A new edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer will replace the n-word with "slave" in an effort to boost acceptance of the books.
Mark Twain's classics are frequently challenged because of the use of the racial slur and appeared as recently as 2007 on the American Library Association's list of most banned books.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2011/01/05/twain-edited.html#ixzz1ABVppQe9
I am going to offer that I question whether this can be useful.
It seems to me that it is all about comparing civil libertarian and how far is too far apples with anti-racism oranges.
And you get grey fruit pulp that no one could like.
I understand the why of it. However, I don't think weakening the historical context of the work will accomplish anything positive - in a sense, it whitewashes (no pun intended) the period and the history of oppression. The language used, what was considered offensive or inoffensive at that time, is important.
I would be interested in the perspective of someone of colour as well.
The publisher is interested in boosting sales, that's the extent of it. There's no altrustic initiative here to have the school kiddies rediscover the 'classics.'
The U.S. carries out daily crimes against humanity, bolsters racism and apartheid and murder around the world, and edits literary works to appear to be anti-racist.
They also refer to workers and farmers as "terrorists" when it comes time to bomb them and invade and occupy their land.
Perhaps the next step will be to remove all references to slavery altogether.
This is absolutely disgusting.
Hmm, while I'm usually against the "wallpapering over" of racism, I can't quite get mad about this one, due to how old the book is.
Old literary works are often revised or rewritten a bit to suit the tastes of the times, aren't they?
Well, there was that Bible book, which kept being revised, but other than that, few have been similarly bowdlerised.
Maybe I had the wrong fruits in mind, but I think the product of grey fruit pulp was right.
[except that grey fruit pulp, at best.... might be more accurate]
A few people have said this doesn't have anything to do with anti-racism. I think that's it.
The problem with Biblical revisions of the past is that they retained much of the disturbing themes found throughout.
Hmm, while I'm usually against the "wallpapering over" of racism, I can't quite get mad about this one, due to how old the book is.
Old literary works are often revised or rewritten a bit to suit the tastes of the times, aren't they?
Oh yes, and i'm really looking forward to the new, improved Shakespeare.
Literature is a product, not only of its creator, but also of its time and place and socio-political atmosphere, or it tells us nothing worth knowing. The worse the US behaves toward its own and other peoples, the more miserable and hopeless everyone is made by them, the more they sanitize the labels and paper over the cracks. When all you see is happy, happy white middle class, you'll know revolution is about to break out.
Old literary works are often revised or rewritten a bit to suit the tastes of the times, aren't they?
You mean, like, Exodus 21:17:
"And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death."
Which in the recently revised version, reads:
"And s/he that disses their mother, or father, shall surely be given a serious time-out."
No, Lachine Scot, I have never heard of an "old literary work being revised or rewritten a bit to suit the tastes of the times" - unless it was the author who did the revising.
Got any examples in mind??
Hmm, while I'm usually against the "wallpapering over" of racism, I can't quite get mad about this one, due to how old the book is.
Old literary works are often revised or rewritten a bit to suit the tastes of the times, aren't they?
Not usually.
If my 10 yr old can understand historical context in regard to language used, does it really need to be revised? Or are we simply doing it to salve the consciences of white, middle-class liberals?
Like, oh my God, poor Yorick. This skull is, like, totally gross!
Bad idea.
If the word offends you, the book's message and Twain's actual politics notwithstanding, just don't read the damn thing. If the word is that offensive then why would one want to contribute to the man's estate anyway.
Same for Harper Lee.
But start butchering dead people's work to fit the times, and pretty soon you will have someone censoring art because the writer said something bad about the editor's grandmother.
Oh wait.... we'r ethere already:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/opinion/20hotchner.html
Ouch! I seem to be in the minority on this one...
I was basing it on something I read once in a book about French, where the author was pointing out a group of people who were offended by the language of French classics being updated, and he countered by saying "what's the big deal? the language has been updated several times since it was originally written.." ie, every hundred years or so when it seems outdated, difficult to understand, or whateever.
