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William P. Kelly
PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST: FENIMORE COOPER AND THE LEATHERSTOCKING TALES (1983) reviewed by Patrick Killough I. bn.com Reviewer's rating of Kelly's PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST * * * * FOUR STARS Title of this review: A Marxist-Hegelian Reading of Early American History In 1983 William P. Kelly and Southern Illinois University published PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST: FENIMORE COOPER AND THE LEATHERSTOCKING TALES. Having just read the five LEATHERSTOCKING novels and a couple of other Cooper yarns, I plunged with an open mind into Kelly in an early foray into secondary sources. First impressions can be dangerous, but I have usually found something true in my own first impressions -- no matter how much I later edit them. Not many pages in, I said to myself: 'This is Marxist hot air!' But by page 100 I had upgraded my deepening impression to 'Kelly is either just a mechanical Arnold Toynbee or a poor man's Hegel.' Take Chapter 2, page 47. It magisterially argues, in effect: The Last Mohican Chingachgook is thesis. His white chum Natty Bumppo 'Leatherstocking' is anti- thesis. The mysterious young heir Oliver Effingham is their synthesis = North America's emerging 'cultural synthesis.' Or something like that. This is not the world's clearest writing. Since I have liked Hegel ever since I struggled through some of his works 50 years ago, I was rather pleased to see that great German's conceptual cookie cutter at work, although reading it over and over again became a bit much. I wonder, though, how many first-time readers of Fenimore Cooper are ready to see his fictional characters of early North America as G. W. F. Hegel or Karl Marx might have categorized them? Bottom line: a Cooper novice like me finds quite a few nuggets and points of departure for good arguments in PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST. An advanced Cooper scholar or an historian of American culture and literature would likely and happily notice at once many more nuggets lying on the surface without having to dig them out and google for the meaning of technical academic jargon as I have had to do. I am glad I read the book and expect to enjoy it more if and when I read it again in another year or so. But it was rough sledding the first go around. Don't read it unless you are prepared to set down the book often and argue mentally with the author. -OOO- Also recommended: --James Fenimore Cooper: THE SPY, THE PIONEERS, THE WEPT OF WISH-TON-WISH. --George Dekker: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER -- THE AMERICAN SCOTT. Black Mountain 02/29/2008 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- II. amazon.com Title of this review: Natty Bumppo as Philosopher of History Reviewer's Rating of PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST: * * * * FOUR STARS William P. Kelly's 1983 PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST: FENIMORE COOPER AND THE LEATHERSTOCKING TALES is written for academic experts on Cooper. Others who can most obviously profit from PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST include university students of English and American studies. It also helps if some of their teachers have taught them to approach literature from an Hegelian or Marxist, determinist perspective with doses of Jung thrown in for good measure. There is no point tackling this book if you have not already read at least three of the LEATHERSTOCKING novels, especially, THE PIONEERS, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and THE PRAIRIE. Kelly argues against reading the five LEATHERSTOCKING novels of Natty Bumppo as one internally consistent tale, a cohesive myth. No, each individual LEATHERSTOCKING novel is about history, not myth. And Cooper's point of view shifts, becomes more pessimistic with each new novel. Initially, Fenimore Cooper's analytical framework is deterministic: history repeats itself. "Cooper is not interested principally
either in providing a model of sound social practice or indulging a
fantasy but is, instead, attempting to plot a system of causality" (p. 35).
In the 1820s Americans looked back to a heroic past with its Franklin, Washington, Madison and Hamilton and doubted that they could ever again reach their heights. Readers were asking: what, after all, makes America America? Are we now better than Europe? Will America always be better, more creative, more "original" than Europe? In the first novel in the series, THE PIONEERS, set in central New York in 1793 - 1794, Cooper conceptualized "American experience as a mechanical process governed by fixed principles of development" (p. 14). The past entails the future of all humans. American freedom, creativity are therefore limited at best. And yet: time moves more rapidly in North America than in Europe. Less than a decade before 1793 the novel's village of Templeton did not exist. The wilderness was pristine. We would have to go back parts of Scotland, Ireland and France 800 years earlier to do justice to the five years that created from nothing bustling Templeton with its roads, shops, academy and church (p. 27). Writing for Angst-ridden readers of 1823, Cooper devalues pioneer days by equating them with ancient history. Forget the frontier, Cooper implies. It happened, emotionally, 800 years ago. What is history doing for America right now? In THE PIONEERS Natty Bumppo represents tradition, Judge Temple progress. Natty has forged a synthesis of European and Indian culture. Fenimore Cooper has a melioristic slant on history much like Sir Walter Scott's in WAVERLEY. "...
