Home > Work > Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
1 " T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. "
― Mark Twain , Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
2 " T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. "
3 " There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Fenimore Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now. "
4 " Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. "
5 " They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together. "