It's been a few years since I read this book and I can't quite remember which book it was, so I am pretty much defeated in this argument, aren't I? ;)
I haven't completely reflected on this.
I do wonder whether replacing one word with another can be construed as bowdelrization.
One goal is to sell more copies of the book especially to schoolboards.
I think one of the central questions is whether this change in order to expose more students to these two works is a good thing?
In other words are Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn books that should be taught in high school?
Are their issues in the stories that it is good for adolescents to wrestle with?
I'm sure opinions will vary. I'm not sure what my opinion is.
I do remember reading TS in a scaled down Read-Aloud edition sometime around 10. I have picked up HF a few times but have never to date made my way through it.
@ Lachine Scot
I think your opinion is just as valid as anyone else's here.
I just disagree with you on the issue of censorship, though I see your point.
And since we're talking about the fellow who grew up in a household which kept slaves, here are a few more of his words:
"The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name."
If the casual use of the "N"-word is taken out of Huckleberry Finn, the profound import of Huck's not betraying Jim to the slave-catchers, for one thing, would be lost.
What? No Shania Twain in this discussion?
(sorry... couldn't help it 
)
ETA: sign of the times I guess - when I saw "Twain" in the thread title, I instantly thought of Shania, not Mark.
If the casual use of the "N"-word is taken out of Huckleberry Finn, the profound import of Huck's not betraying Jim to the slave-catchers, for one thing, would be lost.
Since we were waxing biblical upthread, it is similar to the fact that most people aren' t aware of the full context of the Good Samaritan story when they read it
I haven't completely reflected on this.
I do wonder whether replacing one word with another can be construed as bowdelrization.
One goal is to sell more copies of the book especially to schoolboards.
I think one of the central questions is whether this change in order to expose more students to these two works is a good thing?
In other words are Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn books that should be taught in high school?
Are their issues in the stories that it is good for adolescents to wrestle with?
I'm sure opinions will vary. I'm not sure what my opinion is.
I do remember reading TS in a scaled down Read-Aloud edition sometime around 10. I have picked up HF a few times but have never to date made my way through it.
Hand either of my kids an expurgated or abridged version of a classic novel and prepare to hear a rant. Seriously. They take it as a personal insult.
Why shouldn't adolescents wrestle with these issues? One of the problems I have with children's and YA fiction - especially North American! - is that it consistently underestimates our kids and talks down to them. How can we expect them to rise to the challenges they're going to be faced with later on if we don't challenge them now?
One of my work colleagues told me how her teenaged daughter resents the new, "youthful" approach of CBC radio, and says, "We're young, not stupid."
Yup.
Our school librarian hid Dracula from Ms T (who was 9 at the time) despite my explicitly telling them to let her take anything she wanted out of the library. Even after I called, when she went back it was "lost". So I bought her a copy over the summer holidays.
I'd much rather we give kids the real deal, then help them out if it's difficult, rather than assuming they can't handle it and never letting them try. Give 'em the chance to surprise us!
@ Timebandit
Agreed
Though we didn't really have young adult fiction when we were kids - at least not in the same way people understand it nowadays. We had enough gory end exploitative films, comic books and other material, but not nearly as much in the way of real literature geared toward young adults.
So as much as it is a two-edged sword, I think the fact that it is a growing genre is a good thing.
Meh, I was around these parts when I was a teeny and I was ornary about a variety of issues relating to the preservation of literary works.
Should they revise Marx to make it more market friendly?
Huck Finn is one of the most astonishing books ever written in the English language. It is nearly wordperfect. I'm with al-Q, in that the deep irony of the book would be lost if that word was expunged. Some critics have even argued that the postbellum African-American experience has shaped the way Huck himself is constructed and represented (cf. Shelley Fisher Fishkin's Was Huck Black?). Has anyone read this book as a child and then again as an adult? What an incredibly different experience.
