Inky Horizons

I saw this movie today and it wasn't half bad.

Randolph Scott is acceptable as Hawkeye and the story line itself moves along about as well as you can expect, though it's all "Hollywood." You lose some of the emotional impact in 1936 compared to the remake in 1992, but it's not a bad little film. Not really. Although some of the costumes and dialogue are too cliche.

Some things grate, however. All the Native Americans are, of course, white actors. You have to expect that from the time period in question, but you can't help but wince about it today. However, I must say the actors who portrayed Chingachgook and Uncas did a particularly good job, imo, though Chingachgook should have looked much older. (And maybe they should have done a little more makeup preparation than putting a black wig on the guy.) However, the final battle between Chingachgook and Magua is pretty violent and brutal, even by 1936 standards, and Chingachgook's final speech is, as always, moving. The movie nails those points.

If you like this story, and want to see a fairly good representation of the novel, and if you can view it through the lens of post-code 1936 American racism, you could do a lot worse than this movie. Give it a peek.

James Fenimore Cooper wrote his Leatherstocking tales out of chronological order.  The Deerslayer or The First Warpath was the last of the Natty Bumppo novels and because Cooper had matured both in age and artistic ability it is perhaps the best.

From the beginning we know this is a darker novel than the preceding tales.  In the first few pages Deerslayer's companion,  Hurry Harry, asks the young man,  "...Did you ever hit any thing human, or intelligible: did you ever pull trigger on an inimy that was capable of pulling one upon you?"

Bumppo's answer is, of course, no.  He is at the beginning of his career.  He is known as Deerslayer by the Delawares because that's what he does.  He has yet to take a human life.  As soon as we read this we know this novel, above all else, is a coming-of-age story and someone's life is ticking away....

In the interim Deerslayer meets Tom Hutter and his two daughters, the dark-haired Judith and the feeble-minded Hetty.  The family lives on a castle-on-piers in the middle of Lake Glimmerglass, a secluded spot akin to the Garden of Eden -- the perfect setting for a coming-of-age story.   Except things are not what they seem. This area is actually more of a haunt of savagery, with not a little of it supplied by both Hurry Harry and Tom Hutter against the local Native American tribe, the Hurons.

 Judith Hutter, however, is the engine that drives this story.  She's a woman with questionable morals, and though she's somewhat older than Deerslayer she falls in love with his open honesty and his natural way of looking at the world.  In a telling exchange she asks him if he has a sweetheart.  He answers:

"She's in the forest, Judith--hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain--in the dew on the open grass--the clouds that float about in the blue heavens--the birds that sing in the woods--the sweet springs where I slake my thirst...."

Judith perseveres.  Has he never heard the laugh of a girl he loves?  Deerslayer remains true to form:

"...To me there's no music so sweet as the sighing of the wind in the treetops, and the rippling of a stream from a full, sparkling, natyve fountain of fresh water, unless...it be the open mouth of a sartain hound, when I'm on the track of a fat buck."

In the pages that follow Deerslayer kills a man, a Native American attempting to take his life by deceit.  He earns the reputation as "Hawkeye" for his deft shooting and helps Chingachgook secure the safety of his future wife, Hist.  (She will be mother to the Last of the Mohicans, Uncas.)  Further violence and treachery abound as Deerslayer is captured by the Hurons and tortured.  Tom Hutter dies in an extremely gruesome manner and there's the mystery of Judith's past --even down to her parentage-- to be solved.  But her love for Deerslayer is true and in the end she gives him her father's gun, a weapon of exquisite manufacture and excellent bore, which he will make famous--the long rifle, Killdeer.

In the end Deerslayer leaves Judith after yet more tragedy ensues.  The novel ends fifteen years later with Hawkeye returning with Chingachgook and a stripling Uncas to Lake Glimmerglass.  Everything has changed.  The castle is abandoned and in disrepair, and the graves can no longer be found.  Hawkeye tries to find out what happened to Judith, and we are awarded a glimpse of her fate, but no more.

