Last month, I finished teaching my 11th-grade students what I consider the greatest novel in the history of American literature, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And I decided I wanted to show the class a movie version of the story. I found a made-for-TV version from the 60s, which I didn’t screen beforehand. (It was in the school library, what could be wrong with it?)
As it turned out, an awful lot. While the film began pretty much in synch with the book, although a few incidents were left out, it didn’t seem anything to get upset about. Until Huck began his journey down the Mississippi River. The next thing I knew, he was encountering the characters Twain named the “Duke” and the “Dauphin.” It is a testament to my students that so many of them immediately realized what was wrong with this.
“Wait a minute,” one of them said. “Where’s Jim?”
If you’ve never read Huckleberry Finn, allow me to explain. Jim is a runaway slave who joins Huck in his adventure on the Mississippi. In fact, Jim is the impetus for the journey — early in the novel Huck fakes his own death to escape his father, but when he discovers that Jim is suspected in his murder, he promises to help him escape to the Free States by traveling south on the Mississippi until it joined with the Ohio River, which Jim could take north. At first, Huck wrestles with his conscience, as he is technically helping with the theft of property (Jim) from somebody who has always treated him well (Jim’s owner, Miss Watson). Through their shared experiences, though, Huck comes to view Jim as a human being and reject ingrained attitudes of racism and acceptance of slavery that he was brought up with. It is, in fact, a masterpiece of American literature.
Of course, that means somebody wants to come along and screw it the hell up.
In the worst case of a crime against literature since Snooki got a book deal, Entertainment Weekly is reporting that NewSouth Books is publishing a revised edition of Huck Finn, in which all instances of the dreaded N-Word have been removed. I am, of course, sensitive to this word, just like everybody else on the planet. I don’t use it and I find its use morally repugnant. But I also respect Mark Twain and what he was trying to do with this incredible novel. Having re-read it so recently, one of the things that struck me about the book is the way Twain used that word to puncture holes in those characters that clung to racist ideals. The first reason most people will give for rejecting this change will be because the word is a period-accurate term, regardless of how modern readers think of it, and that is true. But even more importantly, if you remove that word from the book, much of the power is gone.
Twain didn’t just use that word because it was accurate to the dialect of the time. He also used it to demonstrate just how much it was (and, sadly, still is) used to dehumanize black people. By replacing that word with a euphemism, or even a less emotionally charged racist term, we lose what Mark Twain was trying to accomplish. Take, for example, the conversation between Huck and Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Sally in Chapter 32. Huck (pretending to be Tom for reasons too complicated to get into here) is telling one of his many lies, this one including a steamboat that blew a cylinder head. Sally, hearing about the “accident,” asks a perfectly reasonable question:
“Good gracious! Anybody hurt?”
Huck’s response? “No’m. Killed a n*****.”
Sally’s reply? “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.” (Emphasis mine.)
When we got to this part of the book, several of my students were horrified at what Sally said. And dammit, that’s how they should feel, because (in case you can’t figure it out yourself) she’s basically saying here that black people aren’t human beings. There’s no other interpretation. Would it mean the same thing if Huck had used a different word? Technically, yes. Would it have had the same impact? Hell no.
What makes it even stupider to me is that the editor of this Huck Finn, a supposed “Twain expert” named Alan Gribben, has chosen to replace the inflammatory word with the word “slave.” Which I suppose wouldn’t look out of place, as that word is already used liberally throughout the book, but will it do the job of the dreaded N-word? No. And for one simple reason. The N-word is a racially derogatory term. “Slave” is not.
Although American slaves were overwhelmingly black, they weren’t all black, nor were the slaves of many other cultures throughout history. In some culture or another, slaves have been Asian, white, Christian, Jewish, children, adults, men, women… slavery itself is a dehumanizing institution, and Twain demonstrates that wonderfully in his book the way it is right now. But slavery itself is not a racial institution. Admittedly, for the characters in this book who use the word in question, when they refer to slaves, they’re talking about black people. But the word “slave” is not a derogatory term for someone who is black. The other word is. And for that reason, if no other, this change is utterly inadequate to accomplish the goal of the brilliant Mark Twain.
