1871 Mathew Brady portrait of Twain, from Wikimedia Commons
Should teenage students read novels filled with n-word references? Is that even appropriate for public school curricula? At least one publisher doesn’t think so.
New South has put together a volume of Mark Twain’s two most famous novels that bucks several publishing traditions. Here’s how they describe it:
In a radical departure from standard editions, Twain’s most famous novels are published here as the continuous narrative that the author originally envisioned. More controversial will be the decision by the editor, noted Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben, to eliminate the pejorative racial labels that Twain employed in his effort to write realistically about social attitudes of the 1840s.
Gribben points out that dozens of other editions currently make available the inflammatory words, but their presence has gradually diminished the potential audience for two of Twain’s masterpieces. “Both novels can be enjoyed deeply and authentically without those continual encounters with the hundreds of now-indefensible racial slurs,” Gribben explains.
So, is this political correctness run amok? Another example of how easily we destroy our cultural heritage and fictionalize our collective history in service to presentist hyper-sensitivities?
Or does Gribben, a professor at Auburn University, make a reasonable point about the importance of not glorifying gratuitous deployments of racial epithets, not even under the protective cover of art?
The publisher and editor argue that nothing is lost when we translate Twain’s characters’ uses of the word “nigger” into something less discordant to our modern sensibilities, less racially charged: slave. But couldn’t we consider that discordance valuable to any contemporary reading of the work, maybe just as important as Twain’s literary virtuosity?
And slave? Was that the best choice? Not “colored,” not “negro,” not “nigga” (for the hip-hop high schoolers), but slave. What’s lost in translation from nigger to slave? The two aren’t really equivalent, even if Twain himself did eventually renounce the word. (Who knows, Twain might be smiling in his grave.)
Is this a mere distortion of American history? Or a valuable lifeline to high-school teachers who want to assign this classic but fear that its liberal use of the n-word would be far too dangerous and explosive for their contemporary students to productively negotiate. Indeed, there are over 200 nigger references in Huckleberry Finn alone. And the book has allegedly been removed from the curricula of several school districts specifically because of its racist language. Some parents have been demanding no less. (Though maybe we should be just as worried about what a Twain-like depiction of contemporary conversations between youngsters might find them saying.)
But de-niggerizing Huckleberry Finn doesn’t necessarily inoculate teachers from the danger of teaching that 19th century text in an offensive way. If anything, it might just give us all an inflated sense of protection from the most dishonorable aspects of our nation’s history.
Is this what we mean by post-racial? If so, it is a good example of the difference between repression and transcendence.
46 Responses to Censoring Twain
wbgleason - January 5, 2011 at 11:13 am
When I was in high school, an attempt was made to censor what we could read. Being obnoxious, even then, I went to the Carnegie Free Library in Pittsburgh and checked out the book.
So, I guess I favor the uncensored version. Where else to have a teaching moment but in high school?
Bill Gleason
(ps. Nice to see you back, Professor Jackson)
marcbousquet - January 5, 2011 at 12:17 pm
I for one welcome this edition–I wouldn’t describe this substitution as “censorship,” but more simply as “editing.” There’s room for lots of editions, especially in hypertext: one can provide dozens of different editions and toggle back and forth between them. I see no harm and much good in adding another edition to a work widely available in a variety of ways.
For perspective, consider the work of textual scholar Hershel Parker, whose romantic theory of editing has been applied under the imprimatur of many distinguished grant-funded projects. Believing that author’s revisions frequently represented pressured reconsiderations (concern about the public’s reaction, an editor, spouse or friend’s bad advice, etc), Parker often reversed authorial revision in an effort to reconstruct what he contended was the author’s inspired original intention. There were often many choices for Parker to revert to: multiple crossings out in a manuscript, multiple alterations in successive lifetime printings, etc: which was “right,” even by Parker’s loose standard? See Parker’s role in producing the text of the Library of America Melville edition, for example.
We give Parker millions to reconstruct what Melville would have published if his editor or friends hadn’t interfered. We happily watch performances of Shakespeare in altered or redacted language–there’s a whole essay in acting as translation here, even when the “original language” is used. We routinely expect the Supreme Court (ok, not this one!) to navigate “original language” for us. In the end, I think the best comparison to this kind of editorial work is translation: the editor is translating the work into a language in which aspects of the work can be better understood by some readers. As in all translations (and other editorial decisions, right down to typography), things are both lost and gained. Translation is additive; “censorship” is repressive.
