Books, Arts & Manners: Return of the Native

AS A BOY, I read a few of James Fenimore Cooper’s novels in some Central or East European language. Whichever it was, the translation must have improved on the original. After reading Mark Twain’s devastating essay on Cooper many years later—perhaps the greatest piece of American criticism—I have no further desire to reconnoiter that worthy’s fiction. The essay conclusively demonstrated that the retired Navy man had no idea what he was talking about even when he was writing about boats, and that his language was wooden enough to carve cigar-store Native Americans out of.

So I have no doubt that the dreadful movie The Last of the Mohicans does Cooper full justice. Written by its director, Michael Mann, in cahoots with Christopher Crowe, the film is based in good part on the 1936 movie version, starring Randolph Scott and Binnie Barnes, and itself a pretty dubious commodity. Mann, whose name will remain inextricably linked with TV’s Miami Vice, allegedly spent three years researching the novel’s historical background, time he could have spent more profitably watching some good foreign movies.

JS

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John Simon

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AS A BOY, I read a few of James Fenimore Cooper’s novels in some Central or East European language. Whichever it was, the translation must have improved on the original. After reading Mark Twain’s devastating essay on Cooper many years later—perhaps the greatest piece of American criticism—I have no further desire to reconnoiter that worthy’s fiction. The essay conclusively demonstrated that the retired Navy man had no idea what he was talking about even when he was writing about boats, and that his language was wooden enough to carve cigar-store Native Americans out of.

So I have no doubt that the dreadful movie The Last of the Mohicans does Cooper full justice. Written by its director, Michael Mann, in cahoots with Christopher Crowe, the film is based in good part on the 1936 movie version, starring Randolph Scott and Binnie Barnes, and itself a pretty dubious commodity. Mann, whose name will remain inextricably linked with TV’s Miami Vice, allegedly spent three years researching the novel’s historical background, time he could have spent more profitably watching some good foreign movies.