(Scott's) Waverley novels are primarily the product of the Edinburgh
Enlightenment and of its commonsense philosophy." (p. 41)
In THE PIONEERS, Cooper assumes "the narrative formula and the ideological assumptions of the Waverley Novels." (p. 42) Like Sir Walter Scott, his model as a writer of early historical novels, James F. Cooper had a theory of history. For Scott history generally recorded man's virtually unstoppable evolution from primitive to civilized, from superstition to enlightenment, from clan loyalty to the rule of impersonal law. Fenimore Cooper, somewhat contrastingly, according to Professor William P. Kelly, seemed to have a compartmentalized mind on this point. In one part of his psyche, Cooper thought men and nations grew better and better because they had to. But there was another compartment in which humans, or at least American men and women, were exceptional. They were free. And freedom is also the freedom to get worse. Novel two: THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Americans, to survive in a new environment, must separate themselves from 500 years of French - British warfare. They must deny history, make a new start. But can you transplant Europe to a wilderness without destroying that wilderness and exterminating its Indian inhabitants? At times Cooper seemed to think this possible via an interracial mingling on the order of Brazil. Natty Bumppo is a guide to America's future through his values (p. 56). But he is celibate -- like a nun preparing young women to make good wives and mothers. He therefore needs a socially engaged, marrying disciple, who will wed, beget and rear children and thus transmit "Nattyism." And that culture-transmitting disciple is Duncan Heyward! Heyward's European model of chivalry cannot survive in America but will instead destroy America. (p. 58) Natty's rescue of Duncan, David, Cora and Alice from Magua's band converts Duncan to Natty's point of view that North America needs a new and non-European code. Nattyism, the spirit of ornery non-conformity, will therefore find a permanent echo in the American psyche. After working his way through all five LEATHERSTOCKING novels, Professor Kelly concludes that the initial promise of THE PIONEERS has been shattered by the time THE DEERSLAYER is written. Doom trumps freedom of the will. Even if America wanted to be different from, better than Europe, it cannot. History repeats itself. Superhuman originality of men like Washington, Hamilton and Madison might give America enough momentum to last a long time -- but not forever. There is a popular way to recast the major insights of a book that general readers can profit from -- and with far less time and effort slogging away than with the original text. Specialist books, it seems to me, cry out for and deserve an executive summary stated in ordinary language, not academic jargon. PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST needs one. But it does not have an executive summary -- more's the pity. There is much value in the text, but hard to dig out, very hard. -OOO- TAGS: natty bumppo, sir walter scott, waverley novels, leatherstocking tales, james fenimore cooper Black Mountain 03/05/2008 ==-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=- III. epinions.com Title of this Review: Might America Have Turned Out Better? Reviewer's Rating of PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST * * * * FOUR STARS PROS: Speculatively opens up depths of the Pathfinder epic which a layman could very easily miss. CONS: Written for English majors and graduate students of Cooper. Assumes you already know LEATHERSTOCKING. OVERALL RATING: Skip this book if you have no interest in James Fenimore Cooper or his five LEATHERSTOCKING novels. Otherwise, plumb Cooper's surprising depths as a philosopher of America's loss of self-confidence. Epinions reviews of any service or product, I think, aim primarily at consumers who have not yet read the book, or shaved with the razor, tasted the candy, etc. Such potential consumers read reviews to make up their minds whether to invest time and treasure in trying the product. A second group of epinions readers has already used the product and reads an epinion for reinforcement of their own view or for a fresh and differing slant. Epinions writers sometimes review advanced, specialized texts in their field, e.g., the history of piano music. Such reviewers then rightly warn the prospective reader/user that the product is not designed for generalists and likely to be most useful to specialists and experts. Let's now take up William P. Kelly's 1983 PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST: FENIMORE COOPER AND THE LEATHERSTOCKING TALES. The very title, PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST, is opaque enough to a general reader to warn her that this is an academic insider's guide to James Fenimore Cooper's five LEATHERSTOCKING TALES. The phrase "PLOTTING AMERICA'S PAST" seems to mean that Cooper, in telling the story of Natty Bumppo through five separate novels, was "plotting," laying out, mapping America's future. That is, Cooper was imposing a narrative vision on what Europe had in mind when it created a "brave new world" in North America. Through plotting his five novels, Fenimore Cooper first laid out a larger, cyclical, organic or Hegelian vision of history. In such a vision there could be nothing new about America. But then he also presented a second vision: what about human freedom? Did free will not have the power to make America more original and creative than Britain or France? Cooper