Clearly not, since every one of the sins he attributes to Cooper is one that he himself commits to a greater degree in his own works.
And a bit of irony in Connecticut Yankee that I’ve never seen anyone else discuss: The protagonist is always going on about how brutal and savage the people of Camelot are, compared to “civilized” New Englanders… but how did he get the head injury that propelled him through time? Nothing unusual or extraordinary, just a sledgehammer duel, of the sort that one naturally engages in from time to time.
When I was a kid, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry (free admission back then) had an early 1900s “Main Street” with a nickelodeon featuring silent comedies. I LOVED them, tho Chaplin was never one of my faves. His shorts always impressed me as clever and amusing set pieces, where the entire setting and subject matter was amusing due to some novelty, but the moment by moment developments did not elicit laughs.
I think a great deal of his success was due to the novelty of the medium. It was surprising for people to see just about ANYTHING on film. And in his productions, he often pushed the boundaries of the day’s films. Surprise and novelty can contribute to amusement and cause laughter.
But we’ve discussed often how poorly most comedy ages. Today’s comedies bear little resemblance to the comedies of my youth - the 1960s. I envy those of you who still enjoy the comedy of their youths. Maybe I’ve seen them too many times, that I know the funny parts by heart, and now just ocus overmuch on the “filler” in between the laugh lines.
My most recent disappointment was to turn on The Honeymooners - long my gold standard of hilarity, and a show I often quote. Boy, Ralph was a jerk!
I agree with all this except the Honeymooners part. Yes, Ralph was a jerk, and it was great to see him get his comeuppance. The Honeymooners for me are up there with the Three Stooges, and they’re not a whole lot newer. FWIW Curly Howard’s daughter says that her father loved Jackie Gleason’s work.
Gleason rates mention as someone who could switch from comedy to sadness and back at the drop of a hat, which I understand is really hard to do. The episode where they get taken hostage by two fugitive bank robbers goes from pretty dramatic (when Ed and Alice think Ralph is getting beaten up) to relief, and then to hilarity: “So, I guess this is the first time you’ve ever run into a bus driver?”
Another example is the 1962 movie Gigot, in which Gleason played a mute Frenchman who befriends a prostitute and her young daughter. Gleason (who came up with the story) made the character mute because he knew he couldn’t pull off the French accent and make it funny. That’s a big part of competence, knowing your limitations.
Doing it on stage is hard. In a movie or TV show, though, anyone can accomplish that just by cutting the camera at the right point. And most screen shows have way more camera cuts than most folks realize, so there’s definitely room to slip one in when needed.
Don’t get me wrong. You’ll still hear me saying, “I’m RICH!” Or saying, “Hel-looo ball!” Not to mention, “Bang, zoom!” And just the other day I asked my wife which was better, the Hucklebuck or the Swizzle. (Speaking of another main character who did not age well IMO.
And part of my mistake was in watching a couple of the non-classic eps. But the apartment just seemed so sad. And even tho he supposedly loved Alice, so much of how he acted towards her just didn’t seem to translate to well to my ears today.
Maybe this insensitive old clod finally developed some sensitivity? NAH!
I’ve seen this claim before, but I think it’s based on a misunderstanding. That wasn’t the funniest line—it was the line that got the biggest audience response (which makes a lot more sense if you see it in context).
I have two of the original collections. I never had that much of a problem with the dialog, not after a while. His most famous piece was “A Book Review” which reviews Teddy Roosevelt’s memoir on the Spanish American War, which Mr. Dooley said should have been called “Alone in Cuba” since Teddy claims he won the war himself.
I’m one of those people who hear the words in my head as I read until I get totally lost in the text. Dialect of any kind always kills me; I can’t stop sounding out word by word.
Humorists in the 19th century thought dialect the funniest thing in the world. Fie on them.
Regarding the line in Our American Cousin that was said when Booth shot Lincoln
I appreciate the correction. I blame the curator at Ford’s theatre who first told us tourists the story back when i visited in ‘92.
As I understand it, the play centers on an American who travels to England, where he’s confronted with exceptionally snooty relatives. Am I correct in surmising that the line reflects when he finally stands up for himself?
Meaning, it’d be more of a time for the audience to cheer than to laugh.
Having been in a community theater production of Our American Cousin, I’d say it can be a pretty funny play if done right, although it’s fairly lowbrow, SNL-style comedy, not unlike plenty of comedy movies that have been made over the years.
I don’t think this is fair to Cooper. Although, I have to admit, I’ve tried reading his stuff and failed.
The thing is, there was a profound change in written American English between the beginning and the end of the 19th century. At the beginning, things were wordier, with more added phrases and words we would regard as superfluous. You can see this not only in Cooper, but in other writers of the period, like Edgar Allen Poe. This was driven home to me when, after listening to an audiobook version of The Gold Bug, I then read the story. I knew that the audiobook had been somewhat condensed, with episodes missing. But I hadn’t realized just how much had ben excised. The people who did the audio abridgement hadn’t simply removed a few non-essential incidents in the story. They had cut away portions of many sentences that were retained. And I hadn’t realized it until I compared the abridged version with the original.
Twain could have demonstrated his editing of style using Poe instead of Cooper (although I think Cooper was a better target for his satire) – he could still have made his point about superfluous words and phrases. In short, Twain waswn’t demonstrating the flaws of James Fenimore Cooper, but of early 19th century prose. He could as easily have used Nathaniel Hawthorne. There’s a reason you found The Scarlet Letter tedious reading.
Written English (American English, at least) had become more streamlined by Twain’s day. I don’t know why this is, but now that I’m aware of it, I can see it in the older prose.
Actually, to me the most ironic thing is that Twain titles his book “A Connecticut Yankee…” and writes from that point of view, when he considered himself a Southerner (although living in Hartford, Connecticut at the time). I agree with those who claim that Twain was poking as much fun at his Connecticut Yankee as the Arthurian English. And that includes his description of a sledgehammer duel.
I agree that writing styles shifted in the nineteenth century. But Poe and Hawthorne, while adherents of the old-school style, wrote masterful prose. Their narratives flowed expertly. (I’ll admit I’m a fan of the former style and admire those who execute it with aplomb.)
Cooper’s prose is turgid with few redeeming qualities. Twain didn’t pick his name out of a hat. I guess you could infer that Twain was a bit of a hypocrite for targeting Cooper for sins he could just as easily have drilled Poe for (a writer I assume he’d have admired), but Cooper came by his humiliation on his own. His stuff sucked.
I believe the change had to do with the influence newspaper writing had on new writers and the shift away from Romanticism toward Realism. This resulted in American prose becoming more terse and less florid. Hemingway represents the apogee of both trends.
One of Bill Bryson’s books noted this, and quoted one of the the passages from Lincoln’s debates with Stephen A. Douglas which had me nodding off. It seemed like people were trying to demonstrate their skill with language by using fifty words when five would do.
I’ve heard that the invention of the telegraph also led to brevity. Time is money.
