Deerslayer

Rating:
Summary: Natty Bumppo's first warpath
Review: "The Deerslayer" is, chronologically, the first of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, although the last to be written. It takes place in the early 1740s on the Lake Glimmerglass. Natty Bumppo, called Deerslayer, and his friend Hurry Harry March go to Tom Hutter's "Castle," which is a house built on stilts on a shoal in the middle of the lake, and it is practically impregnable. March intends to get Tom's daughter Judith to marry him. More love is in the air, for Deerslayer plans to meet Chingachgook at a point on the lake in a few days in order to help him rescue his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, who is a prisoner of the Hurons.

War breaks out, Tom and Harry are captured by Hurons, and the untested Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them. That sets up the plot, and there follows many twists and turns, ending with a very haunting conclusion. Although the book drags in parts, it's still pretty good.

I would caution you not to expect realism in this book. "It is a myth," D. H. Lawrence writes, "not a realistic tale. Read it as a lovely myth." Yes, Deerslayer is fond of talking, but take his soliloquies the same way as you take Shakespeare's: characters in both men's works meditate and reflect on what they are going through. So toss out your modern preconceptions aside and just enjoy the myth!

Rating:
Summary: Worst piece of early American literature ever written.
Review: "The Deerslayer" is, chronologically, the first of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, although the last to be written. It takes place in the early 1740s on the Lake Glimmerglass. Natty Bumppo, called Deerslayer, and his friend Hurry Harry March go to Tom Hutter's "Castle," which is a house built on stilts on a shoal in the middle of the lake, and it is practically impregnable. March intends to get Tom's daughter Judith to marry him. More love is in the air, for Deerslayer plans to meet Chingachgook at a point on the lake in a few days in order to help him rescue his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, who is a prisoner of the Hurons.

War breaks out, Tom and Harry are captured by Hurons, and the untested Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them. That sets up the plot, and there follows many twists and turns, ending with a very haunting conclusion. Although the book drags in parts, it's still pretty good.

I would caution you not to expect realism in this book. "It is a myth," D. H. Lawrence writes, "not a realistic tale. Read it as a lovely myth." Yes, Deerslayer is fond of talking, but take his soliloquies the same way as you take Shakespeare's: characters in both men's works meditate and reflect on what they are going through. So toss out your modern preconceptions aside and just enjoy the myth!

Rating:
Summary: Natty Bumppo's first warpath
Review: "The Deerslayer" is, chronologically, the first of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, although the last to be written. It takes place in the early 1740s on the Lake Glimmerglass. Natty Bumppo, called Deerslayer, and his friend Hurry Harry March go to Tom Hutter's "Castle," which is a house built on stilts on a shoal in the middle of the lake, and it is practically impregnable. March intends to get Tom's daughter Judith to marry him. More love is in the air, for Deerslayer plans to meet Chingachgook at a point on the lake in a few days in order to help him rescue his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, who is a prisoner of the Hurons.

War breaks out, Tom and Harry are captured by Hurons, and the untested Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them. That sets up the plot, and there follows many twists and turns, ending with a very haunting conclusion. Although the book drags in parts, it's still pretty good.

I would caution you not to expect realism in this book. "It is a myth," D. H. Lawrence writes, "not a realistic tale. Read it as a lovely myth." Yes, Deerslayer is fond of talking, but take his soliloquies the same way as you take Shakespeare's: characters in both men's works meditate and reflect on what they are going through. So toss out your modern preconceptions aside and just enjoy the myth!

Rating:
Summary: Could have been better, but I liked the ending.
Review: Cooper got a little wordy with this book, but for the most part it had a fairly good plot. If it had ended any differently, I wouldn't have liked it half as much.

Rating:
Summary: Natty: The early years..........
Review: Cooper's final Leatherstocking Tale, The Deerslayer, depicts young Natty Bumppo on his first warpath with lifelong friend-to-be, Chingachgook. The story centers around a lake used as the chronologically subsequent setting for Cooper's first Leatherstocking Tale, The Pioneers. Tom Hutter lives on the lake with his daughters and it is here that Deerslayer (Bumppo) intends to meet Chingachgook to rescue Chingachgook's betrothed from a band of roving Iroquois. A desperate battle for control of the lake and it's immediate environs ensues and consumes the remainder of the story.

