I think he is pretty unreadable for a contemporary (of today,
I mean) sophisticated reader. But not all is bad in Cooper:
his action scenes are way ahead of his time, and he had
something that many writers today still lack: pace. So yes,
he's crude, his choice of words is not always a happy one,
his characters aren't always coherent, and so on, but one can
read him and enjoy the action.
All the criticisms of Mark Twain in his famous review are on
target, of course. Cooper did not have the chops to be like
Twain -- but then, who does in American literature?
Best,
MrT
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