When I was eleven, my father recommended James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking series.
Oddly,
when I think back on all the books my father and I read together, there
tends to be a trend...some of which was definitely Native American.
One of my favorite memories from childhood is him coming into my bedroom
to share a biography of Chief Black Hawk; I remember the book, hardback
with a grey cover and the title stamped in black along the spine. He
would sit on the edge of the bed, and reading to me using the light that
spilled in from the hallway (because there might be monsters, we always
had the hall light on) we would discover an entirely new way of life;
one that didn't involve sherbet-colored bedspreads or elm bugs as pets.
This was something different, something primal. I remember wishing I could have lived then; even using brains to tan a hide sounded awesome, the way dad read it.
Someone else recommended and gave me a copy of Black Elk Speaks;
but I think he would have gotten there if I weren't such a Pernicious
Toad. (Pernicious Toad was the award of the week to the child who had
been the most obnoxious. Sadly, I excelled at this, which at one point
led to him bouncing a radish, and then an empty milk jug off of my
head.)
ANYWAY.
Back to Leatherstocking. It was after I had read Red Badge of Courage,
which I wish I had NEVER read and to this day regret wasting time,
effort, and brain cells upon something so horrible. The fact that I
read it three years before it was required reading only gives me a
bigger rash, to be honest. The only thing worse was Stephen Crane's
perpetration upon humanity with his short story The Open Boat,
which was featured prominently in my senior English class and the
teacher of said class not just loved Stephen Crane, but failed to
realize my sincerity in suggesting in an assigned essay that Stephen
Crane would have benefited tremendously by dying before he could write
something so horrible and gave me a grade that would make one assume
that I would lose in a vocabulary contest with celery.
So. Leatherstocking.
I read them all. I liked them, well enough; struggles with opportunistic monarchs, antagonists with shady intentions, American
history (one of the only times I was exposed to it, sadly; my American
history teacher felt that movies spoke a thousand words, and that Lonesome Dove spoke a thousand more than that).
OK,
people. Daniel Day-Lewis movie? KINDA ROCKS. Seriously. I love it.
Yes, it is like almost 15 years since it came out. No, it doesn't
follow the book. Yes, I have problems with the dialogue. Yes, Uncas is
the hottest adopted brother known to man. No, you may NOT interrupt me
when Daniel Day Lewis says "No matter what happens..."
I
remember when it came out. I saw it three times, IN THE THEATERS.
Johdi May's look when she steps off that rock rather than succumb to
Magua? His blood-flecked hand, gesturing her toward him, after he's
done something so horrible but he is NOT A MONSTER, not completely?
Madeleine Stowe was kinda a throwaway for me, as far as I was
concerned. The secondary characters were so incredible. Duncan saving
Cora? Are you KIDDING me?
I took dad to see it.
"That
is the biggest magnolia tree I've ever seen," he said, exiting the
theater. "Where was this SUPPOSED to have been filmed?"