The n-word was not considered "fine" or simply colloquial when Twain wrote this book in the late c-19. There is a reason why Huck refuses to relinquish the word even as their friendship develops and grows. The word is meant to connote hate--vindictive, urgent hate--in a way "slave" sanitizes. I think TB's word, "whitewash," is a great one--why are we reading this book? Because it's a 'classic'? Or because it is the single greatest expression of postbellum racial politics and the emergence of 20th century American capitalism?
Hmm, if you put it that way, I think it makes much less sense to take it out !
I instantly thought of Shania, not Mark.
Sadly, never the twain shall meet.
I haven't completely reflected on this.
I do wonder whether replacing one word with another can be construed as bowdelrization.
It's not just one word: it's the central word of the story, the relationship, the lesson - and US history.
One goal is to sell more copies of the book especially to schoolboards.I think one of the central questions is whether this change in order to expose more students to these two works is a good thing?
Seems to me, if it's changed in such a fundemental way, there is hardly any point in exposing the students to it. Give them something more modern, nicer, easier.
In other words are Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn books that should be taught in high school?Are their issues in the stories that it is good for adolescents to wrestle with?
Not merely good - crucial. If they don't work this out in their formative years, they'll grow up bigots and hypocrites - or just oblivious and indifferent.
Anybody old enough to watch the evening news is old enough to start dealing with the issues of citizenship.
Reading Huck Finn and watching To Kill a Mockingbird complement each other well. I did both in school and felt nary a twinge of damage from the experience.
Is Huck Finn regularly taught in Canadian schools now or was it commonly taught at one point if it's not? Just curious because I don't recall reading it in school. I'm not even sure I have read it. I know the story though and enough of it to recognize what people are referring too but I can't remember if I got that from some tv movie or from the book itself. I did read to Kill A Mockingbird in school though. I remember that.
Regardless I'm going to add it to the my 'should read' list.
Reading Huck Finn and watching To Kill a Mockingbird complement each other well. I did both in school and felt nary a twinge of damage from the experience.
There's an interesting section in George Plimpton's biography of Truman Capote about racism and the Klan in the town where Capote and Harper Lee grew up, as well as an incident that was part of the inspiration for her book.
I am very sympathetic to the Black community's absolute disdain for the "N" word. Yet i struggle with this type of language policing.
If any group should feel similar pain i guess it would be the Jews. Yet their way of dealing with great classics like Oliver Twist or the Merchant of Venice seems much different. Is this apples and orhanges too?
The only area in which I think it is okay to edit stuff like this is bugs bunny cartoons. Don't ask me why I make an exception, but I do (though I would never want to see the originals done away with).
I don't question that some people find certain terms offensive. I just think that if someone finds the word too offensive to read why would he or she want to read the rest of the ideas that the author writes? Read it or don't read it; but don't censor it.
Now the question of whether to let books like "To Kill A Mockingbird" into schools at all is a more difficult matter. Clearly there is no solution there that is going to please everyone.
(edit)
That said, film makers have their work taken away from them and butchered all the time, as Alan Smithee knows all too well.
The n-word was not considered "fine" or simply colloquial when Twain wrote this book in the late c-19.
It did occur to me to conjecture that the n-word might have been a colloquial variant of "negro" in the late 19th c, and might not have become a slur only later. But I have never looked into the question. Presumably this has been written about by historians or historical linguists. Catchfire, do you have a source for your assertion that this word was not considered fine or simply colloquial when Twain wrote? I'd be very interested to see a discussion of that question. Either way, it certainly affects the interpretation of the work.
Either way, it's important that Twain is putting the word in his characters' mouths: as far as I remember from the book, nothing in the book suggests that Twain endorses the use of the word.
ETA. According to Wikipedia (deep research going on here), "Twain, in the autobiographic book Life on the Mississippi (1883), used the term [the n-word] within quotes, indicating reported usage, but used the term "negro" when speaking in his own narrative persona."
