tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post7270560757252018820..comments2024-03-29T03:04:00.853-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: "Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses" by D. H. LawrenceAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-47936236029095717212016-08-07T16:30:24.134-05:002016-08-07T16:30:24.134-05:00I do want to read more Cooper sometime, especially...I do want to read more Cooper sometime, especially <i>The Pioneers</i> and <i>Mohicans</i>, and to revisit <i>Deerslayer</i>, but I doubt it will be anytime soon. My mental space is settled at the other end of the century right now. Once I get sick of all that, a look back to Cooper et. al. could be a good idea.<br /><br />I have never read Bulwer-Lytton myself, but a number of critics - mostly bloggers - have convinced me that, again, I should ignore his (Snoopy-derived) reputation.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-78064236989538285312016-08-07T01:13:10.722-05:002016-08-07T01:13:10.722-05:00I have read through your Cooper musings because he...I have read through your Cooper musings because he is my current obsession, and I have just finished the full Leatherstocking Saga, have re-read The Pioneers and am now re-reading Last of the Mohicans. I think Cooper is far more subtle and interesting than the current belief, particularly in these times of ours when American Exceptionalism is part of the culture wars. Do you have Cooper on your radar, or is he just too obfuscatory for even this select audience to enjoy and consider? I totally agree with you that Twain did a hatchet job on him, an apples and oranges bit of legerdemain that has eclipsed the writer himself. Although Cooper can be very exciting (The Pathfinder being perhaps the toughest row to hoe of the five novels), he can also be a morass of Bulwer-Lytton proportions. What thinkest thou?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00014242874264804584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-6371012443229544852014-02-25T21:52:24.709-06:002014-02-25T21:52:24.709-06:00I see. Cooperstown has actually become fictional....I see. Cooperstown has actually <i>become</i> fictional.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-49261533358969765002014-02-25T16:55:46.036-06:002014-02-25T16:55:46.036-06:00Almost forgot--if you scroll down, there's a b...Almost forgot--if you scroll down, there's a bunch about Cooperstown: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/youmans_interview/Marly Youmanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-47603292917232987742014-02-25T16:53:56.324-06:002014-02-25T16:53:56.324-06:00Cooperstown is a very peculiar place, or so I thin...Cooperstown is a very peculiar place, or so I think! The line between fiction and reality has eroded, so that there are fictional places people talk about--and real places that seem like fictions. Then we have two castles, a Norman tower in the woods and a little tower inspired by the Mouse Tower on the Rhine that stands in the edge of the lake. I can see it from the room where I write some of the time. One of the rectors at Christ Church was a well-known and much-admired poet, ruined by one of Poe's scathing reviews (he went down South afterward and was rector at Vicksburg during the siege!) I've never been in a place that was so fantastical--so full of ghosts of all sorts. Poltergeists. Floaty ghosts. Little children's ghosts. (Three little children dancing in a ring were once seen in what is now our living room.) Mohawk ghosts. Helpful ghosts. Ghosts in mirrors. And there's a lake serpent, of course.Marly Youmanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-36891989425022720432014-02-25T16:42:39.588-06:002014-02-25T16:42:39.588-06:00Actually reading Cooper certainly increased my est...Actually reading Cooper certainly increased my estimation of Cooper. <i>The Deerslayer</i> was idea-packed.<br /><br />I figured, given the title of the new novel, that you had some connection to Cooperstown. How strange - how fun - to have these old books and writers embedded in the town. I suppose Concord is similarly interesting. Can't be too many other places. Oxford, MS, maybe.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-56509898622104702132014-02-25T16:32:24.574-06:002014-02-25T16:32:24.574-06:00p. s. The village still recalls that when Fenimore...p. s. The village still recalls that when Fenimore Cooper came back from Europe, he tried to kick the villagers out of their pleasure-and-boating beach, Three Mile Point, which they had taken over in his absence... Also, his stained glass window at church is didactic, whereas none of the others are!