The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are widely viewed as an American classic. However, the editors of NewSouth Books have decided that they need to do some editing. The editors have decided to remove the “n” word from the book and replace it with “slave.” The editing of a classic raises very troubling questions from the right of an author to have his works remain unchanged to the integrity of literary and historical works. Like all great works, the book must be read with an understanding of the mores and lexicon of its time.
This offense against the original work is being lead by Alan Gribben, who insists that he is merely updating the work. Classic works, however, do not need updating. Gribben decision to improve on Twain’s work for contemporary readers is a breathtaking act of hubris. A vast array of classic and contemporary works use the n-word and other offensive language. If Gribben wants a work without offensive language, he should write The Adventures of Alan Gribben.
Gribben appears to think the following quote from Huckleberry Finn was something of an invitation by Twain:
“Please take it,” says I, “and don’t ask me nothing – then I won’t have to tell no lies.”
Replacing this word with “slave” can change the meaning and certainly the intent of Twain. Consider the following line:
“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger slave there from Ohio – a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see…
The difference may be subtle but Twain clearly could have used slave. The word existed at the time. Twain chose the n-word to convey something beyond captive status. It was a word used widely. It is still used in literary works to say something about the people who use it.
Other authors like William Faulkner used this word in capturing the culture of the South. Consider the following passage from Go Down, Moses (1940):
This delta, he thought: This Delta. This land which man has deswamped and denuded and derivered in two generations so that white men can own plantations and commute every night to Memphis and black men own plantations and ride in jim crow cars to Chicago to live in millionaires’ mansions on Lakeshore Drive, where white men rent farms and live like niggers and niggers crop on shares and live like animals, where cotton is planted and grows man-tall in the very cracks of the sidewalks, and ursury and mortgage and bankcruptcy and measureless wealth, Chinese and African and Aryan and Jew, all breed and spawn together until no man has time to say which is which nor cares…. No wonder the ruined woods I used to know don’t cry for retribution! He thought: The people who have destroyed it will accomplish its revenge.
Would we rewrite Faulkner as well? How about all of the modern movies and books using this term as part of modern urban speech? Authors write to capture characters who are often racist or living in racist times. This publisher may billed itself as the “NewSouth” but this book was written about the Old South. To sanitize history or literature is an act of violence against the artistic work of these authors.
I find the editing of a great literary work to be nothing short of shameful and shocking, but views can differ on such a question. I would be interested in the views of others on the blog.
Jonathan Turley
Blouise-
I’m sorry to hear your husband is hospitalized again. I wish both of you well.
Yeah well … the dude is not so silent when he’s yelling at nurses and telling doctors to speak english … it’s a wonder they don’t kill him … but they seem to like him none-the-less and they are working like crazy to stabilize him … it’s been a rough couple of weeks for him and for our daughter, the designated family crier. I’m afraid the poor kid is going to drown!
Gyges, Thanks for the pointer to Adams Diary by Twain. I had not read that or Eves Diary before. They were enjoyable and the illustrations in Eves Diary were lovely. I enjoyed the way Twain made Eve the force for joy and liberation in the garden, none of that hide-bound christian dogma for him.
Same here, Blouise.
I hope Tex is up and being the strong silent type again real soon.
Blouise, I’m sorry to hear about your husband, I hope he comes home quickly.
mr ed,
Do you ever usher at the fri 11am concerts?
Come to think of it, we’d also have to censor one of Patti Smith’s albums…heresy!
mr.ed,
Nuts, nuts, and nuts … Tchaikovsky! I was scheduled to go to the 8pm on Sat. but the hubby is back in the hospital so I gave our tickets to friends … I’ll think of you enjoying the Pathétique because no one will be arriving late!
We have tickets for South Pacific but I can’t remember which night.
Somewhat (actually vastly) off topic, but to me, this is as pathetic as the film “The King’s Speech” getting an R rating due to language, when the swear words used were used for a specific reason, and not for the mere joy of cursing.
Mark Twain, whether one likes or hates him, has written many of this nations classics. If we start eliminating the “n” word from books, we’ll now have to consider Faulkner, To Kill a Mockingbird, Gone With the Wind, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and who knows how many others.
Buddha,
We had a fine time up north–lots of good food, good wine, and great company. My husband and I made sure everyone was well fed.
Blouise,
If you’re at Severance Thursday night, stop by at the top of the steps balcony/dress circle area and say Howdy. Look for the big bucks in the tux.
If you’re at the Playhouse Friday night, stop by to say Howdy. We usher there, too!
Mr. Ed
We’re glad to have you back, Mrs. M.
Seconded.
And seconded.
Blouise,
I was away with friends in the White Mountains of New Hampshire for a few days and had no Internet access.