Parenthetically, I studied To Kill a Mockingbird in grade 10 in the late seventies. I am not aware of Huck Finn being on the NB high school curriculum.
Does anyone else find it odd that there are people out there who think that constantly referring to Black people as "slaves" is a progressive move?
In fairnessw, they're not regularly referring to people that way, but only as an alternative in this one book. And i don't think progressive comes into it - indeed, the people making this decision (a - presumably white - publisher in the southern US) would probably take unbrage to the p-word. Nor do i think the people who objected to the book as written were of African descent, or progressive: i think it's all about 1. honestly and openly: selling more books and 2. covertly and self-servingly: sweeping their past under the vast, capacious carpet of American forgetfulness.
It's all a bunch of nonsense. They shouldn't be tampering with literary works, period. As someone noted, it's simply an effort by the publisher to make more money, not because it has some burning desire to have Twain's works more widely read.
In fairnessw, they're not regularly referring to people that way, but only as an alternative in this one book. And i don't think progressive comes into it - indeed, the people making this decision (a - presumably white - publisher in the southern US) would probably take unbrage to the p-word. Nor do i think the people who objected to the book as written were of African descent, or progressive: i think it's all about 1. honestly and openly: selling more books and 2. covertly and self-servingly: sweeping their past under the vast, capacious carpet of American forgetfulness.
Well, I would recommend reading the editor's introduction to the new edition. From what he says, it does sound as if he has encountered a signficant amount of African-American objections to the book's language.
[url=http://www.newsouthbooks.com/twain/introduction-alan-gribben-mark-twain-...
I don't doubt that some of the support for this sort of bowdlerization comes from white liberals, looking for easily achieved symbolic solutions, in lieu of addressing deeper problems. But that shouldn't blind us to the fact that there may be legitimate objections from the relevant communities.
I once read a critique, by an African-American scholar, of Twain's attitudes towards race as expressed in Huck Finn. From what I can recall(it would be more accurate to say that I skimmed the essay), the critic's point that was that Twain portrays Jim as essentially being child-like, on a par with Huck. Now, yes, within the parameters of Twain's worldview, this is meant to be viewed as a positive attribute, since Twain was a Romantic who regarded adult society as corrupt and brutal. But this doesn't change the fact that it's essentially a portrayal of a black man as being intellectually equivalent to a child. Basically, Rousseau's noble-savage transplanted to an antebellum American setting.
Granted, if this critic is correct(and I'm not saying he is), then the difficulties presented by the book are not such that are going to be solved simply by the removal of one word.
@ Caissa:
I know inclusion of Lee's book in high school curricula has been a hotly-debated topic in some places. I remember a few years ago hearing a commentary from a fellow in Nova Scotia who felt it should not be there.
@ absentia
p-word...... peckerwood?
(not sure if redneck slurs are allowed. My apologies in advance if they are not)
And I'll say again.... I don't favour censorship, but I don't discount the opinions of those who want the word removed. It may be a ploy to sell books, but I think there is a good argument for removing it. I just think that altering the text would be a greater ill. I heard someone on the radio this morning (guess which station?) talking about the visceral reaction they had reading the text. So clearly it does get in the way for some people, though as some people feel (Dick Gregory, for one) removal of the word is just covering up our racist history.
It's not an issue where there is one clear answer, certainly not one that is going to be answered by those of us who are not black.
For that matter, I remember a few years ago talking with a person who strongly objected to the use of the word "Queer" by GLBT groups because of its history as a derogatory slur. In the same meeting he gave financial support to a group which had that word in its name, but he clearly felt it was important that he let us know his personal objection to the word.
Huckleberry Finn is essentially an anti-racist book with a slave being the hero of the adventure and the slave owners looking stupid and cruel. The use of N-word and other racial slurs were meant to show the prevalent racism and prejudices of the time. How can you combat racism without showing its ugliness?
Granted, if this critic is correct(and I'm not saying he is), then the difficulties presented by the book are not such that are going to be solved simply by the removal of one word.
