Thursday, June 25, 2009

For fun

When's the last time you read Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses by Mark Twain?

You should again.

"I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me that Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens.

A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are—oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language."

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2 comments:

  1. isaac butler8:24 AM

    man do i hate reading james fenimore cooper. i remember in college signing up for american literature, founding-1860 or something like that, and my girlfriend at the time was like MISTAKE! And I was like, "no, I've read so little from that time, I'll learn". Outside of the transcendentalists, it was a complete disaster. At least I can now go through a time machine and tell high school me that i was right and james cooper and nathaniel hawthorne both suck.

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  2. Freeman8:36 AM

    Fantastic!

    I think we need more absolutely vicious, hilarious, withering attacks in the literary world. Everyone is too friendly with each other. Wouldn't it be nice to see a full-on feud between two playwrights? Who wouldn't want to read a series of angry open letters between, say, Adam Rapp and Itamar Moses?

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