MONTGOMERY, Ala. — 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.
Twain scholar Alan 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 said.
Yet Twain was particular about his words. His letter in 1888 about the right word and the almost right one was "the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
The book isn't scheduled to be published until February, at a mere 7,500 copies, but Gribben has already received a flood of hateful e-mail accusing him of desecrating the novels. He said the e-mails prove the word makes people uncomfortable.
"Not one of them mentions the word. They dance around it," he said. AP
http://www.suntimes.com/news/3176866-418/twain-books-classics-gribben-deleted.html (http://www.suntimes.com/news/3176866-418/twain-books-classics-gribben-deleted.html)
This is frustrating beyond my ability to express! It is nothing short of "censorship" and in my opinion also amounts to infringement of copyright law or something along those lines.
It just goes to show how arrogant America as a society has become from my perspective. Has it become so prevalent that we now have to impose political correctness retroactively to the point where we are now taking revered classic works of art and making them comply with what those in power deem to be "the correct way"? Bullshit!
I suppose that pretty soon we will see classic works by the master painters depicting nudes in our national art galleries cloaked in dark cloth? Or will we see history repeat itself by replicating the acts of an early pope, who took a hammer to statues that were so complete as to display the male genitalia, moving him to crack them all off with said hammer?
The word is "******", and yes I personally find it offensive as do many modern day white American people; but that isn't really the point is it? The point is, how can we realistically expect our children to understand how we as a nation and people, have grown and progressed, if we do not accurately represent our mistakes within history? With what measure can they be expected to gauge our progress, or lack of it, if we do not provide to them the proper and uncensored information with which to establish an accurate baseline?
Isn't part of education to receive an accurate and complete picture of what was, and to use it as a comparison of what is today, and to utilize that comparison to better understand the path moving forward? Is it also not a goal to educate our future generations surrounding the ability to understand our history and to put it into its proper context; to teach them to divorce themselves from the inflammitory mistakes of our past, and to properly deal with the emotional ramifications of those mistakes in present day context?
Have we become so jaded and ashamed of our "history" as to suddenly find it so disturbing that we want to "shield" our children from them regardless of the cost; and despite the fact that depriving our children of this knowledge we are thereby dooming them to repeating those mistakes? Please, get a grip people!
Perhaps it is because our so called educators are afraid to broach the subject of derogatory terminology and our racial / racist history, and they are too lazy to properly teach our children to deal with the specter of our past and the emotional responses it elicits from us?
Sure Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are works of fiction, but for decades these classic works of literature have been heralded as accurate and exemplary representations of life as it used to be in this country, and along the way they attained admiration. Why is this all of a sudden a problem?
Mostly denial by those who don't want to face how deeply ingrained racism is/was in this country.
An uncomfortable reminder.
AGAIN, I agree with you PH.
Well said!
I agree, it's damned annoying. I vote "leave it alone", but no one cares what Sandy Eggo thinks ;D They'll do what they want.
Quote from: Palehorse on January 06, 2011, 10:43:50 AM
I suppose that pretty soon we will see classic works by the master painters depicting nudes in our national art galleries cloaked in dark cloth? Or will we see history repeat itself by replicating the acts of an early pope, who took a hammer to statues that were so complete as to display the male genitalia, moving him to crack them all off with said hammer?
We've actually already had some of that crap happening. Did you forget what John Ashcroft did to the statues at the Justice Department after being named Attorney General of the U.S.?
Here's a lil' review for ya'. :wink: :biggrin:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/29/statues.htm
I think it should be left alone, too. If someone's parents object to their child reading it then they could be assigned a different book. Too much pc.
Quote from: Locutus on January 06, 2011, 01:18:53 PM
We've actually already had some of that crap happening. Did you forget what John Ashcroft did to the statues at the Justice Department after being named Attorney General of the U.S.?
Here's a lil' review for ya'. :wink: :biggrin:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/29/statues.htm
Indeed I had forgotten! But, see there yah go then! This is all bullshit! They need to get their big girl/boy drawers on and stop all this fake religious piety and covering up dammit! (Figuratively and literally) :mad: :mad: :mad:
Whats next, an international indictment of Da Vinci, etc for pornography???? Dammit all this money they're spending to try to fool the world/nation could be put to much better use in feeding the hungry and housing the homeless!!! :mad:
Quote from: Anne on January 06, 2011, 01:19:48 PM
I think it should be left alone, too. If someone's parents object to their child reading it then they could be assigned a different book. Too much pc.
Why should they be assigned a different book?
Quote from: Palehorse on January 06, 2011, 01:43:46 PM
Indeed I had forgotten! But, see there yah go then! This is all bullshit! They need to get their big girl/boy drawers on and stop all this fake religious piety and covering up dammit! (Figuratively and literally) :mad: :mad: :mad:
Whats next, an international indictment of Da Vinci, etc for pornography???? Dammit all this money they're spending to try to fool the world/nation could be put to much better use in feeding the hungry and housing the homeless!!! :mad:
Hell, that's no fun for them. The frickin' crusaders for morality are too used to being "holier-than-thou" to stop.
