Although the American literary luminaries Mark Twain and James Fenimore Cooper never actually squared off in a courtroom, the former did once serve a kind of indictment on the latter, in the form of an 1895 essay by Twain that puts his penchant for wry sarcasm and stinging observation on full display. Witness this opening:

Prosecutor: Mark Twain

Defendant: James Fenimore Cooper

Indictment: 18 counts of incompetent writing; 1 count of crime against the English language

Trial: Court of Public Opinion

Twain, clearly well acquainted with Cooper’s entire body of work, picks it apart at every level, airing out his grievances over the individual words that made him wince as he read:

Cooper’s word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say but you also perceive that he doesn’t say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word musician. His ear was satisfied with the approximate word…

He uses “verbal” for “oral”; “precision” for “facility”; “phenomena” for “marvels”; “necessary” for “predetermined”; “unsophisticated” for “primitive”; “preparation” for “expectancy”; “rebuked” for “subdued”; “dependent on” for “resulting from”; “fact” for “condition”; “fact” for “conjecture”; “precaution” for “caution”; “explain” for “determine”; “mortified” for “disappointed”; “meretricious” for “factitious”; “materially” for “considerably”; “decreasing” for “deepening”; “increasing” for “disappearing”; “embedded” for “inclosed”; “treacherous” for “hostile”; “stood” for “stooped”; “softened” for “replaced”; “rejoined” for “remarked”; “situation” for “condition”; “different” for “differing”; “insensible” for “unsentient”; “brevity” for “celerity”; “distrusted” for “suspicious”; “mental imbecility” for “imbecility”; “eyes” for “sight”; “counteracting” for “opposing”; “funeral” for “obsequies.”

The whole literary fireworks display offers more than a chuckle; it affords valuable insight into what exactly sets the two apart.

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