James Fenimore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans - Eine Frontier Novel (German Edition)

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It does contain some duplication, and it is sometimes hard to identify specific editions etc. But once found, each text can accessed in a variety of searchable formats, including the fairly new "Flip Book" which is a searchable facsimile format that looks exactly like a real book. Another rapidly growing source of facsimile copies of earlier Cooper texts is Google Books. This particular links include only out-of-copyright editions currently 83 of books by James Fenimore Cooper which are available at Google in "full view.

I - Novels in chronological order [Note: We do not necessarily list all on-line texts of a particular novel, as the number keeps growing. The French National Library website Gallica has placed some 46 Cooper novels and other works, in French translation, on-line. They can be accessed at the Gallica website by: The volumes include a complete 30 volume set of Cooper's novels as published by Fume, C. Gosselin; and then by Fume, Pagnerre, et Perrotin, between and look for Oeuvres , some 15 other novel translations, and some non-fiction including Ned Myers La Vie d'un Matelot , Gleanings in Europe: Jan 18, Kirk rated it liked it.

I can still remember the edition of this thatsomehowI had in my room as a child. It was a hardback, dense type, the occasional woodcut, thin pages, tightly bound, and it smelled like it had been mouldering under somebody's bed since Martin Van Buren ass-ended to the presidency. Back then I couldn't for the life of me get past the first chapter. The syntax was so knotty ie. Latinate that I might have compared it to autoerotic asphyxiation if I'd known such a thing existed autoeroticism, I can still remember the edition of this thatsomehowI had in my room as a child.

Latinate that I might have compared it to autoerotic asphyxiation if I'd known such a thing existed autoeroticism, that is--not asphyxiation. In fact, I hope it doesn't expose my secret propensity for lace panties and Angora sweaters to say that at ten I much preferred Little Women. Yes, I loved Cooper's title bc I didn't know what the hell it meant, and I debated the pretension one might be susceptible to if made to tote the name 'Fenimore' through life.

Decades later I can say that life for me boils down to a choice: This one falls into the later category. Personal bullshit aside, there's so much here that's so historically important that LaMo as well call it in my neighborhood call it by necessity becomes worthy of reading time. The book is capacious, to use one of Cooper's marble-mouthed words. It conveys the scopic magnitude of the New World. The prowess of setting is particularly important when you realize that by the sa mere fifty years after the country's foundingnature was already a touchstone of nostalgia and Cooper was depicting us as having milked dry the natural resources of this fresh green breast of the new world.

Second, the Native Americans. You don't read Cooper for the verysmellytude of ethnicity.

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Go see Dances with Wolves for that. Better yet A Man Called Horse. But you do see in the ridiculously wooden me-likum-you-pale-face cigar-store depiction of Chingachgook and Uncas a sincere desire to elevate the NA warrior, Greek epic style, into a symbol of Lost Americaagain, poignant given that the Trail of Tears was taking place in this same era. Cooper thus helps make the Vanishing Indian a personfication of American guilt, a spokesman for the jeremiad.

Why divide feminity into innocent blondes and dirty brunettes? To quote the title of my least favorite Pink CD, must be Mizzacegenation, the anxiety that ravenheads have to be born out of those dalliances on the dark side that even British generals are prone to when the colored girls go do-da-do, doo, doo, dootey-dootey-doo, doo, doo, doo, etc.

It's a literary obligation in the 19th century bc Cooper and his peers knew, deep down, that nobody short of Edgar or Johnny Winter was truly white enough. And you are likely to throw the book across the room at the more silly assertions of Natty Bumppo and Chingy's ability to blend with the animals.

The scene in which the latter, the father of the Mohicans' last, dresses up as a beaver!!!!!!!! It absolutely kills the seriousness of the bookat least until the glorious last chapter, when suddenly Cooper's marvelous ability to lament takes over, and you read a threnody for fallen America that ranks up there with the final paragraph of Gatsby. So, enjoy, but be prepared to chew through the fat of preposterousness to the gristle of import. None of Cooper's other books save The Pioneers can really touch this one in terms of melancholy. And the melancholy of loss is what makes it great.

The Last of the Mohicans

Mar 02, Werner rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Fans of 19th-century literature. I've just edited this review slightly to correct a chronological typo. When I read this book the first time, I was nine, not seven years old --I knew, when I wrote the first draft of this review, that I was in 4th grade the first time, so I don't know what I was thinking when I typed "seven!

