The attempt to whitewash Mark Twain”s words has me seeing red.
A new edition of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” removes Twain”s “offensive” words, according to an article published Wednesday in Montgomery, Ala., by the Associated Press (AP).
Why did Samuel Clemens, A.K.A. Mark Twain, use that language?
He was most certainly a brilliant man.
Didn”t he know better?
The answer is simple. It paints a picture ? it”s a sign of the times. Vernacular is important in writing. The words are meant to create an image in the reader”s mind.
The article states, “Mark Twain wrote that ?the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.” A new edition of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” will try to find out if that holds true by replacing the N-word with “slave” in an effort not to offend readers.
Readers should be offended, but not by Twain. He was simply chronicling history in a vivid and accurate manner, as he witnessed it.
The article states, “In addition to replacing the N-word, Twain scholar Alan Gribben changes the villain in “Tom Sawyer” from “Injun Joe” to “Indian Joe” and “half-breed” becomes “half-blood.”
Let me be the first to say, I despise the “N-word.” It crawls under my skin as a toxic reminder of America”s past and in some cases, present. We cannot sugar-coat reality. We should not. It”s a dangerously slippery slope.
The AP article supplies the following argument: “… Gribben, who is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the books, said the N-word appears 219 times in ?Huck Finn” and four times in ?Tom Sawyer.” He said the word puts the books in danger of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once humorously defined as those ?which people praise and don”t read.” It”s such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers,” Gribben stated.
Twain was famous for being particular about his word choices.
Posthumously, he has the right to keep his words and his meanings intact.
I agree with the opinion of Twain scholar, Professor Stephen Railton at the University of Virginia, who said in the article, “Gribben was well-respected, but called the new version ?a terrible idea.””
Railton went on to say, “The language depicts America”s past and the revised book was not being true to the period in which Twain was writing.”
Railton has an unaltered version of “Huck Finn” coming out this year that includes context for schools to explore racism and slavery. “If we can”t do that in the classroom, we can”t do that anywhere,” Railton said.
Changes to Twain”s books were ultimately spurred by parents and students requesting the removal of “Huck Finn” from reading lists for more than 50 years.
This is an old argument. The New York City Board of Education removed the book from the approved textbook lists in 1957 from elementary and junior high schools, but taught it in high school and bought for it for school libraries.
Parents in Tempe, Ariz., sued a high school in 1998 because Huck Finn was on a required reading list. The case went to a federal appeals court, where the parents lost the suit.
The book “Huck Finn” was published in 1885. It is the fourth most-banned book in schools, according to the book “Banned in the U.S.A.”
Twain”s classics including the less-known, “Pudd”nhead Wilson,” one of my favorites, are vehicles of opportunity to teach history, injustice, social consciousness, among countless other subjects.
Or we could pretend that those times simply don”t exist and steal the very art of a master of his time, supposing he really meant to say something else.
Not me. To the schools that cannot accept the genuine product, I will share the immortal words of Twain, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
Sorry, Sam. You may have thought the world was an enigma back then; get a load of it now.
Mandy Feder is the Record-Bee managing editor. She can be reached at mandyfeder@yahoo.com or 263-5636 ext. 32.
