Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences Quotes

“There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Fenimore Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.”
― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

“Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one.”
― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

“T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.”
― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

“T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.”
― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

“They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.”
― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

“When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he does not say it.”
― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper�s Literary Offenses