Newly transferred to parochial school, I stumbled on it in what passed for a school library: I didn't mind the style I was a weird kid , and it actually had a lot to appeal to a boy reader: Indians, gunfights and knife fights on land and water, chases, captures, escapes, and the appeal of some actual history thrown in. It left me with a solid liking for Cooper, and interest in reading more by him though I've only scratched the surface there.

Mark Twain launched the attack with a hatchet job titled "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" see below , and in the next generation, Charles Neider's verdict was snide and disparaging. The probability that Twain was motivated by professional jealousy as much as anything else, and the fact that Neider was a Washington Irving partisan who saw Cooper as dangerous competition for the highest laurels, don't seem to have discouraged today's critics from taking their assessments as the last word in Cooper criticism; indeed, they pile on the added condemnation that he held incorrect political views, which, for today's critical clerisy, is enough to damn a writer to eternal literary-critical hell.

As a high-school student, I recall watching Clifton Fadiman, the favorite 16mm talking head of English classes of that day, sneering at this book as a "dead classic" --which, having actually read it, confirmed my opinion of Fadiman's critical incompetence. Balzac was a fan, going so far as to say of him that "had his characterizations been sharper, he would have been the master novelist of us all.

My own assessment of Cooper, and of this work in particular, isn't uncritical. There's no denying that his prose style, even by the standards of his day, is particularly dense, wordy and florid. This is especially notable in much of his dialogue. Even granting that in upper and middle-class speech tended to be more formal than ours, it's difficult to imagine anyone speaking in as orotund a manner as most of the characters here, especially in some of these contexts.

In fairness to Cooper, though, it's not true that none of his characters have speaking patterns that are distinct and reasonably reflect who they are; and David Gamut, the character with, IMO, the most ridiculously fulsome speech, is to a degree intended as comic relief. His plotting doesn't hold up as well to a read by a year-old as by a seven-year-old kid; some of the character's decisions are foolhardy, and there are plot points that strike me as improbable though not the ones that Twain cites. While I don't necessarily mind authorial intrusion in the narrative, he uses it here a bit too much.

And this edition could also have benefited from the inclusion of a map. For all that, though, the positives for me outweighed the negatives. He delivers an adventure yarn that's pretty well-paced, absorbing and suspenseful. The characters are clearly-drawn, distinct, realistic, round, and complex, and evoke real reader reactions. Actual history is incorporated into the narrative in a seamless way. The portrayal of Indians and Indian culture, while not the treatment of them as blandly homogenized, gentle New Agers that modern monolithic "multiculturalism" would prescribe, is basically a realistic one that derived partly from first-hand contacts, and more knowledgeable than most white literary treatments would have been.

While he sometimes refers to them as "savages," --and it's fair to note that they are people who, in real life, at times DID torture captives and kill noncombatants-- he doesn't demonize them or make them out to be stupid, unfeeling brutes. Like whites, individuals can be villains, like Magua, but other individuals can be very good; title character Uncas is portrayed as an admirable embodiment of masculine virtues, and the author actually contrasts Indian culture with Anglo-European culture to the disadvantage of the latter in several places.

Critics of Romantic school action-adventure fiction tend to deny that it has any serious messages partly because they don't want to see messages they don't like, or recognize serious thought in a despised source , but they're present here nevertheless, and related to the above. Moral qualities such as courage, honor, loyalty, kindness and self-sacrifice, generosity, and love for family and friends are both praised and presented by favorable example, while the opposite qualities are disparaged.

It's no accident that Uncas, an Indian depicted at a time when many people despised Indians, is the title character and real hero of the book, and that Cora, the strongest female character and Cooper's clear favorite, is also the one with some Negro descent on her mother's side. In this respect, the racial attitudes here, IMO, show an advance in enlightenment on the part of the maturing Cooper that isn't evident in earlier works like The Spy and The Pioneers , the two other Cooper novels I've read.

There's even a hint that for Cooper, the idea of interracial romance isn't a complete taboo, though the presentation is subtle. True, Hawkeye, who obviously carries some emotional baggage from being disparaged by other whites for his Indian associations, stresses his un-crossed bloodlines with no Indian "taint," and won't consider the idea of intermarriage though his bond with his Indian friends is subversive of his culturally-conditioned racism. But to automatically assume, as some readers do, that Hawkeye must always speak for Cooper is, I think, a mistake.

