--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Michael Robison
<miker_zspider@...> wrote:
>
> Ed Gorman wrote:
>
> Backing up what Todd Mason said about Brackett
could
> write and Cooper couldn't...at least one other
person
> agrees with us. Ever read Mark Twain's
relenetless
> remorseless parody/sacking of Cooper's
writing?
>
> **************
> Twain could just have easily have panned
Shakespeare.
> Twain represented a revolution in American style,
but
> his themes are built upon Cooper's.
Well, no, Mike, Twain wouldn't've had quite as easy a time
with Shakespeare, because Shakespeare wasn't as blatantly
incompetent a writer as Cooper...even WS's dullest surviving
work is better- crafted than the examples of clumsiness and
lack of thought Twain was able to pull out of Cooper's major
works without breaking a sweat. And to suggest that Twain's
work owes much to Cooper's is about like saying that Ross
Macdonald owes a huge debt to Carroll John Daly. They touch
on some of the same themes, but the more recent guy would've
done just fine if the elder had never existed. Twain owed a
lot more to Irving, without owing that much to him,
either.
And NO GOOD FROM A CORPSE is not Brackett's best writing by
me, no. You don't yet have a sense of what she was able to
do, if that's your only exposure to her work. Still, it beats
the Hell out of THE LEATHERSTOCKING TALES for me as an
esthetic experience, but De Gustibus.
Todd Mason
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