Fortunately, Huckleberry Finn is in the public domain. This is, of course, the reason that NewSouth Books is able to publish their version –the book is out of copyright and Twain’s estate has no way to stop anybody from doing whatever the hell they want with it. But because of this same law, other publishing companies (Bantam, Penguin, or anybody else) who want to publish an unedited version of the novel will be perfectly free to do so. So when you’re shopping, friends, make sure you get the original version. Make sure that Mark Twain’s message is communicated unaltered. Make sure that you can view history in perfect clarity, so that we can recognize how far we’ve come, and know exactly the direction we need to go.
Once again, unsurprisingly, the idiots seem to be running the asylum. I’m much more likely to pick up Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim as I am to buy anything (I have the unexpurgated original safely on my bookshelf already), but the notion that there might be a generation of readers unaccustomed to the practice of Bowdlerization exposed to Twain – for the first time – through this edition horrifies me. The deliberate use of words which shock and appall readers was one of Twain’s strength’s, as even during the period in which the original was published, the use of the word was unacceptable in polite society. He knew the power of his prose as he was laying the words down.
It’s been noted elsewhere that Twain might have harbored certain racist beliefs, though the articles he wrote suggests that he was much more progressive than certain contemporaries. It’s well worth reading through some of his views, then comparing the tone and nature of his social commentaries to those of more recent columnists – there’s a massive collection online.
There’s an old joke about a publisher looking to supply “clean” versions of classic literature hiring an editor to have a go at Chaucer – the project only ceasing when they realize that publishing pamphlets is uneconomical. The first time I heard that, I thought it was hilarious. It was something that belonged in an absurdist sketch show, where the unbelievable is taken to extremes. As we move deeper into the territory of the politically correct, these jokes no longer seem as funny as they do terrifying. Big Brother is watching what we read, and he isn’t happy…
Keep reading the contentious works. Keep giving copies to people. Keep believing that the insanity will come to an end.
This is exactly why politics and art don’t mix. The PC police just get more and more powerful.
You said something that got me thinking though, regarding legal recourse. We have organizations dedicated to preserving buildings for their historical value, and they do good work. I wonder what it would take to start an organization dedicated to the preservation of books?
Your point is somewhat self defeated when you are too afraid or reluctant to not censor the “N-word” out of your quote from the book. If you can’t print a snippet of it uncensored to your blog, if the word is so hated that you are afraid to even use the word on your blog, then perhaps you have no room for argument if someone decides to take it out of their books they publish. After all, THEY have money on the line, and you have basically NOTHING on the line with this blog other than the risk of getting a few inflamatory comments. Or a few hundred. And maybe that’s OK. Maybe that word really IS too inflamatory to put into print. Ever. Either way, you can’t bow to the politically correct police while arguing they are messing up your childhood literature, not without coming off as somewhat hypocritical. Either its OK to publish the word, given proper context, or it isn’t. You can’t give Twain a pass just because his book is quote Real Literature end-quote.
And just so you know, I don’t disagree with your argument. I think it’s stupid for them to censor books. Its down right Un-American. I’d prefer they ban the book to censor it. Is it really Huckleberry Finn when they start taking out everything that offends them about the book? I’m pretty sure Mr Twain would be rolling in his grave about now. I somewhat doubt he would consider politically correct to be anything other than an oxymoron.
You have a legitimate point there. I did leave the word out and I did so deliberately. But my attempt was not to pretend the word was never there. I did so mainly because I want to keep this blog relatively family-friendly and I’m not sure I want that particular word turning up results in Google searches.
I want to talk about the word, but I don’t actually want to say the word. Is there a contradiction there? Yes. But it’s one I’ll have to live with.
Had Blake used the dreaded N-word, either here or on Facebook, it would have taken only a microsecond for one of his students to discover it and be forever emotionally damaged, leading inexorably to Blake’s symbolic public disembowelment by the school board. Best to let THAT sleeping dog lie.
The illo on the original story shows a Ballantine Classics book cover which would lead the reader to think that a major publisher is doing the censoring, when it fact the bowdlerized version is to be published by some no-name press. OTOH, Mr. Gribben DID get his 15 seconds of fame on the CBS Evening Snooze a couple of days ago.
I don’t really have anything to add to the article, but I think you make a compelling argument. So much of modern “literature” or film is created with the intended purpose of shocking the audience. And it’s defended as “artistic license” or some such thing. Here we have a case that a word is used to offend on purpose, but it isn’t granted that same license to offend.