JasonKoivu

Like the only prostitute in town, it's very popular and good fun at first, but after a time it ain't so pretty, and jesus christ, why won't it just shut the fuck up!

Very popular in its time, The Last of the Mohicans is a historical fiction written in the 1820s and set in the 1750s during the French and Indian War in which a small party of British colonists and their Indian guides journey through the upstate New York wilderness defending themselves from their French and Indian enemies.

James Fenimore Cooper brought insight into the lives of the Native Americans in a way seldom seen at a time when the people of these many new world tribes were mostly reviled as hostile savages. Back when it was published The Last of the Mohicans must have seemed revolutionary. Were it tweaked into the non-fiction Cooper half seemed to be trying to write, perhaps it would've succeeded, if it's inaccuracies could've been shorn up that is.

But it is a fiction and today its formal prose does not go down easily for the modern reader. Archaic terms and phrasings aside, Cooper wrote like a grammar robot. He adheres to English language strictures like a foreigner dotting his I's and crossing his T's. His rigid style absolutely takes the joy out of what should be an exciting tale. And why use one word when five are available? Wordiness digs this poor book's grave ever deeper.

The other big problem I had was Cooper's narrative style. Not only does he feel the need to explain away everything, he forces the explanation into the mouths of his characters at the most ridiculous of times. Soldiers and scouts constantly chatter away while tracking enemies or hiding from them. By the end it got so unbelievable that I found myself having sarcastic conversations with the characters....

"Do you see that dastardly Huron spying on us there mayhaps two rods ahead in yonder verdant undergrowth?" asked Hawkeye.
"The one in the bushes thirty feet away that can probably hear us talking? Yeah," I replied before pausing to ask, "How is it you've survived this long?"



Note: For many years now I'd heard bad things about this book and I'm not sure I would've read it, but then someone double-dog dared me. I of course scoffed at the mere double! However they then triple-dog dared me, the fiend!...Game on...GAME...ON...