What is so appealing to me about these books? While Cooper's narrative requires me to keep a dictionary handy to get through a chapter (quick, what does verdure mean?), his characters speak with innocence and simplicity (if long-windedness). His description of the virgin wilderness of what is now Upstate New York produces a definite wistfulness in me.
While most novelists are moving from fifth to fourth grade English in their writings, Cooper's unflinching intellectual presentation of the Colonist and the Indian is refreshing to the educated mind. He presented one of the first reasoned portrayals of the Native American in fiction, and struggled with the morality of colonization, independence, war and Manifest Destiny. His main character represents the faith and veracity of the settler in the character of the wilderness explorer.
Cooper's books represent to me an unspoiled America we cannot return to, explored by an ideal character we cannot attain to. His characters achieve difficult goals in circumstances beyond their control. They do so with unerring adherence to their principles.
Today's popular fiction glamourizes the bitter, lonely hero who vanquishes the foe by exploring the dark side of himself. While Cooper's Hawkeye loves the solitude and silence of the woods, he is altogether sociable and amiable, honest and straightforward. It is literature that is uplifting, rather then sullying.
I'll go back.
Home, home on the range, where the deer. . .
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