The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper

I know, I'm just a blogging fiend today. I've got to get all these books out of my head so I can think about the next ones. The Prairie is the third of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales that I've read this year, the others being The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans. There are five Leatherstocking Tales, and I originally intended to read all of them this year, but I just don't know if I can do it. Now, The Last of the Mohicans was pretty good, and The Pioneers had some good parts, especially the end. (No, not because it was the end). The Prairie was my least favorite so far. Again, the ending was the best part. The novels seem to drag at various points, with plot and dialogue being uninteresting, but they always pick up at the end. That is Fenimore Cooper's greatest strength. After three novels' worth of Nathaniel Bumpo fighting Indians, protecting damsels and waxing eloquent about nature, I feel like I'm reading the same thing over and over. As an aside, Mark Twain wrote a satirical essay called Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences, which I found quite humorous. He describes Fenimore Cooper's writing style more critically than I would think accurate, but it's eight pages of satire, it's funny, and it's free at Project Gutenberg. Check it out. Maybe check out Fenimore Cooper first, so you know what you're laughing at.

Stats:

Hero: the trapper aka Hawkeye aka the Deerslayer aka Natty Bumpo aka Leatherstocking

Bad guys: the Tetons and some lawless white settlers

Good guys: the Sioux and some nice white settlers

Two-dimensional plot devices: the females (as Fenimore Cooper calls them)

There was a lot of: tracking, shooting, spying, sneaking up, escaping, capturing

There should have been more: plot. I really shouldn't have read Twain's essay before writing this entry. hee hee

This book makes you want to: fall asleep (help me, I can't stop myself)

This book makes you glad you don't have to: die alone in the wilderness without family, step on dry twigs an inopportune moments, read the last two books in the series, although I probably will anyway

Last of the Mohicans

This is the second (in order of publication) of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, following The Pioneers, which I read in March.  Once again, I embarked upon a mental portage for the first 300 pages, after which the plot sped up somewhat, but although I patiently awaited some of the thoughtful, even philosophical musings encountered near the end of The Pioneers, I was ultimately disappointed. Don't get me wrong, as a plot-based historical novel Mohicans can hold the reader's interest, but it lacked the depth of Cooper's earlier volume. There are three more novels in the Leatherstocking Tales, and I am interested to see which precedent they will follow.  I know I will be reading The Prairie at some point this year, as it is already in my possession, but The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder will likely wait until next year.

The plot of the novel differs noticeably from that of the 1992 film, so if you've seen the movie but haven't read the book, don't worry, I'm not mixing up the sisters....not that it would be difficult to do so when both characters are one-dimensional stereotypes of 19th century women.  Speaking of which, let's talk about Cora. One piece of information that is fairly important in the novel but omitted from the movie is the fact that Cora is one-quarter black (but technically not African-American, as her mother was from the Caribbean). Why would the screenwriter (or casting director? whoever) skip over this? Probably because it is implied as a reason for Magua's attraction for her as well as for her more strong-willed and intense temperament. This then begs the question of why it would be problematic for Magua to be attracted to her due to her racial origins. To the 21st century reader it seems obvious that individuals have varying levels of attraction to people of different ethnicities. Part of the difficulty lies in the stereotypical representation of Magua as a sly, sneaky, violent and deceptive Indian. To put it bluntly, in Cooper's world, the villain of inferior race, when presented with two women, chooses the one who is also of inferior race.  So you can see why Hollywood wasn't going to touch that with a ten-foot canoe paddle.

     Now, before you get the idea that I think Cooper is a racist pig, I must state that I stand by my previous opinion of him as quite advanced for his time in his ideas of race and culture. Let's look at Uncas, for example.  If Magua is the sly, sneaky Indian and Chingachgook is the stoic noble savage, Uncas is an admirable and courageous hero whose depiction rises above ethnic stereotype. Hawkeye and Cora point out at different times that Uncas' behavior is commendable. Hawkeye comments that Uncas is pretty awesome for an Indian (my paraphrase) *sigh*, while Cora states that anyone who observed Uncas' actions would forget the color of his skin. Cooper then portrays the other characters as being uncomfortable with Cora's statement, which would have indeed been a historically accurate response. Cora (and Cooper) were ahead of their time.

    Related but not identical to Cooper's exploration of interracial relationships is his portrayal of culture conflict. Heyward represents the soldier ideal in American culture, while David Gamut is the Calvinist Protestant and Hawkeye is the frontiersman. These three men clash with each other throughout the novel, so how can such an internally discordant culture, one which can't even agree with itself, be expected to instantly enter civil discourse with not just one completely foreign Native American tribe, but many? Thus, Cooper makes his point more clearly than would have been possible had he permitted less conflict among the male American characters.

     Cooper further sets out issues of cultural conflict through his use of several names to refer to one person, tribe or place. To name something or someone is to assert dominance over that person or thing, and the fact that each group had their own names for other groups/people is used as a device by Cooper to signify the struggle between them. Nathaniel Bumppo calls himself Natty but is also known as Hawkeye by the Mohicans and La Longue Carabine by the French and Huron. The Iroquois are alternately Maquas and Mingoes, the Delaware are the Leni-Lenape, Chingachgook is Le Gros Serpent and Magua is Sly Fox. Even Lake Horican is also Lake George and Le Lac du St. Sacrament. Uncas originally carries the title Last of the Mohicans because he was the last born of his tribe, but after his death, his father, Chingachgook becomes Last of the Mohicans. Symbolically, Chingachgook represents not only the last of his tribe, but the last of all Indian culture, ultimately destroyed by the coming of the Europeans and their settlement of the frontier.