Great post, John.
missoularedhead - January 5, 2011 at 1:34 pm
I personally find it difficult to wrap my head around this idea. Then again, I’m not a fan of adulterating Shakespeare, either, so there’s that.
I just think that removing the word effectively ends some conversations in the classroom that could be very fruitful. Such as talking about the word itself and why it has the power it does, how we’ve changed (or not) our understanding of race, and the re-purposing of the word by rap artists (which, let’s face it, are a big part of student’s listening pleasure). It also makes the book less powerful — the casual use of the word by someone who likes Jim, and sees him as a person, not just a slave, says something profound about the relationship of African slaves to whites in the 19th century. Students aren’t going to get that, and it’s s shame.
And for the record, students are smarter than we seem to think (or than school boards, it seems). They GET why the word is there, and why it does what it does, and how it functions in the novel. Funny, then, that adults can’t seem to wrap their heads around this one.
wbgleason - January 5, 2011 at 2:36 pm
The always readable English professor (GWU) Margaret Soltan has this to say:
“I’m a Jew and an English professor. If I were so hurt and offended by every use of the word ‘kike’ and similar slurs — in a work of art that I refused to engage with the work, I’d not only be unemployed; I’d be an idiot,” Soltan told TheDC. “You cannot grasp Huck’s ethical transformations in Twain’s story without first grasping the truth of his attitudes as they express themselves in his speech.”
Soltan told TheDC that it’s probably a good thing if readers are offended by the term in Twain’s text because then they will have a strong understanding of the slur’s offensive implications.
“If his speech upsets you, that’s arguably all the better, since your response dramatizes the violence of the word, and the harsh reality of the attitudes it conveys,” Soltan said.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/05/literature-scholars-oppose-removal-of-n-word-in-censored-huck-finn/#ixzz1ABv1ubT7
markbauerlein - January 5, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Note that Huck isn’t an anomaly. Question for Marc: should texts by Frederick Douglass and Richard Wright undergo the same “editing”?
ruritania - January 5, 2011 at 3:43 pm
This is political correctness run amok. Another example of how easily we destroy our cultural heritage and fictionalize our collective history in service to presentist hyper-sensitivities.
jessekrosen1 - January 5, 2011 at 3:55 pm
For those who have forgotten their history, slavery was a largely non-racial institution before the 17th Century. Keep in mind the word itself comes form the same root as Slav – nothing to do with Africans.
By replacing nigger with slave the actual meaning of the word and its place in these two classics is lost. Its not just political correctness – it completely changes the sense of the stories.
I will keep my edition of these two works for my grandchildren.
livefreeordie2 - January 5, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Was your last sentence a statement or a question?
Assuming that it was a question, the answer is clearly repression. Changing the original text – and especially to a word with a completely different meaning – is an act of literary barbarity. It does indeed distort our history. What a shame that we’ve reached a point where we allow emotion and fear to outweigh intellect and learning. Our progeny, as Americans, cannot know who they are if they can’t honestly learn about who their progenitors were. That means emphasizing the good while still learning about and analyzing the bad. By doing this, all Gribben has done is give ignorance another victory.
cwinton - January 5, 2011 at 4:16 pm
This kind of after the fact “editing” is too much akin to someone deciding to correct Faulkner’s grammar. I certainly hope these folks have the decency to prominently term this an abridged edition (since that is most definitely what it is). That way readers are at least warned they are getting a version sanitized according to the whims of some “I know what’s best for you to be reading” mentality.
bondage2 - January 5, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Once, when I was invited to a high school to discuss Huckleberry Finn, I found myself addressing not only students, black and white, but a concerned black woman, a mother whose child was in one of the classes to which I spoke. I had shaped my presentation to deal initially with the issue of the word “nigger,” but to quickly move on to focus on more complex issues, like the novel’s portrayal of the good and decent folk being slave-holders and oppressors. However, the concerned mother insisted that I focus on the word. So I asked her, which would you rather be, a free nigger or a Negro slave? A Negro slave, she answered, without hesitation. And so she was.
David Bradley
lexalexander - January 5, 2011 at 4:18 pm
[[“You cannot grasp Huck’s ethical transformations in Twain’s story without first grasping the truth of his attitudes as they express themselves in his speech.”]]
This.
[[And for the record, students are smarter than we seem to think (or than school boards, it seems). They GET why the word is there, and why it does what it does, and how it functions in the novel.]]
Also this.
