I have to respectfully disagree. Twain really did feel that Cooper’s prose was far too wordy, as he amply demonstrates in the follow-up I cite*. He also lived by the rule that :the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug", a phrase he used outside his published works ( Mark Twain quotations - Lightning ). He criticizes Cooper in particular for this one.
*I think he’s misguided in this – there was a revolution in writing styles between Cooper’s time and Twain’s, and that overly-wordy style passed out of popularity in preference to a more succinct style. Have a look at Poe’s style, for instance. You could very easily trim his sentences the same way Twain does Cooper’s, and to a modern reader not very familiar with the Poe original it wouldn’t seem as if anything had been removed. I’m acutely aware of this, because I just finished writing a story in that early 19th century style, and it takes effort to keep that style up (and to not fall into parody)
Damon Knight’s essay “Cosmic Jerrybuilder” on the serialized version of A. E. van Vogt’s World’s of Null-A was so devastating to van Vogt that he rewrote major sections for full publication. Van Vogt – who was considered one of the giants of the field back then – found his reputation deteriorate badly (though it’s had some resurgence).
Knight’s best put down, though, was when he began, “‘This eloquent novel,’ says the jacket of Taylor Caldwell’s The Devil’s Advocate, making two errors in three words.”
If movie reviews are included, I have a particular affinty for Roger Ebert’s review of Alien Ressurection:
“…Like the bugs in “Starship Troopers,” these aliens are an example of specialization. They have evolved over the eons into creatures adapted for one purpose only: To star in horror movies…”
Stephen Greenblatt won the National Book Award for his book The Swerve, about the discovery of an important, ancient Naturalist poem by Lucretius in the Middle Ages.
Marilynne Robinson won the Pulitzer for her novel Gilead.
Robinson, about two-thirds if the way through, coldly educates Greenblatt and us readers about Milton’s views on individual spirituality and marriage, and then points out how Greenblatt’s book in this section is worthless because it is based on a superficial understanding.
She ends the review with: “The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve” up is an ambitious attempt an at important cultural history. It is cursory, and, to the degree that its treatment of these influential texts and movements is uninformed, it is not a help in understanding them"
Ouch.
Again, Greenblatt is a Harvard scholar and shit. This isn’t going to be the end of this.
