There are few books on the shelves--or laying on the flooring 5-6 deep like an accumulation of edifying snow along the baseboard of the bedroom, on which the undersigned lately caught a toe sending him crashing headlong to the concrete, his iPhone flying, jamming painfully his left pinky finger, landing him on his left hip, more injury to personal dignity than to his physical person, for he is Old--I say, there are few books to which the undersigned has turned with the frequency and which have provided him the succor as The Pioneers by Fenimore Cooper.
According to the inside flap the undersigned purchased the volume on November 22, 2003, the occasion he remembers well as it was at the airport preparing to depart for Lake Placid, New York to fetch his son and his son's friend who had just completed hockey camp when he was seized by an immediate anxiety that he had neglected to pack one of the edifying snowflakes for the trip and in his anxious haste seized on this volume as probable, suitable companion for the solitude of the flight.
The Pioneers is first in the series The Leatherstocking Tales, the first novels by an author in the New World whose subject matter is the New World thus distinguishing Cooper the first American novelist.
Cooper's career as writer began in manner similar to the careers in whatever field of this new mutant species of humanity, the American. Challenged, by his wife in this instance, to do something, anything, better than their betters in the Old World, Cooper, of course accepted the challenge to write a novel superior to, e.g., those of Sir Walter Scott and deemed himself, an expellee from Yale for conspiring to blow off the door of a classmate's room after previously having been censured for introducing a donkey into a classroom and locking him in, repositor of the talent requisite to become Gabriel of the New Republic's letters. On this foundation of sand--and of the precursor of dynamite--astonishingly the ass pulled it off to notable degree.
Consciously or no Cooper followed the injunction of Revelation to, “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are…,” and Behold! created the realism writing style that was to become characteristic of the American, for instance, of Ernest Hemingway.
Published in 1823 and set in the America of 1793 The Pioneers, sub-titled “A Descriptive Tale,” provides and unapproached view of the country and its people so soon after creation. Cooper’s talent at descriptive writing was indeed prodigious, truly astounding, unsurpassed even by Dickens, and his characters drawn so accurately that it was child’s play to identify their life models, William Cooper, the son’s father, for Marmaduke Temple, Dr. Nathaniel Gott for the fictional Dr Elnathan Todd (transparent fig leaf there, albeit), Father Nash-Reverend Mr Grant, Nathaniel Shipman-Natty Bumpo.
The undersigned is constrained to excerpt at length two instances of scene description that are in their unrealistic hyper-realism pure art, the literary equivalent of that detail seen in The Golden Age of Dutch Painting, in order to illustrate Cooper’s talent:
It was near the setting of the sun on a clear, cold day in December, when a sleigh was moving slowly up on of the mountains…The day had been fine for the season, and but two or three large clouds, whose color seemed brightened by the light reflected from the mass of snow that covered the earth, floated in a sky of the purest blue…There was a glittering in the atmosphere as if it were filled with innumerable shining particles, and the noble bay horses that drew the sleigh were covered, in many parts, with a coat of hoar frost. The vapor from their nostrils was seen to issue like smoke, and every object in the view, as well as every arrangement of the travelers, denoted the depth of a winter in the mountains. The harness, which was of a deep dull black, differing from the glossy varnishing of the present day, was ornamented with enormous plates and buckles of brass, that shone like gold in those transient beams of the sun which found their way obliquely through the tops of the trees. Huge saddles studded with nails and fitted with cloth that served as blankets to the shoulders of the cattle, supported four high, square-topped turrets, through which the stout reins led from the mouths of the horses to the hands of the driver…The sleigh was one of those large, comfortable, old-fashioned conveyances which would admit a whole family within its bosom…The color of its outside was a modest green, and that of its inside a fiery red. The latter was intended to convey the idea of heat in that cold climate. Large buffalo skins, trimmed around the edges with red cloth cut into festoons, covered the back of the sleigh and were spread over its bottom and drawn up around the feet of the travelers—one of whom was a man of middle age and the other a female, just entering upon womanhood…A greatcoat that was abundantly ornamented by a profusion of furs enveloped the whole of his figure, excepting the head, which was covered with a cap of marten skins lined with morocco, the sides of which were made to fall, if necessary, and were now drawn close over the ears and fastened beneath his chin with a black riband. The top of the cap was surmounted with the tail of the animal whose skin had furnished the rest of the materials, which fell back, not ungracefully, a few inches behind the head…The form of his companion was literally hid beneath the garments she wore. There were furs and silks peeping from under a large camlet cloak with a thick flannel lining that, by its cut and size, was evidently intended for a masculine wearer. A huge hood of black silk that was quilted with down concealed the whole of her head, except at a small opening in front for breath, through which occasionally sparkled a pair of animated jet-black eyes.