I am not familiar with the work of Hershel Parker and am no literary scholar, but I would be curious to know the basis for his belief that “the author’s revisions frequently represented pressured reconsiderations.” Absent explicit notes in the manuscript or elsewhere, how is he to know?
For me and most writers I know, writing is REwriting. When I change something, 99% of the time it’s because I think the change is BETTER, not because I’m trying to avoid offending anyone (you’d have to know me in real life to know how funny that idea is) or bowing to economic pressure. How is Parker to know whether an author’s original intention was, in fact, “inspired” rather than merely an early glimmer of an idea yet to be fully developed?
Most accusations of “political correctness,” I’ve found, come from people who are just pissed that they can no longer say gratuitously insulting, demeaning things without fear of repercussion. This, however, is not such a case. Mark Twain had a profound moral vision, he expresses it clearly in “Huckleberry Finn,” and he knew exactly what he was doing when he used the word “nigger.” To substitute “slave” for “nigger” in “Huckleberry Finn” is the very opposite of “additive translation”: The change diminishes the work and blurs the sharp moral viewpoint that gave rise to it.
forestd - January 5, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Changing the text of the author seems to me to be the height of arrogance and as others have said, an example of pc run amok. If the words in the text offend you, then for God’s sake don’t read the book, but at least give others the chance to make up their own mind. I’m truly glad this will be my last semester (after 23 years) in academia.
eacowan - January 5, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Censorship, which imposes a prior restraint upon the reader, is always bad. And the idea that a writer’s revisions do not matter very much. And the idea that such revisions were brought about by the solicitude of the writer’s closest friends or acquaintances. I’m glad that the perpetrator of this violation of Mark Twain’s text has at least pointed out what he has done. I’m also glad that there still exist editions that respect the authentic texts of these two masterpieces. (FWIW, back in the late 1940′s, when I was in grade school in Austin TX, I actually read aloud from _Tom Sawyer_ in a fourth-grade class. This was the chapter about the cat and the painkiller. My classmates thought this chapter was screamingly funny, and it is.
The author of a novel, or of the composer of an opera or a symphony, must be presumed to have known what he was doing when he published either the original or a later revision of a work. The final version, whatever the “problems” with the text, must be considered exactly that. As noted above, any third-party changes must be regarded as abridgements and such a text, when published, must be regarded as “inauthentic” and unacceptable. So it is here with bowdlerized texts of Twain’s two masterpieces. –E.A.C.
keithtravels - January 5, 2011 at 5:32 pm
I remember how cheated I felt reading a bowdlerized Macbeth in high school. In preparing for the exam, I reread the play in our World Library edition, and I was blown away by the humor of the Porter’s speech which somehow hadn’t made it into the textbook. It made me feel that the school was being dishonest, and certainly made me doubt the “truth” of the education I was getting (I did discuss the passage with my teacher, who was cagey about it).
If I had picked up an authentic copy of Huck Finn after having read the altered version (dare I say neutered version), I would have been stunned by the hypocrisy of it all. Surely we don’t need to communicate that kind of dishonesty to our students. On the other hand, the kids who checked the book out of the local library could certainly upset the apple cart. Might be kind of fun . . . Makes the novel doubly subversive.
physicsprof - January 5, 2011 at 6:09 pm
keithtravels, excellent point.
22118130 - January 5, 2011 at 8:29 pm
keithtravels, I had the same revelation when taking Latin in high school and translating some of the poems of Catullus. I looked up a translation of Catullus at the public library and was blown away by some of the poems that didn’t make it into the textbook. I am against bowdlerizing under any circumstances. If we’re going to do it to Twain, why not to William Burroughs? If the editor wants to put a word in context in a new edition of a work, why not a footnote at the outset to explain the use of an otherwise offensive term? I understand that students today might have trouble understanding the context in which Twain used the word. Explaining that is best left to footnotes and teachers. Leave the work of the author alone.
chuckkle - January 5, 2011 at 11:46 pm
Can someone explain who precisely objects to teaching the original Huck Finn, and why they have a problem with this word? Does this fall on a liberal vs. conservative difference? Or do both sides object to the novel?
Is Huck Finn taught “as is” in high schools and colleges with a specific conservative commitment? Is it taught “as is” in “liberal” prep schools, high schools, and colleges?
I think some of the English and foreign language lit dept readers on this list need to explain a bit more to those from other fields about editing and theatre and music faculty explain more about performance and the decisions that always go into staging plays, dance, concerts, opera, etc.
