A "censored" -- properly speaking, Bowdlerized -- edition of Huckleberry Finn has been published. No "nigger" word.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic by most any measure—T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of "all modern American literature." Yet, for decades, it has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation's most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: "nigger."
Twain himself defined a "classic" as "a book which people praise and don't read." Rather than see Twain's most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the "n" word (as well as the "in" word, "Injun") by replacing it with the word "slave."
"This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind," said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he's spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. "Race matters in these books. It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."
Geibben's case is quite sound.
What is the current status of HF in American education as regards letters? Why, it is a "classic." Why is it a "classic"? Because people say so, mostly, but (arguendo) they say so because instructing young people to read & discuss HF is widely held to impart something of value to young Americans. OK.
What this "something of value" is, precisely, can be debated.
But the real question is, is the entire value of teaching HF truly compromised if the word "nigger" is Bowdlerized?
I myself tend to think it is not. I think HF would still have interesting & provocative things to say about 19th -Century America even in the absence of the word "nigger."
In terms of morality, what would be abominable would be to excise slavery or biogotry from HF. But is that what is happening in regards to HF? Not according to Geibben.
"Nigger" is, to understate the case intensely, a loaded word. Uh, give this a shot: be a white English teacher, and then give Huckleberry Finn to class full of black adolescents. If they get upset over the use of "nigger," tell them they are uneducated for not appreciating a Literary Classic.
Congratulations. You've Improved the World.
I'm willing to have a discussion about the book, but I'm not at all willing to do so with anyone responding glibly to the pedagogical issues that arise as to assigning black kids a book where "nigger" is used a lot with a "this is a Classic get over it" defense.
MAS. Some issues.
First, to a degree, here I'm trolling my own blog. The last bit of religion I am conscious of losing was that of Artist as Priest, and Art as Writ. Fuck that.
HF as a book is actually something of a mess. Oh, it's a great book, certainly. But it's not really very coherent from first to last, and Twain doesn't (come on!) make any sort of "argument" in it, except for the arguments he starts that then make him uncomfortable. "Don't fuck with Twain's vision" is not really a claim that applies to this novel, because that "vision" is not especially consistent. (I don't think Hamlet is consistent either, BTW.)
The notion of the "author" as a fingernail-paring God is pretty recent, historically, and whether or not it's even applicable to Twain is indeteminate. Which is to say, if you want to argue that there is no value in retelling HF, go ahead. But then, maybe there is!
I really don't see why retelling HF is so bad; stories have been retold for shifting cultural reasons for thousands of years. Saying "no you can't retell them now" is at variance it seems to me with the entire Twain folkloric aesthetic. Whether the Bowdlerization is well done or not is a seperate issue, and since I have not examined it, I'll leave that be. But if you don't like your stories retold to your liking... too late!
Which gets me to this point: who was going to "not tell" the readers of the Bowdlerized book that they were reading a Bowdlerization? Did I say that? No!
I would myself be delighted as a teacher to say "here is the book you were allowed to read. For 'slave,' Twain wrote 'nigger.' Make your own judgments about that -- or would you like to discuss it?" THAT would be fun.
Anyway. I stand by this: "be a white English teacher, and then give Huckleberry Finn to class full of black adolescents. If they get upset over the use of 'nigger,"'tell them they are uneducated for not appreciating a Literary Classic." Click the fucking link.
I appreciate the teachers that have commented, but they really have not contradicted what I said. Which was, the "literary classic" defense has to be made, not assumed.
There is a pernicious reading of HF -- as indeed of To Kill a Mockingbird -- which deprives the novel of much of its force by turning it into a parable of how if white kids really try, they can learn to not hate black people. (Have I mentioned I'm at DisneyWorld right now?)
The historical point about the systemization of racial inequality & its lingering effects is then lost.
That Gribben's book is in a pragmatic way necessary is wonderful, as it means the book is relevant and still has the power to cause trouble. It is an extremely healthy development.