He is who he is, warts and all, and that includes being opinionated and fallible it's not likely, for instance, that his disdain for books and literacy was shared by an author who was a professional writer! Cooper was a strong Christian, and this book has several naturally-integrated references to religious faith and prayer, as well as a couple of short discussions of religious belief. The type of Christian belief Cooper finds congenial comes across as one that's not doctrinally dogmatic and narrow as opposed to Gamut's Calvinism , and not judgmental in consigning others to hellfire and damnation.

When Hawkeye refuses to translate Colonel Munro's statement, "Tell them, that the Being we all worship, under different names, will be mindful of their charity; and that the time shall not be distant when we may assemble around his throne without distinction of sex, rank, or color," this reader perceived Munro, not Hawkeye, as speaking for the author! A major factor in my rating was the ending.

This accords with the Romantic penchant for tragedy, which I don't share as strongly; I much prefer happy endings. But the ending here, while I didn't like it, does seem to have an inherently fated quality that grows naturally out of the arc of the story. Since Twain based most of his attacks on Cooper on The Deerslayer which I want to read eventually , it seems better to respond to his essay in detail whenever I review that book.

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But where he makes general or specific criticisms that apply to this book, it's appropriate to mention those here. First, as to Cooper overusing the device of a twig breaking and alerting someone to movement, on this reading I looked particularly for that. It occurs once, in a page book. Second, Twain does NOT establish that it's impossible, in a fog, to backtrack the trail of a spent cannonball that, by his own admission, would skip and roll over damp ground, leaving marks; he establishes that it would be quite difficult --in other words, the sort of thing heroes or heroines in action fiction often do, where less capable characters wouldn't be able to.

And third, if it's an iron-clad law of nature that every mark in the bottom of a running stream is more or less instantly totally erased by the current, we're at a loss to account for fossilized impressions of such marks that endured until they turned to rock. In practice, it makes a great deal of difference how deep the mark is, how mallable the bottom is, how fast the current is moving, and how much time elapsed since the mark was made.

Cooper isn't the one being unobservant on that point. Reading this book was a cool trip down memory lane; it was amazing how much detail, and often how much exact wording, I remembered! It's definitely re-whetted my appetite to read more of his work one of these years! Of course, there are a lot of physical to-read piles in my office to be hacked through, or at least reduced, first View all 12 comments. I really wanted to enjoy this book. You ever do that? Pick up a book and assume it begins with 3 stars, hoping to move skyward.

I was looking forward to the crisp narrative of Colonial Realism, something like a Ben Franklin writing about mercantilism. My college roommate loved the Leatherstocking Tales, and I was rewarded following his recommendations before, so I put them on the shelf to read 20 years later. And in those last pages I captured my favorite sentence in the book: Or my second most favorite sentence: There was no description to sink your teeth into.

Maybe I should have started with the first of five Leatherstocking Tales instead of book 4. Some Indian tribes helped the French; others helped the English; they all fought each other. Fenimore Cooper is lauded as our first great American novelist. In that spirit, we are taught in middle school to revere his writing. Which is a mistake.

He was merely the first to popularize Indian-speak, paleface. Sentences that could be removed—should be removed—to make a better flow. They have long sentences too, but no dead wood. I also like that very few of my friends have read this book so that I can 1 not be called-to-the-carpet and 2 hopefully save you from this novel. Just know when he lived, what he wrote, and spend more time reading the Federalist Papers.

Probably because of this book.

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The review stands, take it or leave it. I first read this book when I was a boy, and decided to re-read it to see how it held up. In fact, I'd say that this book is a "must-read" for any American. Despite the fact that it's in no-way an accurate depiction of native American culture, it's a great reminder of what our landscape was like when our country was young. Written in , it was already 75 years past the events depicted in I first read this book when I was a boy, and decided to re-read it to see how it held up. Written in , it was already 75 years past the events depicted in the story, but upstate New York was still in places very wild.

Reading this book, I had a keen sense of what America was once like to the Europeans who were working so hard to turn the wilderness into the kind of world with which they were familiar. Also fascinating is the book's struggle with racism. Hawkeye keeps referring to himself as being "without a cross. In this way, the book reminded me a bit of Trollope's Can You Forgive Her , a book that still has the sensibilities of its time, but is struggling to transcend them. As Trollope could see that there was a way of thinking about the rights of women that he couldn't quite support, Cooper sees that there is something special in the ways of the native American, even as he condescends to it.