Chuck Kleinhans
rbannist - January 6, 2011 at 1:33 am
Have we become so thin-skinned and politically correct that we cannot leave alone two of America’s greatest contributions to literature alone? Is there not some value to discussing the societal and historical context of how and why the all-offensive word was used?
pocvecem - January 6, 2011 at 1:46 am
I have a feeling that the n-word may not disappear from students’ attention. All it takes is one student reading the Cliff Notes and sharing information in class or outside of class. (I’m assuming the little yellow booklet includes a brief summary of the word’s use.) And won’t THAT be an interesting chat with the teacher?
God Bless Cliff Notes!
marcbousquet - January 6, 2011 at 2:10 am
Believe me, I understand that for some responding here that this practice resonates emotionally as somehow parallel to knocking the penises off of sculpture and affixing fig leaves. In some cases such a parallel might be justified. I just don’t see that here, personally.
What’s most useful about Parker’s theory and practice is that it highlights how _social_ writing, editing and publishing really are. If anything, Parker represents a more extreme version of the sentiments of most commenters here, who defend the author and his original text, whatever that was (normally a huge question for editors: in most paper editions, only one of potentially dozens of authorial versions of a text can be printed as the clean-ish master text; which one should it be? The earliest? The latest? The most popular? The one the editor judges “best”? The one that we prefer in this century?).
That is: Parker wants to get at authorial intention before various contemporaries, as he sees it, “interfered,” even when they convinced the author to make the change with considerations of cash or virtue–saying things like, “it won’t sell that way,” or “you’ll offend your uncle the Judge.”
Where does Parker’s quest for an imaginary writing soul free of social “interference” end? With cancelling the market for literary product? Cancelling an editor’s suggestions? Cancelling the wife’s suggestions? The publisher’s and editor’s, but not a literary mentor’s?
In short, your average scholarly editor is going to be intensely aware of the social forces enabling/constraining a text’s appearance and subsequent evolution, sometimes with an author’s blessing. The survival of a text is similarly freighted.
Skepticism about Parker’s project, however, leads to a broader skepticism about the possibility of presenting any version of a text as “unadulterated.” All writing is adulterated, in Parker’s usage: by the market, by author’s second thoughts,etc. The act of republishing/canonizing a book is an adulteration. Derrida c. 1981, etc etc.
We are in any event pretending massively if we think that we can get an author’s original intention, much less recapture the original scene of a work’s reception by contemporaries frequently utterly alien to our sensibilities.
This isn’t _1984_, where the existence of one version expresses an intent to alter all others. It’s simply one version of many, an addition or adaptation. I prefer many Shakespeare adaptations–including a couple of recent silent adaptations in DC and Sons of Anarchy’s version of Hamlet–to meticulous three-hour stone bores.
For that matter, there’s little reason to value the project of trying to determine which version is “truly original and authoritative” more highly than any other editorial project–such as trying to determine whether Twain might find the n-word no longer le mot juste for some of today’s young readers.
In answer to Mark Bauerlein: I have students read difficult poetry aloud by Amiri Baraka. I give them the choice, as individuals and as a group, of deciding how to render certain words and passages. I don’t think Baraka “should” be bowdlerized, but I’m not offended when students make the informed choice not to speak some of his language. Baraka’s an instructive counter-example: it’s pretty clear Baraka uses much of his language with an intent to shock or offend. Not so clear with Twain and the n-word. Furthermore, Baraka’s language has gotten him excluded from plenty of syllabi: so a better question might be why are we so worked up about one modest revision of a couple of Twain novels, when real censorship happens all the time?
Hell, I know dozens of faculty–on both contingent and tenure-track appointment– who daily experience greater violations of their academic freedom than this. Where’s the rage about that?
wbgleason - January 6, 2011 at 8:47 am
Marc-
You had me at penis whacker.
By the way, the “worse things happen in war” argument is not very convincing.
Best.
Bill Gleason
20ahabs - January 6, 2011 at 8:49 am
Unless Gribben also decided to eliminate or soften all references to “[white] trash” in the work, he’s practicing a fairly typical one-sided racial reading of the text. Admittedly, there is only one direct use of the word (Jim calls Huck trash), but the population described in Arkansas–as well as throughout Mark Twain’s work in general–are full of “poor white trash.” If this editorial idea is even partly about racial sensitivity then letting a racialized and classist epithet like “white trash” slide actually promotes the idea that poor whites are the last acceptable population to lampoon or satirize.