Stats:
Heroes: Uncas, Hawkeye
Villain: Magua
More sappy prairie women: Cora and Alice, but especially Alice
Over sensationalized: Indian massacre
Under explored: character of Hawkeye...but I do have 3 more volumes to go so I'll let it slide
There was a lot of: dialogue, tracking, descriptions of nature, hiking through the forest
There should have been more: comic relief. I think Cooper was trying with David Gamut, but I personally don't find much humor in strict Calvinists...
This book makes you want to: appreciate the alien beauty of the wilderness, appreciate the alien beauty of a person you don't understand (hmm...think Cooper chose his setting to correspond with his themes?)
This book makes you glad you don't have to: faint regularly as proof of your XX chromosomes, engage in hand-to-hand combat as proof of your XY chromosomes, rely on a guide who is trying to trick you, be the last living member of your tribe

The Pioneers: The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale

Yes, that's the entire title, and I chose to use it to distinguish this novel from O Pioneers!, which might have come to your mind if I had only written The Pioneers.  This book is the first published (fourth chronologically) of the Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, and it sold 3,500 copies before noon on the day it was published (1823).  Most famous of the Leatherstocking Tales is the second chronologically, The Last of the Mohicans, which is sometimes called >adopt reverent tone< THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL.  (Incidentally, this should remove a weight from the minds of all you aspiring American writers, in that, since Cooper has already written the great American novel, you don't have to!) I have chosen to read all five of them this year, and I was undecided whether to read them in order of chronology or of publication, until someone suggested doing the latter in order to more easily follow Cooper's development as a writer.  That appealed to me, so down I sat with The Pioneers.

Egads. After about 300 pages, I was considering greasing my eyeballs to allow them to slide over the text more quickly. It was, how you say, le boring.  And then, somewhere around page 325 (I'm guessing), the clouds parted, the sun beamed down, the birds sang and somebody smacked Cooper upside the head and said, "Get going!!"   Well. After that the plot took off galloping and didn't stop until a finish that crammed in everything.  Instead of spreading out the literary goodness over the entire novel, Cooper was rather stingy at the beginning, and then piled it on at the end.  Seriously, in approximately the last 100 pages, you will find  SPOILERS AHEAD>>>  entrapment, poaching, a weaponized stand off, a trial, a jailbreak, a wildfire, rescue of damsel in distress (twice), the death of a noble chief, appearance of a long lost friend/relative, revelation of a character's true identity, confession of true love, proposal and marriage, burial and romantic epitaphs, poetic speeches about death, the afterlife, wilderness, civilization, law and justice, and finally the hero walks off into the sunset.
END SPOILERS

Now, before you think Cooper a tired cliche for having his hero walk off into the sunset, let me point out that The Pioneers was the first novel to contain such an exit. Far from cliche, this was original and very romantic (in the original sense of the word).  Also romantic is the continuous tension between wilderness and settlement.  Cooper addresses issues of environmental stewardship, conservation and use, and is possibly the first novelist to do so.  He also pointedly demonstrates the difference between justice and law, and the fact that the law exists to serve itself (or possibly power).  He devises a surprisingly universalist hero for an American in 1823, as can be seen in Hawkeye's statement that, although whites want to be buried facing east and Indians want to be buried facing west, after death they will meet in the land of the just.

Despite being far ahead of his time in many ways, there are other areas in which Cooper has not shed the conventional prejudices of his day.  The portrayal of black slaves and freedmen as childlike is similar to or slightly worse than that of Mark Twain's Huck Finn (written a generation later than the Leatherstocking Tales). Expect to see the "N" word in the first few chapters, used by black people as often as by whites.  That said, Cooper was the first American novelist to include African American characters at all, so even his stereotypical portrayal was a milestone. As for women, they are virtuous but mentally vacuous, occasionally fainting and getting into dangerous predicaments from which they require rescuing.  Their main functions are as daughters, servants and wives, but not mothers, interestingly. (Both mothers are dead).  A contemporary critic wrote of Cooper: "the women he draws from one model don't vary / All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie."  Despite these shortcomings, Cooper's portrayal of Native Americans is varied and complicated. He succeeds, through the course of the Leatherstocking Tales, in creating contrasts between some Native characters that are noble and heroic and others with few redeeming qualities.  In this, he demonstrates his view of Native Americans as a large group with certain tendencies, but comprised of individuals with different characters. In other words, they have the dignity and depth of any other human culture group.

As a short aside, I must question whether Cooper was a genius. You see, he was enrolled at Yale at age 13, but was expelled after a dangerous prank that involved him blowing up another student's door. Another less dangerous prank consisted of training a donkey to sit in a professor's chair. That certainly looks like the work of a genius to me. ;)

Stats:
ponderously annoying semi-main character: Judge Marmaduke
maple and prairie female: Elizabeth
ethnic stereotypes: the German guy, the French guy, the black guy, the English guy 
hero: Hawkeye, aka Leatherstocking, aka Nathaniel Bumpo, aka Natty Bumpo
comrade of aforementioned hero: Chingachgook  (also of The Last of the Mohicans fame)
there was a lot of : trees, wildlife, use and misuse of said trees and wildlife
there should have been more of: women with brains...or at least personalities...
this book makes you want to: preserve some unspoiled wilderness, treat people right, get away from stupid people
this book makes you glad you don't have to: be a woman or ethnic minority in 1823




Edit: I read and reviewed The Last of the Mohicans in May.