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I’ve read it, and I enjoyed it. Though it does take a while to get up to speed, what with Cooper’s habit of not telling you a character’s name until five chapters after he’s introduced.
And I still maintain that Twain’s essay on Cooper’s literary offenses was a joke, since most of the things he complains about are equally true, or more so, of his own writing. Which doesn’t make Twain’s writing bad, either.
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I don’t think Twain was making a joke about Cooper–on a couple of other occasions he wrote or spoke derisively of Cooper’s writing–but some of his work was definitely an intented parody of the sort of aimless, sprawling, stream-of-consciousness plotting that was common among earlier American writers. In particular Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is often compared to and/or accused of being a broad recasting of Homer’s Odyssey, really bears more resemblence to the meandering tales of Cooper and his contemporaries, and Twain notes in the introductory notes that “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” (Nonetheless, there is in fact motive, moral, and plot, albeit buried beneath the meandering, seemingly simplistic narrative.)
In general, Twain typically aped and parodied previous writers in style, mannerism, and/or subject, including but not limited too Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, François Rabelais, Miguel de Cervantes, Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, and Jonathon Swift (and of course subsequently served as an inspiration to generations of novelests who succeeded him). He did so in a surprisingly sophisticated manner, given the seeming simplicity of his grammer and narrative structure; in fact, he made very sophisticated use of local vernacular and tradition to develop complex social satire and criticism, particularly in is later writings.
Regarding Cooper, yes, his prose is clunky, overwrought, implicitly bigoted, and often obtuse, and the plot merely a closeline on which to hang largely disjoint episodes with no real overall structure. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to levy this as a criticism, as this in no way distinguishes his writing from that of his contemporaries; one could make largely the same complaint of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, although Cervantes is, IMHO, a much better writer and an intentional satirist. His prose was written in the style in which the reader of the day was accustomed to, and can’t be judged by modern standards any more than you would compare, say, C. S. Forester or Rudyard Kipling to Joseph Heller or David Foster Wallace, or even more traditional prosists like John le Carré.
Cooper is at his best when he is describing nature, and is a fair hand with action; his characterization, however, is lacking, and his research and verisimilitude of native culture is laughable. His worst literary since in my opinion is the continual reuse of the same plot gimmick or device (Twain’s criticism of the cracking twig always being where the plot demands) which tends to make the story repetitive. He’s certainly not the only writer–even of celebrated writers–to engage in this nasty habit; see J.R.R. Tolkien or Neal Stephenson (the latter of whom at least seems to have a self-deprecating sense of this) for examples thereof.
Stranger