Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Mark Twain

Critical Essay by Mark Twain

SOURCE: "Fenimore Cooper's Further Literary Offenses," in The New England Quarterly, Vol. XIX, No. 3, September, 1946, pp. 291-301.

In the following essay, originally composed in 1895, Twain criticizes Cooper for his inflexible style and verbosity.

Young Gentlemen: In studying Cooper you still find it profitable to study him in detail—word by word, sentence by sentence. For every sentence of his is interesting. Interesting because of its make-up, its peculiar make-up, its original make-up. Let us examine a sentence or two, and see. Here is a passage from Chapter XI of The Last of the Mohicans one of the most famous and most admired of Cooper's books:

Notwithstanding the swiftness of their flight, one of the Indians had found an opportunity to strike a straggling fawn with an arrow, and had borne the more preferable fragments of the victim, patiently on his shoulders, to the stopping-place. Without any aid...
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