I only bring this up because I think it points to a limit in the kind of thinking that would allow for this kind of special editing in the first place. The line was drawn at “nigger,” because Mark Twain egregiously uses the word in the novel. But how should one engage in a discussion of the novel’s language as a marker of its supposed “Realism” (which brings up the old discussion of its greatness, Hemingway’s perspective on the novel, etc.) with this bowdlerized edition?
Ultimately, I guess publishing this edition really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. After all, there are so many editions of the novel already that this one just adds a wrinkle to the book-market as such–as other posters have said, it’s not as though the unedited version will cease to exist. And I hope responsible teachers will tell interested students to seek out the “original,” too.
22067030 - January 6, 2011 at 8:49 am
This sort of bowdlerization usually has little to do with not offending students, and a lot to do with not offending parents or the school board. A purely cynical analysis would be that Alan Gribben has detected a substantial market for bowdlerized Twain, and considering the size of the high school academic market, there may be money in it.
And a sideways glance at Hollywood — which produced those saccharin portrayals of young Huck floating down the Mississippi, occasionally but not necessarily accompanied by Jim — suggests that Gribben may have made a good marketing move.
Of course, the result of defanging Twain may be to make his book more like the McGuffey readers — which is probably what school boards would prefer, anyway.
—–GLMcColm
trendisnotdestiny - January 6, 2011 at 8:56 am
Where’s the rage about how inflation statistics are doctored to hide how stagnant wages have been in the middle and lower class over the last 30-40 years? Marc is correct here…
There are so many examples of this that normalcy bias has set in and a distracted professorate drift to the matters of medium consequence. Why not address the confluence of factors that is beheading the middle class currently; all in the name of globalization…..
My fear for some here at CHE is that they are going to wake up some day in the near future and find:
1) Their currency debauched via hyperinflation(POMO, QEI, QEII)
2) Their assets, retirement plans and homes worth very little
3) Their communities, municipalities, and states defaulting
4) Their ecologies fracked, polluted and barely livable
5) Their parents’ future income cut short (zero interest rates)
6) Their children’s future sold out into indentured servitude
7) Their neighborhoods increasingly violent, addicted & insane
8) Their views self-reliance/social darwinism about to be tested
Austin Goolsbee (an Whitehouse Economic Adviser) over the weekend started talking about the possibility of US government default (when talking about our debt ceiling) as a precursor to the future battles as the finds threads of the social safety net are sheared (medicaid, soc security and pension funds). Look folks, these are great discussions and all but you need to get your house in order to prepare for the new normal. When gold has gone $1450/oz and silver has appreciated 75% ($29/oz)in less than a year, it is pretty clear that there is flight out of fiat currency. The stimulus package effect is wearing off (especially at state/municipal levels) and worlds are about to change as many globalists see the fall of the dollar as the worlds’ reserve currency a necessity….. We need to turn situated awareness into shared awareness as to make change…..
The article, notwithstanding, Twain would be talking about the reality of censorship in larger places than his text…..
velvis - January 6, 2011 at 9:03 am
I’m not a fan of censorship – personal or parental restraint certainly- should my 5 year old (when I first saw the movie) be hearing or reading the n-bomb (as I was taught to call it) probably not. A 13 year old (when I first read the book) could handle it if the teacher weren’t afraid of being sued over saying the word in class.
Most of the readers of the chronicle are wise enough to know Twain and what and who he was really harpooning here…most other people aren’t and all they see are words; ignoring meaning, ignoring purpose and losing the lesson of those words.
Of course this could just be brilliant marketing and I bet the sales of both version will skyrocket.
bigfruitbasket - January 6, 2011 at 9:22 am
Of course, the editor is an Auburn University professor. A University of Alabama educated student or faculty member would never resort to censorship. That’s just not right. Roll Tide!
drj50 - January 6, 2011 at 9:46 am
I am puzzled by Marc Bousquet’s invocation of Hershel Parker’s attempts to get behind changes introduced by editors to the author’s real intent. The case of Twain seems exactly the opposite. There is (so far as I know) no indication that Twain’s editors forced this word on him. So the editors of the new edition appear to be doing exactly what Marc praised Parker for reversing. What am I missing here?
livefreeordie2 - January 6, 2011 at 9:46 am
No Bosquet. This is EXACTLY like knocking the penises off of statues and affixing fig leafs. Your comparison of changing the author’s words over a century later to advice or editing given contemporaneously is preposterous. And I’m not sure I even grasp how an author’s second thoughts somehow “adulterate” his published text.
