).

   One trick that Twain focuses his attention on is the old stepping on a loud twig cliché. Think about it- how many movies have you seen wherein a person is trying to sneak up on another person, they step on a twig, which immediately alerts everyone in the vicinity to their exact position. Twain remarks, “He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest” (380). Mark Twain’s insistence on poking at this trend indicates that the twig snap was a cliché even then- in 1895- over one hundred years ago.

The Horror

   Fenimoore’s biggest literary offence, though, is poor attention to details. This aspect is what Mark Twain spends the majority of his criticism on. Anyone who says that the devil is in the details must be thumped upon the nose (again, my words). When it comes to writing details are ever important and getting little things like the width of a stream as compared to the size of a river boat, the method by which cannons fire the cannon ball through the air for a bit before the ball hits the ground, or how moccasin tracks do not stay put in a flowing riverbed. All these examples are referred to in Twain’s criticism of Cooper’s writing. He may have been able to weave tales of romance in the American frontier but his novels lack believability because the most basic details were overlooked or not properly researched.

   Nailing down accurate details while observing the basic tenants of  literature and allowing the story to flow naturally, as opposed to a limited bag of tricks, are all important in writing because they lend credibility to the work and allow the writer leeway in other areas where they may need to suspend the reader’s disbelief. Mark Twain’s style of criticism is both informative and amusing. So much so, that I would like to see him come back to life to be a film critic. 

Seriously how awesome would that be?