No clemensy for Cooper

Birthday of James Fenimore Cooper (see yesterday's entry). Mark Twain, after taking a look into Cooper's ouevre, wrote a famous essay.

"Cooper's art has some defects," Twain wrote. "In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

"There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction -- some say twenty-two. In 'Deerslayer,' Cooper violated eighteen of them."

To read the complete essay, visit
James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

Sincerely yours, Samuel Clemens

American author Bret Harte (The Outcasts of Poker Flat) was born on this day in 1836.

"He hadn't a sincere fiber in him," Mark Twain wrote of Harte. "I think his heart was merely a pump and had no other function."

Get ready for the Dog Days!

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man." -- Mark Twain.

At least he's consistent

Mark Twain died on this day in 1910.

"All the talk about tolerance, in anything or anywhere, is plainly a gentle lie," Twain wrote. "It does not exist. "It is in no man's heart; but it unconsciously, and by moss-grown inherited habit, drivels and slobbers from all men's lips.

"Intolerance is everything for oneself, and nothing for the other person. The mainspring of man's nature is just that — selfishness.

"Let us skip the other lies, for brevity's sake. To consider them would prove nothing, except that man is what he is — loving toward his own, lovable to his own — his family, his friends — and otherwise the buzzing, busy, trivial enemy of his race — who tarries his little day, does his little dirt, commends himself to God, and then goes out into the darkness, to return no more, and send no messages back — selfish even in death.



For more about Twain's death, visit Farewells

A majority is always wrong

April Fools Day.

"Haint we got all the fools in town on our side? And haint that a big enough majority in any town?" -- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn.

We say a treadmill is the road to hell

It's four days into the new year. How are you doing on those resolutions?

"New Year's Day is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." -- Mark Twain.

They never bought his books, either

The Wounded Knee massacre occurred on this day in 1890.



"He (the Indian) is ignoble--base and treacherous, and hateful in every way. Not even imminent death can startle him into a spasm of virtue." -- Mark Twain.

Give us enough rope

Mark Twain was born on this day in 1835.

"There are times one would like to hang the whole human race," he wrote, "and finish the farce."

The whale of the world

Moby-Dick was published on this day in 1851.

"A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read." – Mark Twain.

Moby-Dick sold only 3,000 copies in Herman Melville's lifetime.

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life," Melville wrote in Moby-Dick, "when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."

Read more about Herman Melville's view of life (and death) at farewells.blogspot.com.