As I said earlier this is a fairly dark book in the Leatherstocking Tales, but well-written.  It's a good story and the characters really do come to life.  There are the usual elements of humor and long-winded conversations but they don't detract too much from the overall enjoyment of this tale.  Cooper also doesn't hold back in showing that violence, both necessary and ignoble, can come from anyone for any reason...at anytime. 

This is one great book and I highly recommend it.

Nathanial Bumppo, otherwise known as Leatherstocking, Deerslayer, and Long Rifle, is without a doubt the quintessential American version of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan.  To be sure, James Fenimore Cooper's frontier character saw print long before Burroughs's creation did in 1912.  This in no way invalidates the creation of ERB, but it does give more literary impact to a wholly American character who appears in what can only be defined, if one is truthful, as wholly flawed novels.

The five novels which feature Bumppo were written by Cooper out of sequence.  This doesn't necessarily impair the fictive underpinnings of the stories themselves, but it does give rise to certain elements which writhe like a murky thread throughout the main arc. 

We will, as expected, consider the best known, at least as far as the general public goes, work of Cooper, that being The Last of the Mohicans and examine just what makes this novel tick, and why you should read it.

Cooper believed that Indian culture must needs be crushed by the Anglo Saxon wheels of religion and technology.  He saw no other way around this inevitability.  Though he wasn't himself racist by the definitions which we adhere to today, he did have certain beliefs of superiority of his own culture which "dark-skinned" individuals had to bow down to.  Mohicans, with its poignant idea that there will come a time the "last" of this noble race will pass from the ken of men (that is to say the ken of White Men), has through this very self-same literary device carved for itself a spot of prominence within American literature.

Not everyone liked Cooper's work.  He was always viewed much more favorably in Europe than by home-grown American authors.  Mark Twain famously savaged Cooper's novels and the savagery resonates even to this day.  Yet, something about the novels, especially Mohicans, endures.  Perhaps it is the idea of a race of men passing, the wide landscape of virgin forests and pure lakes blessed by God, the savagery and brutality of life on the frontier, the fog of war, the blood-curdling violence.  Whatever the reason for its longevity, and Twain notwithstanding, this book endures...and thank God for that.

As one might expect there is very little of this book that is recognizable in the 1992 film remake of the same name. In fact, the film stole much of the story line which was rewritten in the 1920 silent film.  In the modern film Hawk-eye, at the height of his powers, is taciturn to a fault but still capable of a normal sexual relationship. In the novel, Natty Bumppo is not only naive sexually, he won't shut up, period.  He discourses on everything, even to the halt of the action being described around him. Leaning on his rifle he has no problem detailing, to infinite exhaustion, his opinion on events around him.

Another big difference, aside from the often awkward descriptions, stereotypes of women and just plain ignorance of Native American ethnicities, is the fact a major character dies in the novel yet is allowed to survive in film.  I suppose this would come as a shock to someone who saw the movie first, but there it is.  Cooper has no problem dispatching that which, if allowed to live, would intercede in the future life of Hawk-eye.  Natty Bumppo, in Cooper's estimation, must remain pure. He must be allowed to view and accept nature as a powerful motivation than the intimate love of another human being.  This loneliness is his past, it is his destiny.  He is akin to the figure of Greek tragedy in this way.  He has a duty to perform and he will accomplish it, but he himself cannot lose the connection he has to the pristine land he loves and calls home.

I highly recommend this book, though the new reader must approach it with a few caveats and not a little caution.  Cooper is simply not that great a writer.  I am not the first to say that nor will I be the last.  Many of the passages go on far too long and the long-winded philosophies of Bumppo grate, not to mention the embarrassing stereotypes.  Nevertheless, there is power here, grounded with pathos, grandeur, and yes, love -- though it's love on Bumppo's, and Cooper's, own terms.

Despite its many flaws this is a major American novel by any definition.  If you like adventure, and don't mind a little (okay, a lot) lagging, I think you will enjoy reading The Last of the Mohicans.