Elaine!! I have been waiting for your opinion on this matter and I find it is one with which I can agree 100%.
IMO, no one has the right to change the words of an author. Twain wrote a book that reflected the times in which the story was set. Are we supposed to accept the sanitization of great works of literature because they make some people feel uncomfortable? As a former teacher and school librarian, I often did pre-reading discussions with my students to provide them with background information and to put books in context so my students would have a better understanding of the stories and their characters.
Would the following poem, written by a Black American, have the same impact if the author had not used the “N” word? I think not.
Incident
BY COUNTEE CULLEN
(For Eric Walrond)
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171327
*****
Nikta,
I find it troubling that a school librarian would be in favor of censoring a work of literature. It think it would be better if you spoke out and defended the use of “Huckleberry Finn” in the schools as it was written by Twain.
First, let me say that I am a school librarian who made it through his 1L year. Fierce defender of fine literature – that’s in the job description. But I see the point for the change.
The reason for the change is a simple one. Huckleberry Finn is one of the most frequently banned books in the United States SOLELY due to the use of the word “nigger”. Or at least that is the stated reason. The real reasons are the meat of the book – the examination of Jim and his treatment and how much we haven’t changed as a society. But “oh, that book has that dirty ‘n’ word!!!!” gets everyone all a-flutter.
Supposedly Prof. Gribben (distinguished, if not THE foremost Twain scholar in America today) is writing a forward explaining his alterations. I look forward to reading his forward, and to seeing the arguments now against the re-introduction of Huckleberry Finn into school curricula.
Update:
http://www.mynorthwest.com/category/local_news_articles/20110105/Librarian-of-the-Year-disagrees-with-Huckleberry-Finn-edits/
Dr. Harris: Yours is the most elegant and vivid accounts of what it is like to be “different” in our society. All of us are different in one way or another, but some–like yourself–are more different than most. Again, you make an elegant statement, using a shock word to drive home your point. If you had not used that word, your account would have lost much of its power. And that is the point of this entire discussion. Of subtracting from a work of art by trying to edit the offensive from the delicate sensibilities of the average reader. My goodness, we must not let our impressionable young people be shocked out of their anomie! They might begin thinking on their own, without prompting.
It is plain to me that words can never have a plain, one-to-one correspondence between a given word and its perfectly unique meaning and meanings can never have a plain, one-to-one correspondence between a given meaning and its perfectly unique word symbol. Is my meaning plain, even if my word are not?
Given my being autistic as I am, I resort to dictionaries as part of my effort to discover whether intelligible communication will ever be plausible; without plausibility, how could possibility ever come to fruition?
From “The American Heritage College Dictionary, Third Edition” (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, New York, 1997) {the dictionary I bought for fine-tuning my word usage in my dissertation}, page 922:
[bold on]nig[dot]ger[bold off] [pronunciation omitted] [italics on]Offensive slang.{italics off] [bold on]1.a.[bold off] Used as a disparaging term for a Black person. [bold on]b.[bold off]Used as a disparaging term for a member of any dark-skinned people. [bold on]2.[bold off] Used as a disparaging term for a member of any socially, economically, or politically deprived people. [word origin descriptors omitted]
As I am an autistic person, I find I am a member of a socially, economically, and politically deprived people. All autistic people thus are, by definition, niggers for as long as autism is always a mental disorder or defect or disease by consensus definition — said consensus invariably excluding those who are autistic and/or are niggers..
Under penalty of perjury, herewith, I resoundingly affirm that I am, have always been, and (because the past cannot be changed by merely denying it) expect always to be a nigger. I am neither proud nor ashamed of being a nigger, yet I regard so being as among the very most difficult, yet beautiful and cherished, aspects of my life.
When I was in grade school, living in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, I was able to pass, to pass as though not a nigger and not autistic. In these facts of my life, I set out to deceive no one, yet the difficulties I have in finding word that accurately convey my intended meaning(s) kept me from effectively sharing what I knew and understood with others. As I never know for sure that nothing of my life will I ever effectively share with others, I make the effort to communicate of which I find myself capable, even to the extent of regularly becoming heartbroken.
When I was in grade school, living in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, being able to pass, I sometimes played “children’s games” with neighborhood children. “Eeny, Meeney, Miney, Moe; Catch a Nigger By the Toe; If He Hollers, Let Him Go; Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe; Youre IT!. Words have no plain meaning. I knew what a nigger was, my playmates evidently did not. There is more than one form of nigger. For me, the nigger in that “Who is IT” jingle was, is, and always will be, a little harmless, gentle, furry pretend animal without a tail, and about the size of a gentle, playful month-old kitten without claws who never bites anything alive. To catch a little harmless furry kitten-like nigger, one can only catch it by one of its toes, there is nothing else one can grab on to without hurting the nigger. But little harmless furry kitten-like niggers object to being caught, they are meant to harmlessly go about sharing kindness and decency with anyone and everyone, including people who do not yet know or understand that fact.