…
The mountain on which they were journeying was covered with pines that rose without a branch some seventy or eighty feet and which frequently doubled that height by the addition of the tops…The dark trunks of the trees rose from the pure white of the snow in regularly formed shafts until, at a great height, their branches shot forth horizontal limbs that were covered with the meager foliage of an evergreen…To the travelers there seemed to be no wind, but these pines waved majestically at their topmost boughs, sending forth a dull, plaintive sound…
...
When Elizabeth was attired, she approached a window and drew its curtain, and throwing open its shutters, she endeavored to look abroad on the village and the lake. But a thick covering of frost on the glass, while it admitted the light, shut out the view. She raised the sash, and then, indeed, a glorious scene met her delighted eye.
According to the inside flap the undersigned purchased the volume on November 22, 2003, the occasion he remembers well as it was at the airport preparing to depart for Lake Placid, New York to fetch his son and his son's friend who had just completed hockey camp when he was seized by an immediate anxiety that he had neglected to pack one of the edifying snowflakes for the trip and in his anxious haste seized on this volume as probable, suitable companion for the solitude of the flight.
The Pioneers is first in the series The Leatherstocking Tales, the first novels by an author in the New World whose subject matter is the New World thus distinguishing Cooper the first American novelist.
Cooper's career as writer began in manner similar to the careers in whatever field of this new mutant species of humanity, the American. Challenged, by his wife in this instance, to do something, anything, better than their betters in the Old World, Cooper, of course accepted the challenge to write a novel superior to, e.g., those of Sir Walter Scott and deemed himself, an expellee from Yale for conspiring to blow off the door of a classmate's room after previously having been censured for introducing a donkey into a classroom and locking him in, repositor of the talent requisite to become Gabriel of the New Republic's letters. On this foundation of sand--and of the precursor of dynamite--astonishingly the ass pulled it off to notable degree.
Consciously or no Cooper followed the injunction of Revelation to, “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are…,” and Behold! created the realism writing style that was to become characteristic of the American, for instance, of Ernest Hemingway.
Published in 1823 and set in the America of 1793 The Pioneers, sub-titled “A Descriptive Tale,” provides and unapproached view of the country and its people so soon after creation. Cooper’s talent at descriptive writing was indeed prodigious, truly astounding, unsurpassed even by Dickens, and his characters drawn so accurately that it was child’s play to identify their life models, William Cooper, the son’s father, for Marmaduke Temple, Dr. Nathaniel Gott for the fictional Dr Elnathan Todd (transparent fig leaf there, albeit), Father Nash-Reverend Mr Grant, Nathaniel Shipman-Natty Bumpo.