Ray Stevens called them "Bertha-better-than-you."
Quote from: followsthewolf on January 06, 2011, 01:58:15 PM
Why should they be assigned a different book?
I guess because their parents haven't taught them right from wrong. It is fairly common practice, I think, that if someone or their parents object to a particular class or book the student is given an alternative.
The "Do Gooders" are idiots. Leave the N word in. That was the way it was written. That's the way they thought back then. It's history. Everybody with a cross to bear wants to rewrite histroy and turn a fact into a lie.
That would be like writting a book about George W. and leaving out that he was a idiot, fool and just plain stupid. That's the facts and the history of George W. Bush. :biggrin: :yes:
Quote from: Anne on January 06, 2011, 04:27:41 PM
I guess because their parents haven't taught them right from wrong. It is fairly common practice, I think, that if someone or their parents object to a particular class or book the student is given an alternative.
I agree with your assessment.
I also think it is a shame to alter a course of study because of the failure of parents to properly prepare their children for the world.
Quote from: Anne on January 06, 2011, 04:27:41 PM
I guess because their parents haven't taught them right from wrong. It is fairly common practice, I think, that if someone or their parents object to a particular class or book the student is given an alternative.
And that is just one symptom of what is entirely wrong with today's PUBLIC education system. The course curriculum is what it is, and has been approved for use in providing education to
everyone in the system. (
Part of the reason for the removal of religion is exactly because the public education system is supposed to be for
everyone and not just Xtians).
My thoughts are that if a parent has a problem or issue with the material(s) or subject(s) being taught within the school system, then they have the right to discuss it with the head of the program(s), and minus the obtainment of an understanding acceptable to both sides of the issue, those same parents have a choice; accept it and move on or pursue education within a private venue.
The other side of this is that providing an alternative to the child is restricting his/her ability to develop the skills necessary to express their thoughts on the material being assigned. Why should a child or parent's objection to material being assigned have any validity surrounding the assignment? If it is a report the child is to write on the material, then let him/her express their objection(s) within the report. If it a classroom discussion, then why do we silence the detractors surrounding the material and thereby deprive the group of the opposing perspectives, and the opportunity to consider them? Coddling children (and their parents) is not the answer here! The development of the skills necessary to debate the opposing perspectives within a given subject are best learned early.
Diverting the curriculum to meet the individual needs of one or even three within a given course negatively impacts the process for the larger group proportionately, by dividing the teacher's attention between the various objectives. This substantially reduces the quality of the retention of knowledge for the students and is a severe hinderance to the effectiveness of the process for all. Unacceptable. Just as the censorship of classic literature is.
You want religion in your child's school? Send them to a religious institution of learning and pay for it yourself, because the public system is what it is.
You want your child "shielded" from racial history and learning from this society and country's past mistakes? Then find a school system (private) that sees things the same way and pay to send your kids there!
The public system exists to assure an equal, accurate, and thorough education for every child. You don't have to use it if you do not want to. Feel free to pay for your children's private education if you feel so strongly about whatever it is you find objectionable within the public curriculum.
Now, you also have the right to talk to your children about the content of their school work, and to "teach" them your personal beliefs surrounding its content, etc., and no one is standing in your way toward doing so. In fact, I'd dare say that if most parents sat down and put forth a sincere effort to discuss Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer with their child, they themselves just might learn a thing or two!
But if we sincerely desire our children to become educated and along the way obtain the ability to critically analyze the information they receive, as well as obtain the ability to exist as a socially well adjusted individual within society, then shouldn't we allow them the opportunity to do so and arrive at their own decisions? Sheltering children from the reality that is our history, our legacy, and our very existence, is depriving them of the ability to do each of these things and forcing them toward a life of maladjustment! It is unnecessary and downright cruel, and if you as a parent sincerely feel that a child is emotionally "not ready" for certain materials, then why aren't you getting off your respective asses and putting in the time and work necessary to help them catch up yourself? Teaching is, after all, an integral part of parenting. . .And if you cannot handle that, then what makes you think that you have the right to impose your will upon your child's public education???
Palehorse posted:
" In fact, I'd dare say that if most parents sat down and put forth a sincere effort to discuss Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer with their child, they themselves just might learn a thing or two!"
I believe there is an alarmingly large number of parents who don't have a clue why Samuel Clemens wrote those seemingly simple (but incredibly complex) novels the way he did and why he used the language he did. He was not a simple man.
Most parents who raise issues with a school system over curriculum have already made up their minds about the situation before they meet with anyone, and only have the meetings because they believe that they will change the course of study.
Quote from: followsthewolf on January 06, 2011, 05:27:55 PM
Palehorse posted:
" In fact, I'd dare say that if most parents sat down and put forth a sincere effort to discuss Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer with their child, they themselves just might learn a thing or two!"
I believe there is an alarmingly large number of parents who don't have a clue why Samuel Clemens wrote those seemingly simple (but incredibly complex) novels the way he did and why he used the language he did. He was not a simple man.
Most parents who raise issues with a school system over curriculum have already made up their minds about the situation before they meet with anyone, and only have the meetings because they believe that they will change the course of study.