No wonder I have met with scorn and derision from some folks who never troubled themselves to know me.
As I am writing these words, I am listening to music, Jeff Ball (on a compact disk, Reverence, Red Feather Music RF3003), track 1: “Out of the Darkness”
Not only because people who identify as black identify my maternal grandmother as black, not only because I have close family members who identify as black, but because, by every definition that makes any useful sense to me, I am a nigger and I rejoice in the gift of so being.
Ain’t gonna be nobody done take that from me, In world of due process, I done did pay my dues.
I know my main man, even if you don’t; even if you believe me not.
The late Lewis B. Smedes, as a Professor of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote, “Forgive & Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve” (Harper & Row, 1984) describes ways of forgiving past hurts. However, I take intense exception to the premise I find implied in his book title. I live my life in accord with, “Forgive & Remember: Remembering First Forgiving & Forgiveness.”
I take umbrage beyond transcending the infinite at the atrocity of denying to those given lives of being niggers the right to have lived their lives by replacing meangful words with meaningless ones..
Palliation and sequestration of the errors of the past, such that it is as though the lives of those damaged and destroyed by disparaging denigration is as though to deny validity to people who lived lives unfathomably heroic and beyond heroic is; to me, like the mutilation of a corpse, the denial of the spirit of truthful decency, and the assured pathway of humanity pursuing the endless recidivism of ever-increasing compounded atrocities.
As I find quoted at the beginning of the Introduction of Steve de Shazer, “Words Were Originally Magic” (W. W. Norton, 1994):
He impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well. — C. Auguste Dupin, The Murders in the Rue Morgue…
The way I live is rather well told in “Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self” (Kabir Edmund Helmniski, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1992). To know what I mean by that, you will need to read, to study, and come to understand Helminski’s book, unless you have already so done..
From Helminski, the page before page 1:
[italics on]The Master said: There is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but did not forget that, then there would be no cause to worry; whereas if you performed and remembered and did not forget every single thing, but forgot that one thing, then you would have done nothing whatsoever. It is just as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out a specific task. You go and perform a hundred other tasks; but if you have not performed that particular task on account of which you had gone to the country, it is as though you have performed nothing at all. So man has come into this world for particular task, and that is his purpose; if he does not perform it, then he will have done nothing. -“DISCOURSES OF RUMI[italics off] (Translated by A. J. Arberry)…
From Helminski, page 152:
Water says to the dirty, “Come here.”
The dirty one says, “I’m so ashamed.”
Water says,
“How will your shame be washed away without me.”
– RUMI, [italics on]MATHNAWI[italics off], II, 1366-67
Who remembers Godfrey Cambridge, about six minutes into the movie, “The President’s Analyst,” describing, in character, his second day of school? “Run, Run”? “Here comes the nigger.”?
Here comes Brian the Nigger, who, as fact, believes he may have come into this world for a particular task; a task of harmlessly going about sharing kindness and decency with anyone and everyone, including people who do not yet know or understand that fact.
Of no person who desires to deceive the future about the past by changing meaningful words into meaningless ones will I tolerate their so doing, for, were I tolerate such doing, while affirming such people as would so do, would not I guarantee that, with my life, I will have done nothing?
It is not the way of truth to replace a correct, albeit misunderstood, word with an incorrect and more greatly misunderstood word. Better to use the correct word, and identify, and then use, its correct-in-context meaning?
Or, am I mistaken and mistaken about being mistaken? Do I niggardly niggle with the proper meaning of nigger? If so, what more could be expected from Brian the Nigger?
Some years ago, another person who matches my personal definition of “nigger” remarked to me, to the effect, “What you say makes more sense to me than anything else I ever heard in my whole life.” My nigger friend went on, also saying, in effect, I know that I will never be able to tell others what it is like for us, but I think you may some day be able to do that. If you ever find that you can tell, please do so, for us, and for everyone else.”
Run, Run? Where is there to run to that is not here, where we already are?
Run, Run? Here comes Brian? I know what it is like for us. I live what it is like for us. In the salt mine. Who is everyone else? The only people I have known are not everyone else. I have only known us, us niggers. Methinks no one else exists.
Why not admit the evident truth? Is it not manifestly apparent that we, everyone and everyone else, are as though in a great darkness, thus niggers, together making the effort to come “Out of the Darkness” and into the light?
Having been told about them, that they are not like us, I have searched everywhere possible, in every way possible, for a them; all I have ever found is us.
Reverence. Out of the Darkness! Reverence for Life! Into the Light…La Kayim!