Yes, the characters are cartoons apart from Hawkeye, who has a strong "through line" , the plot is sentimental, and the view of native American culture is stereotypical, but there's still a lot here. After all, the point of a book like this isn't its realism, but its ability to mirror the mindset of a time, as experienced by the author and his readers. There is enormous value in a chronicle like this precisely because it shows the prejudices and attitudes and knowledge of its day. The writing is far better than in The Deerslayer , which I also re-read recently, even though the Deerslayer was written 25 years later though the events in it take place earlier.

In places, the writing is quite lovely. It's a paean to the glories of early America. This is also a great, though understated, love story, a story of a love that cannot be accepted by white society. But most of all, this book is a reminder of the tragedy of America's settlement, that in building our "new world", we destroyed the old world we came to.

The image of Chingachgook, last of his tribe, is poignant and powerful. Every American should remember, feel sorrow, and responsibility to make something good to replace what we destroyed. View all 4 comments. Aug 28, Kelly I found this book to be dull drudgery. I couldn't get into the story at all. Dec 21, Leo. This book gets five stars from me. The mysteries of the Americas and the Invasion of European settlers.

These lands have been raped and scorched by Europe.

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The Spanish were first; allegedly, on behest of the Vatican of course. It was a fantastic story. Jun 16, Carol Storm rated it it was amazing. Modern readers expect brutal realism, graphic violence, natural-sounding dialogue, and raw, authentic emotions in novels about the frontier. He wasn't trying to capture what life on the 18th century frontier was really like.

He was trying to write a novel that could compete with what everyone thought of as the great literature of the day -- the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott. Fair, gentle Alice and dark, brave, passionate Cora are obviously based on Rowena and Rebecca, respectively. Cooper heightens the drama by making them sisters, and threatening them both with equal danger. Instead of the conflict between Normans and Saxons -- which is happily resolved by creation of a new English national identity -- Cooper focuses on the conflict between the Native Americans and the encroaching settlers.

This does not end happily. But what's interesting is that Cooper much more than more celebrated American icons like Mark Twain actually feels the tragedy and the loss. Using Shakespeare as an inspiration for his more menacing characters is a trick that Cooper learned from Sir Walter Scott.

So is using personal tragedy as a symbol for larger historical trends. When you read this book, it's not hard to guess that the dark-eyed, racially mixed Cora is destined for a tragic fate, while bland, blue-eyed Alice is guaranteed a happy ever after. But what stays with you long after the book is over is the haunting sense that Cooper isn't really happy about the ending he had to write. Despite the often dense and twirly prose, I enjoyed this novel immensely! It helped that I read this out of genuine interest, not forced by educators, nor pushed down my throat by anyone, which bode well for my enjoyment of the story for the story's sake.

And it was good!

At first, I was tempted to review this with a comparison to the famous film inspired by this book, which was my introduction to the story, but it'd be a long breakdown of what the film got wrong and why the changes to Dunc Despite the often dense and twirly prose, I enjoyed this novel immensely! Suffice to say that I'm glad it's very different.

Personally, I like the original story much more, as the details are richer, despite the writing. There were gratifying surprises as well, particularly how subtle the feelings between the Mohican and the British are. Other surprises weren't as much, like Nathaniel, whom I'd expected to be different, and younger. Oh, and that my copy had illustrations by N. Wyeth, one of my favourite artists, was wonderful! A very nice accompaniment. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.

To view it, click here. I read this in seventh grade many years ago and it was the first full length 'classic' novel I had ever read. I just fell in love with this kind of writing. I have seen so many complaints about Cooper, but this lead me to start reading Dickens and many others Victorian writers. LOTM is great adventure stuff. And it has the most fantastic hero long before the world had ever heard of James Bond. I just loved him. In fact, knowing that he finally dies in the book The Prarie, I still won't read that book. I suppose I'll have to wait until the winter of my life to read that.

I just hate to see him get so old and die. The only character to 'outcool' Hawkeye is his companion, Chingachgook. There is an added mysteriousness to him that makes him the ultimate special forces fighter, and this was long before ninjas became the rage. Oct 09, J. This was a book I nearly quit on. However, just after half way through, the story gets very exciting. I know it's a classic, but Mr. Cooper can be difficult to read. I'm very glad I made it through the tedious stuff and really enjoyed the second half. Mar 21, Eli rated it it was ok. I went into Last of the Mohicans knowing that it was by no means an accurate depiction of either the Native cultures or history that occupied so much of the tale.