“Why are we so worked up. . . when real censorship happens all the time?” Because that is the proper response to ANY literary censorship! You have it 180 degrees backwards. Baraka gets censored, so it’s okay to censor Twain? Huh? How ’bout this? We put an end to all literary censorship! You are defending the indefensible.
And while I don’t see this as a left vs. right issue, the problem is at least exacerbated by the political correctness of the left. It’s not the word that’s the problem – it’s the attitudes one can associate with that word. When that word is used, one must look to the context. Of course, in a PC world, white scholars are afraid to read that word aloud from a text for fear of being called a racist and context be damned. A decade ago, an aide to the mayor of Washington DC was forced to resign because he used the word niggardly and a black coworker was offended. Never mind that the word is etymologically unrelated to the “n-word,” it sounded similar. And there were other incidents involving the same word where the basic complaint was that someone using it wasn’t “sensitive.” In other words, those people should have been sensitive to the potential ignorance of others. In those cases, it wasn’t the attitudes that were racist, it wasn’t even the n-word used in a racist fashion, it was a completely different word, used appropriately, that a person with a limited vocabulary didn’t understand. Yet they are victims and we should genuflect to their ignorance because their feelings are more important than truth or knowledge or intellect.
It is an insane world where in a (minimally) scholarly discussion like this, we must substitute “n-word” for the real word. Somehow, if the real word is used, then the (non-black) person using it is a racist, context be damned. Perhaps from that, the genesis of an idea. Instead of substituting slave, perhaps the 200 or so references could simply be changed to “n-word.” And then in Tom Sawyer, we can change it to “I-word Joe.” And Tom can convince his friends to “W-word wash” the fence. Yes, let do that rather than teaching students the historical contexts. Let’s continue to allow student to think that it is somehow appropriate to judge historical events by the standards we continue normal today. Yep! And then tomorrow we can take any book with words that offend, throw them in a pile, and pull out the matches!
dank48 - January 6, 2011 at 10:28 am
Gribbens’ edition of Twain is a whitewash. It belongs in the same category as bowdlerized Shakespeare and Victorian “family Bibles” without the Song of Solomon, the rapes, the incest, the genocide . . . No, wait, they left the genocide in; just took out the sexy bits.
Look, if what Gribbens has done to Twain were legitimate, where does one stop? How about a “cleaned-up” Last Exit to Brooklyn? Better get that naughty language out of Another Country while we’re at it. For that matter, The Nigger of the “Narcissus” and “The Artificial Nigger” both need retitling. It’s okay: Selby, Baldwin, Conrad, and O’Connor are all dead, so they surely won’t mind being sanitized. Come to that, we can just burn everything Kurt Vonnegut wrote after Player Piano.
The real obscenity is not in the use of “nigger” or any other word in a literary work. The words are often if not always used by the author to draw attention to the obscenity of some people’s attitudes toward other people. The problem lies not with the author or the work but in, ah, insufficiently acute readings and readers. Those who can’t handle the language don’t belong in a college classroom, on either side of the desk.
markbauerlein - January 6, 2011 at 11:25 am
Marc terms this edition “one modest change.” If the change is modest, though, why go to the trouble of making it?
wbgleason - January 6, 2011 at 11:51 am
Very interesting discussion in the New York Times – Rooom for Debate – on this matter. Mark Bauerlein makes an especially cogent presentation.
Link: http://nyti.ms/e2DeUJ
Bill Gleason
marktropolis - January 6, 2011 at 12:27 pm
So, rather than get into the back and forth over using nigger (there, I said it), I thought I’d try and see who this Alan Gribben guy is, and perhaps get a sense of what would motivate someone to do what he is doing. After all, he seems to be making a lot of press over what the public might see as “not really a big deal.” After all, he is taking something “offensive” out of the classroom. So I hit the Google.
There, I came across a rather lengthy autobiographical piece (c. 1993) by Gribben in which he recounts his version of events leading up to his departure from UT Austin (http://wiretap.area.com/Gopher/Library/Article/Journey/gribben.txt). A few comments on that, then maybe I’ll have time to get back to the link that Gleason gives above and see what the NYTimes folks have to say. First, I have to think twice if your case has being defended by David Horowitz’s Heterodoxy magazine. Second, Gribben ends his piece with a list of “what can you do about this?” in which he asks the sympathetic reader to “Support resisting groups like University Centers for Rational
Alternativ es, the National Association of Scholars, Accuracy in
Academia, and the Center for Individual Rights.”