used his five novels to probe philosophy of history, to wrestle with historical determinism versus free will. Had Jehovah lost control of Eden when he created Adam and Eve with free will? Did our first parents, for all their "originality" as the first rebels against conformity, "inscribe," i. e., mark, tattoo, brand all their descendants with a history, a doom, a vicious cycle which they could never escape? If that was the general rule for humanity, might America nonetheless be an exception? I found this a fiendishly difficult book to understand, therefore to review. It has much to offer specialists in literature. But I am not one such. Maybe you are, maybe you are not. Be your own judge! Here below is one of perhaps a dozen threads you or I might lay hands on to lead us through a many-leveled labyrinth of writing. My review, though long, is also overly simple. But it might offer just enough to help you decide whether to open the book. That one thread I have selected and try to unravel in this review is the time-binding role of marriage and procreation in the five LEATHERSTOCKING novels. Is marriage of superior men and women and their then passing on their values to children a possible way to break the iron necessity that is the wheel of history? Let us see marriage at work in the five LEATHERSTOCKING novels in the order they were written: PIONEERS, LAST OF MOHICANS, PRAIRIE, PATHFINDER, DEERSLAYER. -- 1823 THE PIONEERS, or THE SOURCES OF THE SUSQUEHANNA Set in 1793-4 on Lake Otsego in central New York, THE PIONEERS holds in balance two contradictory views of time. THE PIONEERS sees to it both that historical justice is done and that a young hero will synthesize warring elements through marriage, assuring a golden future for an America which has made a clean break with Europe. Combining ancient rights of blood and property with the energy of a new, rising generation of Americans, young Oliver Effingham grows into becoming the novel's hero and gives readers reason to believe that his children will imitate the constructive deeds that he himself will do for New York in the next three decades and thus ensure a solid future for the new USA. -- 1826 THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS: A Narrative of 1757 In the summer of 1757 Redcoat Major Duncan Heyward contests for leadership in wilderness struggles with 40-something Natty Bumppo, a British scout. Heyward is a native born Virginian, a slave owner, a colonial fighting with British regulars to repel a French invasion of New York from Canada. He learns native skills not only from Natty but also from young Uncas, the last of the Mohican branch of the Delaware nation. The novel argues that the days of the independent red men must soon end. But so will rule of North America by European colonial powers. Heyward, by marrying Alice, a daughter of backward-looking Scottish Colonel Munro, synthesizes all the good that he and she carry both in their genes from Europe as well as from the frontier teachings of Indians and Natty Bumppo alike. Duncan Heyward through marriage, ensures a good future for his children as leaders of a progressive, continuously original self-renewing future United States. -- 1827 THE PRAIRIE Set in 1804-05 in the vast, almost empty stretches of the new Louisiana Purchase, the PIONEERS portrays Natty Bumppo as more of a saintly, detached observer than an active participant or leader. Like generations of celibate nuns teaching girls how to become good wives and mothers, ancient, ever celibate Natty is free with his advice on marriage. Two marriages are presented. Army Captain Duncan Uncas Middleton of the U.S. army is already married to a rich Spanish Catholic heiress of recently acquired New Orleans -- Inez de Certavallos. He rescues her from the westward-bound, violent, law-breaking, family of primitive squatter Ishmael Bush, who are holding her for ransom. Middleton is the aristocratic Virginian grandson of Duncan Heyward of MOHICANS. He is, therefore, pre-destined to leadership. He will later become a member of Congress. His fruitful marriage also augurs well for a multi-cultural, many religioned America. For like Duncan Heyward, his grandson Duncan Middleton has also shaken off the flaws of European culture while taking on the best native aspects of his grandfather's Mohican friend Uncas. Middleton successfully resists loving efforts by Inez and her Jesuit confessor to convert him to Roman Catholicism. America will therefore remain open-minded and Protestant. The second marriage of THE PRAIRIE is quite ordinary and more disappointing than heartening, between the bee hunter Paul Hover and Ellen Wade, niece of Ishmael Bush. Paul sets Ellen free from her uncle's tyranny. The couple, however, turn their backs to the West and go back to the settled East where, under Middleton' influence, Paul acquires land, becomes a good farmer and a town-official. The Hovers' children will be placed permanently far above the humble original state of their parents. Bravo for America and its future of unlimited upward mobility, Cooper leads us to exclaim! -- 1840 THE PATHFINDER or THE INLAND SEA Lake Ontario in the 1750s is a hostile setting. The plot in some ways replicates MOHICANS, A young woman is led through the wilderness to a fort about to be destroyed by the French. There are captures, rescues and escapes. For the only time in his life Natty falls in love with a woman, Mabel Dunham, daughter of Natty's old friend Sergeant-Major Dunham. Mabel does not love Natty in return. Eventually Natty realizes that his love has tempted him from his God-ordained duty |