Throughout this ultimate Leatherstocking Tale, Cooper provides Natty much to postulate upon. Seemingly desiring a comprehensive finality to the philosophy of Bumppo, Cooper has Natty "speechify" in The Deerslayer more so than in any other book, though the character could hardly be considered laconic in any. Though the reason for this is obvious and expected (it is, after all, Cooper's last book of the series), it still detracts a tad from the pace of the story as Natty picks some highly inappropriate moments within the plot to elaborate his position. And, thus, somewhat incongruently, Cooper is forced to award accumulated wisdom to Bummpo at the beginning of his career rather than have him achieve it through chronological accrual.

All things considered, however, The Deerslayer is not remarkably less fun than any other Leatherstalking Tale and deserves a similar rating. Thus, I award The Deerslayer 4+ stars and the entire Leatherstocking Tales series, one of the better examples of historical fiction of the romantic style, the ultimate rating of 5. It was well worth my time.

Rating:
Summary: Natty: The early years..........
Review: Cooper's final Leatherstocking Tale, The Deerslayer, depicts young Natty Bumppo on his first warpath with lifelong friend-to-be, Chingachgook. The story centers around a lake used as the chronologically subsequent setting for Cooper's first Leatherstocking Tale, The Pioneers. Tom Hutter lives on the lake with his daughters and it is here that Deerslayer (Bumppo) intends to meet Chingachgook to rescue Chingachgook's betrothed from a band of roving Iroquois. A desperate battle for control of the lake and it's immediate environs ensues and consumes the remainder of the story.

Throughout this ultimate Leatherstocking Tale, Cooper provides Natty much to postulate upon. Seemingly desiring a comprehensive finality to the philosophy of Bumppo, Cooper has Natty "speechify" in The Deerslayer more so than in any other book, though the character could hardly be considered laconic in any. Though the reason for this is obvious and expected (it is, after all, Cooper's last book of the series), it still detracts a tad from the pace of the story as Natty picks some highly inappropriate moments within the plot to elaborate his position. And, thus, somewhat incongruently, Cooper is forced to award accumulated wisdom to Bummpo at the beginning of his career rather than have him achieve it through chronological accrual.

All things considered, however, The Deerslayer is not remarkably less fun than any other Leatherstalking Tale and deserves a similar rating. Thus, I award The Deerslayer 4+ stars and the entire Leatherstocking Tales series, one of the better examples of historical fiction of the romantic style, the ultimate rating of 5. It was well worth my time.

Rating:
Summary: Worst piece of early American literature ever written.
Review: Deerslayer is an absolutely terrible novel written by a rich swelled ego (Fenimore Cooper). There is no depth and no direction. It is a waste of paper and ink. Please, do not even waste your time even finishing reading this review for that would be too much time spent on the topic of Deerslayer.

Rating:
Summary: Not Cooper's Best Effort....
Review: Had "Deerslayer" been James Fenimore Cooper's first "Leatherstocking" tale -- who knows? Maybe it would have been his last! But his mythic hero, Nathaniel Bumppo (a.k.a. Natty, Deerslayer, The Long Carrabine, Hawkeye, et. al.)had such a mid-19th Century following that Cooper was practically guaranteed an eager, receptive audience for his tales.

I won't say straight out that "Deerslayer" is a terrible book. If nothing else, Donald Pease's introductory essay informs us of several plot complexities that are intertwined with Cooper's personal life, such as the re-invention of Natty Bumppo to buttress and justiry Cooper's real-life legal property claims. But, if "Deerslayer" is not a terrible book, it is for hundreds of pages something less than scintillating. Why? I think it comes down to this. Patient readers can endure quite a lot of moralizing, or wide swaths of verbosity. But put the two together and it's hard to endure.

The story takes place on Cooper's real-life ancestral home, Lake Otsego in mid-upstate New York (my friends tell me the pronunciation is "Otsaga" with a short "a") where we first encounter a youthful Natty Bumppo and his unlikely fellow traveler, Harry "Hurry" March, an indestructible, Paul Bunyonesque figure whose credo can be summarized as "might makes right." Natty (given the sobriquet, Deerslayer, by his adopted Delaware tribe) has arrived at the lake to join his companion, Chingachgook, (the "Serpant"), in his quest to liberate his future bride, Wah-ta-Wah, who was kidnapped by a band of Huron Indians. Harry March has come to the lake to capture the heart of Judith Hutter, who along with her father, Thomas, and simple-minded sister, Hetty, live on the lake, occupying either a floating ark or a fortress-like structure built upon the lake.