The undersigned is constrained to excerpt at length two instances of scene description that are in their unrealistic hyper-realism pure art, the literary equivalent of that detail seen in The Golden Age of Dutch Painting, in order to illustrate Cooper’s talent:
It was near the setting of the sun on a clear, cold day in December, when a sleigh was moving slowly up on of the mountains…The day had been fine for the season, and but two or three large clouds, whose color seemed brightened by the light reflected from the mass of snow that covered the earth, floated in a sky of the purest blue…There was a glittering in the atmosphere as if it were filled with innumerable shining particles, and the noble bay horses that drew the sleigh were covered, in many parts, with a coat of hoar frost. The vapor from their nostrils was seen to issue like smoke, and every object in the view, as well as every arrangement of the travelers, denoted the depth of a winter in the mountains. The harness, which was of a deep dull black, differing from the glossy varnishing of the present day, was ornamented with enormous plates and buckles of brass, that shone like gold in those transient beams of the sun which found their way obliquely through the tops of the trees. Huge saddles studded with nails and fitted with cloth that served as blankets to the shoulders of the cattle, supported four high, square-topped turrets, through which the stout reins led from the mouths of the horses to the hands of the driver…The sleigh was one of those large, comfortable, old-fashioned conveyances which would admit a whole family within its bosom…The color of its outside was a modest green, and that of its inside a fiery red. The latter was intended to convey the idea of heat in that cold climate. Large buffalo skins, trimmed around the edges with red cloth cut into festoons, covered the back of the sleigh and were spread over its bottom and drawn up around the feet of the travelers—one of whom was a man of middle age and the other a female, just entering upon womanhood…A greatcoat that was abundantly ornamented by a profusion of furs enveloped the whole of his figure, excepting the head, which was covered with a cap of marten skins lined with morocco, the sides of which were made to fall, if necessary, and were now drawn close over the ears and fastened beneath his chin with a black riband. The top of the cap was surmounted with the tail of the animal whose skin had furnished the rest of the materials, which fell back, not ungracefully, a few inches behind the head…The form of his companion was literally hid beneath the garments she wore. There were furs and silks peeping from under a large camlet cloak with a thick flannel lining that, by its cut and size, was evidently intended for a masculine wearer. A huge hood of black silk that was quilted with down concealed the whole of her head, except at a small opening in front for breath, through which occasionally sparkled a pair of animated jet-black eyes.
…
The mountain on which they were journeying was covered with pines that rose without a branch some seventy or eighty feet and which frequently doubled that height by the addition of the tops…The dark trunks of the trees rose from the pure white of the snow in regularly formed shafts until, at a great height, their branches shot forth horizontal limbs that were covered with the meager foliage of an evergreen…To the travelers there seemed to be no wind, but these pines waved majestically at their topmost boughs, sending forth a dull, plaintive sound…
...
When Elizabeth was attired, she approached a window and drew its curtain, and throwing open its shutters, she endeavored to look abroad on the village and the lake. But a thick covering of frost on the glass, while it admitted the light, shut out the view. She raised the sash, and then, indeed, a glorious scene met her delighted eye.
The lake had exchanged its covering of unspotted snow for a face of dark ice that reflected the rays of the rising sun like a polished mirror. The houses were clothed in a dress of the same description, but which, owing to its position, shone like bright steel; while the enormous icicles that were pendent from every roof caught the brilliant light, apparently throwing it from one to the other, as each glittered, on the side next the luminary, with a golden luster that melted away, on its opposite, into the dusky shades of a a background....The huge branches of the pines and hemlocks bent with the weight of the ice they supported, while their summits rose above the swelling tops of the oaks, beechess, and maples like spires of burnished silver issuing from domes of the same material. The limits of the view, in the west, were marked by an undulating outline of bright light, as if...numberless suns might momentarily be expected to heave above the horizon. In the foreground of the picture, along the shores of the lake, and near to the village, each tee seemed studded with diamonds. Even the sides of the mountains where the rays of the sun could not yet fall were decorated with a glassy coat that presented every gradation of brilliancy, from the first touch of the luminary to the dark foliage of the hemlock, glistening through its coat of crystal. In short, the whole view was one scene of quivering radiancy...
At which point all that we can do is stop and gape in awe.
Resuming, what Nabokov said about Bleak House is fully applicable to The Pioneers:
Resuming, what Nabokov said about Bleak House is fully applicable to The Pioneers:
...let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. Let us be proud of our being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame...If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver...then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our books-of-the-week.