I approached the novel as an entire fabrication, and if anyone else elects to read this book, I strongly urge the same attitude. As to the story itself, I'm torn. Hiding in these pages is a truly great adventure, but the greatness - and sometimes the story itself - is obfuscated by the author's heavy-handed use of language. I sincerely I went into Last of the Mohicans knowing that it was by no means an accurate depiction of either the Native cultures or history that occupied so much of the tale.

I sincerely believe that this story would only profit by trimming away the excessively verbose detritus inflicted on it by the author. Ultimately, you could do worse for yourself than Last of the Mohicans if you feel the urge to read a classic, but you could definitely do better as well. I don't consider the time I spent in the pages of this book a total waste, but neither could I say it was enjoyable wading through all the linguistic chaff to extract what pleasure I did take from it. Well, what can I said?

I guess everyone watched the movie, it's a great action movie from , directed by the genius Michael Mann, with some love scenes and an amazing BSO Vangelis made it once again! An American classic as well. They are the characters in this book. I guess that I've learned a lot reading it, places, names, new words in English was a bilingual edition , and at the end I remember so well the ending scene that when I watched it, everytime I cry. May 24, Czarny Pies rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Americans looking for their founding myths.

This novel is about the first major war in the History of United States. All Americans were Englishmen, the French were the enemies and the Indians tried to figure out who to side with. When it was over the English won, the French lost and the Mohicans were exterminated. This novel tells us that much as there is great nobility in the American warrior every battle has collateral damage. Every young American should read this book. It tells us how different were the first battles and how different the future battles will be.

The good will always die young. May 15, Josh Kotoff rated it it was amazing. Well, let me say this The author is a genius and use so much adjectives and descriptiveness. I mean, for instance, the Author spends a page and a half describing the sunset and its glory compared to their peril. Awesome book to read and is way different from the movie.

A must read for hardcore readers. Dec 28, Maida rated it it was ok Shelves: One of the rare instances when the movie is SO much better than the book. The British and the French North American colonies were fighting each other, and each had their respective Native American allies supporting them. The sisters are accompanied by Heyward and, later on, the singing master David.

At first, the Huron Magua guides them, or pretends to do so. On their way, they meet a scout called Hawkeye and the two last surviving Mohicans, Chingachgook and his son Uncas. The whole story sounds awesome! Review June 11, Update June 19, Well, some things correspond, of course, but lots of other things don't. Hawk-Eye, for example, is taken prisoner by the English, there is no bear scene, some key events concerning Alice and Cora are turned around, and so on. Plus, Heyward is incredibly unlikable, and David doesn't even make an appearance. I'm sure these things would have bothered me if I'd have liked the book better.

As it is, however, I enjoyed the movie a lot, and definitely a whole lot more than the book. The actors are awesome, the music is great the Oscar is well earned , the sceneries are beautiful, and the plot is as good as in the book, although somewhat different. His Bernese home is in my neighborhood rather exciting! Ok, I didn't really enjoy the one book I've read written by him. And ok, he's only lived here for three months July-October The movie is much better than the book, no doubt about that. The illustrated version is available for free download at Gutenberg Project Illustrated by N.

Wyeth "Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadowed livery of the burnished sun. View all 9 comments. This story was amazing but hard to read, mostly because I found the author tended to be a bit wordy and overly descriptive when it came to the surroundings. I would tune out and think about other things then have to re-read the page I just spaced out over. The story itself was full of action and very interesting characters.

The author also included a lot of history, which I really enjoyed. I found the native cultures fascinating especially Uncas and his father who where Mohicans and how they inte This story was amazing but hard to read, mostly because I found the author tended to be a bit wordy and overly descriptive when it came to the surroundings. I found the native cultures fascinating especially Uncas and his father who where Mohicans and how they interacted with the Huron's.

The friendship between Hawkeye and the Mohicans was also quite touching. Parts of the book are quite violent, I think the author really captured the brutality of war. I had seen the movie when I was younger, and am glad I have read the book. It seems they have changed a lot from the book when making the movie, to the point where there are very few similarities left.

I prefer the book much more. I thought I would like this old favorite a lot more than I did. I don't think this one made the transition from the 19th century to the 21st century very well at all. The book is about twice as long as it needs to be, thanks to wandering and bewildering dialogue.

The story itself is unlikely; Cooper would have us believe that the Hurons were extremely lenient with their prisoners, letting them wander about unraped and untortured and permitting them to be rescued time and again.

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If you want a boo I thought I would like this old favorite a lot more than I did. If you want a book on torture, pass this one by and pick up something on Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. I know the book has long been considered a classic, and Mr.

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