The Last of the Mohicans: A Book that Eats like A Meal

As I am wont to do, when I began to read this novel I posted as much on facebook and received congratulations for doing so from two of my more bookish pals. Then I recieved more comments from others in person, then a conversation about the novel from one of my more non-bookish pals came up. Before too long I came to grips with the fact that I was the last English speaking person to have read this book.

I scored it from the hyper-discount rack at chapters along with two other books I should have already read. I had watched the movie with my mom just before I started the book. The movie, I thought, was pretty good, its hard to judge violent period piece movies before Braveheart (everything changed after Braveheart) but I liked it all the same and my mom thinks its just great. I know everybody and their dog likes to yak about how the book is better than the movie, but brothers and sisters, these two stories are kissing cousins at best. The flick really strays from the original story, and adds subplots that really amount to themes 180 degrees from the book. I'll throw in a disclaimer though, because there are more books in the series so the movie could have just compressed plots me being none the wiser.

This book is wonderful, and probably everybody should read it. It's a nice look at at least one man's opinion of Montcalm that strays considerably from the heroic image we're taught in school. The story is the sort of exciting that makes you ignore a ringing phone, interesting the way that makes you pester your family with misguided insights into first nations issues, and reads just like a nineteenth century New Englander's Lord of the Rings.

In order to corner the saucy gentlemen market, Cooper jumps the shark large late in the book and has the heroes running around in furs pretending to be a bear in the Huron's camp. It's ridiculous but is prefaced with quotes from Midsummer Night's Dream and I suspect conforms to some matter of form requisite of fiction in his day and age. Other than that the story is of folks killing folks, warriors being heroic (I found enough parallels with Homer to get a little more excited than probably necessary) and the French being smug ditherers. It gets pretty heavy when a Huron brave smashes a baby against the rocks and splits his mom's melon with a tomahawk, but having read all the Mercer Mayer books I am no stranger to gore.

Apart from the violence, the groovy language and the history, the best part of the book is to have a look at the attitudes of the characters, and the differences between whites and indians, English and French, and between Huron and Delaware. To hear Cooper say tell it, if there's one thing Indian's hate, it's other Indians, perfectly in keeping with what I know of human nature. The real action comes between two rival tribes, and they have all sorts of mean racist sentiments towards each other's tribes that I didn't understand, like when I watch All in the Family.

So read this book if you haven't already. It's great and you'll learn more about our continent and the fiction it has spit out.