Eventually, the Hutters are surrounded by dozens of fierce Huron warriors, who are on the warpath during the opening days of the mid-18th Century French & Indian Wars. Seemingly, it was all there for Cooper to capitalize on: just a handful of isolated white settlers, whose only protection from scalp-seeking, torture-minded skulking Hurons is a crank sailing craft or a lake home on stilts. But Cooper rejects his own dramatic setting to stage a morality play, and a heavy-handed one at that.

A word about the Hutter sisters. Diametrically opposed siblings are at least as old as the Bible, and Cooper employed them in several novels, including "The Last of the Mohicans" and "The Spy" (far superior works than "Deerslayer".) Hetty is Cooper's example of purity and innocence, but we can leave her to the Hurons, who display an admirable level of respect and reverence for the frail-minded girl. I suspect she would have fared much better in the hands of so-called savages than in the typical 18th Century colonial settlement. It is her vain, beautiful and high-tempered older sister, Judith, whose character is of more interest, and requires in my opinion a little rehabilitation.

It is never made explicit by Cooper (no doubt it would have scandalized his audience) but I think it's fair to say that Judith Hutter -- much to her regret later on -- granted her last favors to at least one colonial British officer (maybe several.) And, if this is a mis-reading of the text, she most certainly did "something" to set the colonial tongues a wagging. Whatever her "failings", they would not be recognized as such by modern day readers (perhaps her vanity and self-centeredness would go unnoticed as well.) There was, however, little tolerance for a Judith Hutter in the 18th Century, and Cooper would have never permitted Natty Bumppo -- young, virginal and selfless -- to fall in love with this high-spirited young woman. (Besides, it would not have chronologically tied in with his future exploits.)

But I'm not entirely convinced. Judith Hutter possesses several admirable traits, not the least of which is intelligence, bravery and a certain loving devotion to her frail sister. She also recognizes Natty Bumppo's virtues, as well as her own faults, and is more than willing to embrace the former and cast off the latter. Her love for Natty is obvious for hundreds of pages, but somehow he doesn't quite get it! In the end, the girl must swallow her pride and make explicit what even modern day women would find nearly unthinkable -- she makes an outright marriage proposal. Alas, Natty Bumppo is simply "too good" for her.

To use a modern day expression, Cooper is over the top with the virtuous Natty Bumppo. At some point, self-abnegation is just another form of narcissism -- only more complex than the garden variety of narcissism possessed by Judith Hutter (and other mere mortals.) In his introductory essay, Donald Pease points out that the rejection of Judith Hutter balances the brutal rejection Natty Bumppo receives at the hands of Mabel Dunham in an earlier Leatherstocking tale, "The Pathfinder". Maybe. But consider this. To honor his parole from the Hurons, Natty Bumppo chooses torture over Judith Hutter. And, ultimately, he chooses a famous rifle over her -- a gift she lovingly gives to him in recognition of how much he would appreciate such a weapon. It comes down to this: torture and guns over Judith Hutter! Hmmm.... I'll leave that one for modern day psychologists.

I've given "Deerslayer" three stars because Cooper is, after all, one of our nation's early literary masters, and "Deerslayer" is not without its moments. There's a wonderful give-and-take scene between Natty Bumppo and the Huron Chief, Rivenoak, as they negotiate the release of Thomas Hutter and Harry March. (My advice to modern day corporations: don't bother with negotiation consultants -- save your money and read Chapter 14.) And for those who still believe in the right of every American to bear arms, take it from the author who created our nation's first true literary sharpshooter. There's a haunting, prescient admonishment about leaving loaded guns lying about the house (pages 219-220.)

Rating:
Summary: Not bad; Could Have been Better, but Not Bad
Review: I enjoyed this book for the most part, although I do agree that at times Cooper did get a little bit too wordy. Unfortunately, the reviewer from Louisville, Kentucky does not realize that while he claims Cooper got too wordy, his review takes up half the screen. I think that the ending was very fitting. I feel for the poor idiot who had to marry that moron Judith, because, as we all know, all women are Communists.

Rating:
Summary: better for kids than adults
Review: I just reread this book after 35 years. I loved it as a 15 year old and enjoyed it as an adult. The negatives? The hubrus of Cooper, the successful author, shows up in the form of undeveloped characters and a wandering plot. The positives are the rolicking adventure and the way it makes me remember where I was and what I was doing the first time I read it. If you are under 16 read this on first and the rest just get better. Over 16 read them in the order they were written and try not to be too disappointed in with this later effort.