Mark you this...
Writer Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) had read more than enough of the critical adulation accorded to James Fenimore Cooper, one of America's most revered early novelists (including The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans). Accordingly, in 1895, he published his review of Cooper's works. Listening to the national news this morning, hearing about politicians' maneuvers and the confusions some are having about the mysterious connection between cause and effect, and about the difference between a law and a bill and such, I was reminded of that review. I found it and reread it, and here is the passage that had come to mind.
If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would haveworked better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, moreplausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations"suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's protectinggift. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom sawanything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glasseye, darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the commonest littleevery-day matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when heis constructing a "situation."
(Anyone in Washington, DC remember this passage? Apparently not.)
Twain then goes on to give an example of such a disadvantage:
...The ark [a houseboat that is about to be attacked] is one hundred and forty-feet long; the dwelling is ninetyfeet long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretlyfrom the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps alongunder it at the rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. Itwill take the ark a minute and a half to pass under. It will takethe ninety-foot dwelling a minute to pass under. Now, then, whatdid the six Indians do? It would take you thirty years to guess,and even then you would have to give it up, I believe. Therefore,I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person ofquite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily watchedthe canal-boat as it squeezed along under him and when he had gothis calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as hejudge, he let go and dropped. And missed the boat! That isactually what he did. He missed the house, and landed in he sternof the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly.He lay there unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feetlong he would have made the trip. The error lay in theconstruction of the house. Cooper was no architect.
There still remained in the roost five Indians. The boat haspassed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain whatthe five did -- you would not be able to reason it out foryourself. No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water asternof it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water stillfurther astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell agood way astern of it. Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell inthe water away astern. Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat-- for he was Cooper Indian. In that matter of intellect, thedifference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands infront of the cigar-shop is not spacious. The scow episode isreally a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill,because the inaccuracy of details throw a sort of air offictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes ofCooper's inadequacy as observer.
Do treat yourself to the whole essay. It's been making me laugh - loudly! - since I was in high school.