<br /><br />His daughter left a good mark on the village, being highly philanthropic. It's fun to take down "Rural Hours" and see what things were like here, not long before "Walden" was published. I'm still a bit suspicious that Thoreau read Susan Fenimore Cooper...Marly Youmanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-81219445683966998432014-02-25T16:17:00.238-06:002014-02-25T16:17:00.238-06:00Although I have read the Leatherstocking novels (a... Although I have read the Leatherstocking novels (and that before I moved to this house, 200 yards from Lake Otsego), I do muddle them up a bit in mind. I think there are probably a lot of important American-lit cameo moments in the novels, sometimes small moments that launched certain ideas about the wilderness and the West--like that image of the plow magnified against the sunset. Maybe from "The Prairie"? Or any one of the others!<br /><br />It is, I think, interesting to set the order of composition against the order of events. All sorts of interesting things could be derived, no doubt. And I do like "Deerslayer."<br /><br />I do like the passenger pigeons episode. Also, the water burial in the lake really sticks in my mind. I have pilfered something from each of those passages. And of course I snitched a bit of Cooper for my upcoming novel. Glimmerglass. I walk by his grave frequently, and often tourists ask me which one it is. Not as often as tourists ask me to point out The Baseball Hall of Fame, but still--Marly Youmanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-3184275312296000672013-08-15T09:28:38.094-05:002013-08-15T09:28:38.094-05:00True, Scarlet Letter (and a lot of Hawthorne reall...True, Scarlet Letter (and a lot of Hawthorne really) and Moby-Dick are very strange books I would never consider realist. Perhaps I will venture into the possible strangeness that is Cooper one of these days.Stefaniehttp://somanybooksblog.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-21068432849513529232013-08-14T23:18:00.351-05:002013-08-14T23:18:00.351-05:00I think the easiest - most productive, interesting...I think the easiest - most productive, interesting, I don't know - way into Cooper now is to focus on all of the destruction in his novels. I mean not just violence but obliteration - extinct species, demolished landscapes, genocidal wars. The end of <i>The Deerslayer</i> is apocalyptic. It is simultaneously the end of the series and, strangely, the beginning. <br /><br />As with Cole - <a href="http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/thomas-cole/scene-from-the-last-of-the-mohicans-by-james-fenimore-cooper-1827" rel="nofollow">this painting at least</a> - the blend of realism and idealism is peculiar.<br /><br />In some other respects, Cooper is sure easy to dislike.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-60076602484161440622013-08-14T17:07:28.051-05:002013-08-14T17:07:28.051-05:00I suppose I should have read Fenimore Cooper as a ...I suppose I should have read Fenimore Cooper as a child. Instead, in college I read the Twain essay following on the heels of a devastating lecture on Cooper by a professor who loathed him. That pretty much killed my interest in Cooper in the bud. Curiously, though, it was piqued recently by discovering 19th century painter Thomas Cole's paintings, several of which depict scenes from <i>The Last of the Mohicans</i>. Have you seen these? Talk about a perfect setting with little pretense to reality!seraillonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17654593356535433945noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-32823641116076271602013-08-14T10:26:57.573-05:002013-08-14T10:26:57.573-05:00We're sold a line that Cooper is a clumsy real...We're sold a line that Cooper is a clumsy realist. And <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> is about adultery, and <i>Moby-Dick</i> is about whaling, and on like that.<br /><br />True in part, but these are also fantasy novels, as fantastic as Poe. It is a curious phenomenon that this is so hard for some people to see, with the text right in front of them.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-39474375444315671072013-08-14T10:20:31.363-05:002013-08-14T10:20:31.363-05:00I've not read Cooper but I've never though...I've not read Cooper but I've never thought of him as being strange. Maybe Lawrence finds the strange because he can be so darn strange himself. A takes one to know one sort of thing.Stefaniehttp://somanybooksblog.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-16775661077514352992013-08-14T08:13:28.003-05:002013-08-14T08:13:28.003-05:00I know how you feel. He is better than his reputa...I know how you feel. He is better than his reputation, yet still kind of a klutz and kind of a drag.<br /><br />He would benefit from an anthology, which sounds like heresy, but it's true. <i>The Pioneers</i>, for example, has an amazing description of the mass slaughter of passenger pigeons, a famous scene - Lawrence singles it out, too - that in no way needs the rest of the novel to be understood.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-90324622389621924872013-08-14T05:41:47.914-05:002013-08-14T05:41:47.914-05:00I have yet to read any Cooper. Maybe one day.I have yet to read any Cooper. Maybe one day.Mel uhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08714473754458914681noreply@blogger.com