I know that’s enough for me to look askance (to sat the least) at Mr. Gribben’s attempt to whitewash Twain for today’s youth. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpo11TxSdVg
p.s., not often I agree in substance to livefreeordie2…
missoularedhead - January 6, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Suddenly, I have the urge to create a course out of banned novels…
trendisnotdestiny - January 6, 2011 at 1:38 pm
marktropolis,
Very convincing comments as usual; thanks for the time you spent clarifying Gribben’s role…. Comparatively, though, I wonder if Marc’s comment about censorship holds some larger truths: 1) data mining and scrubbing, 2) the legislative process/length of congressional bills up to the final hour lack of transparency, 3) FCC ruling about net neutrality and 4) hoards of other encroachments that privilege MSM’s commodified content.
Why does it take Twain for many to identify and voice concerns about censorship? In the financial milieu, this is a wack-a-mole commonplace.
Even tomorrow, there will be three major new events that occurred which directly relate to millions of people in this country that will be cleansed of its situated and shared meaning in hopes that ordinary folk would rather play guitar hero. For me, this is a case of falling over the dollars to get to the pennies…..
ejb_123 - January 6, 2011 at 3:44 pm
Mrcbousquet wrote, ” We give Parker millions to reconstruct what Melville would have published if his editor or friends hadn’t interfered. We happily watch performances of Shakespeare in altered or redacted language–there’s a whole essay in acting as translation here, even when the ‘original language’ is used.”
I think that removing the word “nigger” (as well as changing “injun” to “Indian,” according to the article in New York Times) in this new edition of _Huckleberry Finn_ is different than the Norton edition of _Moby-Dick_ attempting to reconstruct Melville’s final intentions based on the different American and British editions of the novel. Likewise, I see the new edition of _Huckleberry Finn_ as different than modernizing Shakespeare’s language or educators continuing to teach the conflated editions of plays such as _Othello_ and _King Lear_. What is happening with _Huckleberry Finn_ seems a form of historical revisionism masquerading under the guise of “good taste” and “ease.”
Of course, an educator can always replace the teaching of a fictional novel such as _Huckleberry Finn_ with a non-fiction text such as one of the many slave narratives, particularly Harriet Jacobs’s _Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl_. In fact, teaching a nonfition slave-narrative might actually be more instructive and insightful rather than teaching a fictional novel such as _Huckleberry Finn_ or _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_.
marktropolis - January 6, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Marc B’s stuff about Parker’s work has more to do with translation and “original intent.” Folks have been doing that with the Bible for years. But when you actually want to teach the text of the Bible, you go to the original as much as possible (if only to teach folks the pitfalls of translation). Years ago, I used to go to a Christmas Vespers service, and the first reading of Genesis was always done in Greek (of course, this was one of those small liberal arts places). But I digress.
What Gribben did wasn’t an attempt to gauge original intent. He was fundamentally changing meaning. He’s admitting to softening the language to make it more palatable. And my gut tells me he really just wants to make it more palatable for the grown ups – not the kids. Nigger, in all its derogatory, inflammatory glory, means the same thing now that it did then.
On a certain level, this reminds me of the situation in Georgia, where the incoming commissioner of Agriculture (a white republican, but who’s paying attention) has decided that the art that has been displayed for some 50 years – depicting slavery – should come down because “I think we can depict a better picture of agriculture” (see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/04/DDJ91H18GS.DTL&type=printable).
pacificgeezer - January 6, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Please send “millions” to Hershel Parker, who lives in reduced circumstances in a decayed California village, formerly a fishing port. He authorizes me to say that he did not run through millions of grant money. He had a Guggenheim back in the mid 1970s but never had a penny from NEH because he was politically incorrect, working on a dead white man. He never had a penny from the American Philosophical Society or any other benevolent organization. He says he donated his time to the Melville edition after the 1960s and further says that he did not have anything to do with the Library of America Melville, alas. Send those millions, please.
learnmore - January 6, 2011 at 10:37 pm
I do not know if there is a clear cut answer for this question. I am for freedom of expression, and not altering the arts but in the case of primary and secondary students, I think we need to think of their comfort level.
Most minorities, no matter what age they are, want to present themselves in the best light, and to be a good example for their race, cultural, or ethnic group, but this is difficult to do when you are reading and discussing a novel in class for weeks that at a minimum uses the “N” word 200 times.
