Posts that almost weren't

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses, courtesy of Mark Twain (whose autobiography can finally be purchased, 100 years after his death.

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the "Deerslayer" tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.

2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the "Deerslayer" tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.

I'll try to do better next month, but here are some of the posts I would have written about, if I'd had the time this month.