I won't be going there.
Let's look at the two sides of that little scenario:
What is worse, being exposed to the deluded and unenlightened views of the past, or imagining that we are now free from all delusion, have a perfect understanding of things, and that everything we know is not built on the thoughts and work of those deluded people who came before us?
There is a reason why hubris was a central theme for the Greeks. Evidently they understood a few basic concepts 2500 years ago.
(and I noted your qualifier, and don't assume that you are arguing this case).
Maybe we should simply ban from our schools everything written more than 30 years ago. Cull the libraries annually, and give in to every interest, ethnic and pressure group that objects to anything. At least our children's sensibilities will be safe from contraversy, and their intellect, clean of cultural debris.
((ps p(rogressive))
Absentia wrote:
Maybe we should simply ban from our schools everything written more than 30 years ago. Cull the libraries annually, and give in to every interest, ethnic and pressure group that objects to anything.
Well, saying that something may not be the best choice for classroom reading and discussion is not the same thing as saying that it should be taken out of the school libraries.
What is worse, being exposed to the deluded and unenlightened views of the past, or imagining that we are now free from all delusion, have a perfect understanding of things, and that everything we know is not built on the thoughts and work of those deluded people who came before us?
Smith:
Just to clarify, when you say "the deluded and unenlightened views of the past", are you referring to the views that Twain was satirizing, or the views that he himself may have held? (It was the latter which were the subject of the paragraph of mine that you quoted.)
I think that if one believes that Huckleberry Finn is expressing(as opposed to simply portraying) a racist viewpoint(however unintentionally), then a case could be made for it being an inappropriate text for examining racism-related issues in the classroom, at least at the pre-secondary level. (University students should be able to handle a nuanced discussion of a book being both anti-racist and racist at the same time.)
Just to clarify, when you say "the deluded and unenlightened views of the past", are you referring to the views that Twain was satirizing, or the views that he himself may have held? (It was the latter which were the subject of the paragraph of mine that you quoted.)
Neither actually. I was speaking generally, though I see the two layers you mention.
While I acknowledge we need to look at things like this on a case-by-case basis, I think the assumption that we have the right to hack and slash to fit things to our more enlightened sensibilities is arrogant and foolish. If someone objects to the content, better to leave it on the shelf than bowdlerize, I think. Think of the mess we would be left with if all literary works had countless revised editions based on contemporary values. It would be like computer science or auto mechanics.
And to be clear, I wasn't assuming that you were arguing for any sort of ban or censorship, but rather extrapolating on the thoughts of another critic.
Also, I am not trying to put forward an absolute answer to whether Twain's works should be allowed in schools; as a non-black person I wouldn't presume to do so. Personally, I am in favour of letting them in unaltered, but I recognize it is a contentious issue.
Well, saying that something may not be the best choice for classroom reading and discussion is not the same thing as saying that it should be taken out of the school libraries.
A very fine line, indeed. Usually, the books that are contraversial for classroom are also problematic in the libraries frequented by youth, the idea being to protect vulnerable minds, in which endeavour, leaving it on the shelves for the young to read unsupervised is potentially more harmful than guiding them through it in the classroom.
In any case, all i'm saying is: if a book isn't worthy of reading as written, it isn't worth fixing. If we disapprove of a book, we should get rid of it, not change it. There are plenty of approved books to choose from.
While I acknowledge we need to look at things like this on a case-by-case basis, I think the assumption that we have the right to hack and slash to fit things to our more enlightened sensibilities is arrogant and foolish. If someone objects to the content, better to leave it on the shelf than bowdlerize, I think.
Yeah, I basically agree. It's not the end of the world if a high-school English teacher decides that Huck Finn is too combustible a book to assign, since there are of course all sorts of other books that can be taught as well. But it is, if not the end of the world, at least a slight affront to the integrity of the original book if the teacher assigns an edition of the book with alterations that change the meaning of the story.