I felt very uncomfortable as a graduate student when our class read and analyzed for weeks the Autobiography of Malcomb X. I was the only minority in the class and I felt uncomfortable with the portrayal of minorities and the language.
On the opposite side of the coin, maybe this is not a problem for some children/young adults given the fact that the “N” word is used regularly in rap songs, movies, and sometimes in everyday conversations with some people.
This brings me back to my initial statement….I do not know if there is a clear cut answer for this question.
jamesericwatkins - January 7, 2011 at 10:29 am
Taking the word out takes out more than just the word. It takes out the perspective of living in that time and place in history. And though it is a tale of fiction, it is nonetheless a lesson in history and must be taken as such.
natnabob - January 7, 2011 at 3:07 pm
You want kids to read this book right?
The best way to get kids to read this book is quit teaching it in high school. Say it’s too adult, too controversial, too hot to handle. Say (truthfully) that the parents forbid it. Ban it. Tell them it’s for mature college aged adults.
Then put it on the Internet.
ledzep - January 7, 2011 at 4:38 pm
@Marc Bousquet”For that matter, there’s little reason to value the project of trying to determine which version is “truly original and authoritative” more highly than any other editorial project–such as trying to determine whether Twain might find the n-word no longer le mot juste for some of today’s young readers. ”
That’s ridiculous. Editorial projects are not all created equal. Even if there is not always a clear-cut best choice, there are lots of choices that are straightforwardly bad, or at least useless. I could devise an algorithm to scramble the words of Huckleberry Finn and publish it as a piece of performance criticism or whatever, but other people have great reasons to think that that’s less worthwhile than producing a version (perhaps not the only version) that represents (even if imperfectly) something Twain actually had in mind. Similarly, I think we have good reason to trust Twain as an author whose decisions were (and remain) integral to his vision of the work, and good reason to want to come into contact with that vision. That contact may be mediated, but not all forms of mediation are equal.
It’s also weird to think about this edition as trying to determine what Twain would think young readers today need to hear in the work. If that were the rationale, then presumably more would be changed than just two words, right? How likely is it that a reincarnated Twain, embarking on a revised edition for current young people, would just switch a couple terms out without regard for context, without changing anything else? Especially, as some have pointed out, when ‘slave’ doesn’t even match up extensionally with the n-word? How much sense does Pap’s rant against the “free n– from Ohio” make when you replace the term with ‘slave’? No amount of critical perspective is going to make that decision equally valid.
[Getting on my soapbox] I grow so tired of ‘critical’ arguments or perspectives that depend entirely on false dichotomies. What’s the implicit premise in Bousquet’s remark? It seems to be something like this: Either there is one ideal edition possible that fully expresses the authorial intent of one indivisible person, whose intention can in principle be isolated from all social context and preserved in amber for all time, or … all editorial choices are equal. Um, no. There is ambiguity, as there is in many domains, but the landscape of editorial decisions, like the landscape of interpretations of a text, is not entirely flat.
wbgleason - January 7, 2011 at 4:45 pm
natnabob (of neg?)-
It’s already on the internet. You can download it to your computer or ebook reader for free at Project Gutenberg.
Bill Gleason
marktropolis - January 7, 2011 at 4:46 pm
natnabob: http://pd.sparknotes.com/lit/huckfinn/
Doesn’t seem to have helped…
stinkcat - January 7, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Bill,
That is why I am not sure that there is much practical effect of this revision. If the previous copies are there and practically free, it is not like they are burning the old copies. In fact, one could argue that by making the change they are bringing more attention to the old wording.
wbgleason - January 7, 2011 at 4:54 pm
Cat,
You are probably right. And they are free as in no cost to download. As I mentioned in my very first comment, kids will always find a way to get the unexpurgated version. But how many will?
And, as us Ivory Tower types like to say: It’s the principle of the thing.
Bill
marktropolis - January 7, 2011 at 6:22 pm
stinkcat – you could make that argument, but with the current state of K-16 education, there’s a very real chance this version of Twain will be the only one that the students come into contact with.
It would seem to me that all these folks yammering on about “original intent” as it relates to the Constitution (present company of course, excluded) might want to be consistent in that commitment. Kind of like how when the Tea Party Congress-critters went through the exercise of reading the Constitution in its entirety, they conveniently excluded the language about Negroes being 3/5 a person. But I digress…