Indeed FTW. Indeed!
I suspect those who are objecting to the literature of Mr Clemens, never really understood the material during their own opportunity to learn from it as children themselves. And that is either due to the poor state of teaching during their time in school, or the failure of their own parents to follow through surrounding their child's learning process; or both!
It's an ugly cycle in either case, and one that must be addressed and broken in order for the future of this country to rest on a solid foundation. And yet, incidents like the one that opened this subject, chip away at it each and every day! :mad:
I grew up with a mother who was what I would call today, a religious zealot. Dad had his own belief system and it certainly did not include going to church or any form of organized religion. But when the two works of classic literature came up in my school work, and I was shocked at some of the terminology used within them, mom sat down with me each evening while I read my assigned portions of each book, and then we talked about whatever it was that bothered me, or the things I had questions about. And then the next morning, dad would follow up those conversations with some individual lessons on what he found offensive, and why, and how the literature was used to create a window in time for the reader, to show them how things were then. Then he always asked me for my thoughts on the things he had told me, and made sure to emphasize the thoughts that the literature was intended to evoke from the reader in the first place, when I expressed them myself.
Dad worked second shift back then, and looking back it was an outstanding effort on his part ( and mom's part as well) for him to drag himself out of the bed 1 1/2 to 2 hours before I was scheduled to be at school the next morning, just to make sure I understood the material I was reading, and had a pretty good grasp on it.
Later on in life I found out why mom made me leave my schoolbooks on the kitchen table before going to bed. She always told me it was so that I would know where they were in the morning and not forget them, and while it was partially true, the real reason was so that she could stay up and read my assigned chapters, and dad could read them when he got home from work that night.
I eventually came to recognize the herculean efforts my parents made in assuring that I and my 3 siblings were afforded the best possible opportunity toward learning. I'd like to think that it is the norm, but doing so is delusional I know. . . :'(
Your parents were, indeed, exceptional in their desire to help you understand the complexities of classic literature.
You were/are lucky to have been reared in such an atmosphere. Most of us were/are not so fortunate.
Some of us (as it was in my case) had terrific high school teachers and/or college professors who were passionate about teaching the classics.
Lots never cared about or spent any time trying to learn what was in those books.
Some still don't, and still have no desire to learn much, preferring to suck up opinions second-hand, much like small birds that depend on regurgitated worms for nutrition.
Sad.
Quote from: followsthewolf on January 06, 2011, 06:16:14 PM
Your parents were, indeed, exceptional in their desire to help you understand the complexities of classic literature.
You were/are lucky to have been reared in such an atmosphere. Most of us were/are not so fortunate.
Some of us (as it was in my case) had terrific high school teachers and/or college professors who were passionate about teaching the classics.
Lots never cared about or spent any time trying to learn what was in those books.
Some still don't, and still have no desire to learn much, preferring to suck up opinions second-hand, much like small birds that depend on regurgitated worms for nutrition.
Sad.
Yeah, I recognized that later on in life. Both of my parents graduated HS and dad had some college but never obtained a degree, but both emphasized education in our lives. And when it came to my own children, only then did I come to realize just how huge my parents contributions were. . . and come to appreciate them. Imagine my chagrin at never recognizing it before that! :spooked:
In the suburban / Chicago educational system we went through, it was sadly much the same way; some were great, but most were marginal at best. But, I had the great fortune of having parents that truly cared, and a few very exceptional teachers along the way as well. Especially in HS. Those men and women had a major impact upon my life, and it resonates to this very day in most cases. (And provided a bar against which I measured every single one of my children's teachers too).
I always held contempt toward those teachers that coasted though. I got "A's" in their courses, but I always felt cheated by them. I left their classes feeling unfulfilled and with no outlet for my questions and thoughts. I left hungering for more information on the topic(s) and at one point actually got sent to the deans office for taking the teacher to task right in the classroom during final exams, for their lethargy. :icon_twisted: (It's a damned shame when a high school student can actually arrive at the conclusion that they know more about a particular subject than the teacher, and that they could do a more efficient and effective job at teaching it). :spooked:
To this very day I am greatly motivated by the learning process, and I hunger for more. Had I had the means and funding I would still be in college and working on a doctorate or two. Or perhaps teaching myself. Nothing invigorates me more than a young person's thirst and enthusiasm for learning. . . Perhaps that is why I find myself addicted to this forum???? :spooked:
Well, if nothing else I am inspired by the fact that those much more enlightened than I, and respected, are also very much frustrated by this, and that we share the very same reasons for it as well!
P.C. insult to a Mark Twain classic
By Ron Powers, Special to CNN
January 6, 2011 4:58 p.m. EST
Editor's note: Ron Powers is the author of "Mark Twain: A Life" (Free Press, 2005).
(CNN) -- The vapid, smiley-faced effrontery of it corrodes the foundations of respect for American literature.
And the effrontery is the least of it.
NewSouth Books' announcement that it is bringing out a desecrated edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" -- in which faceless editors at this distinctly vanilla-flavored publisher will have excised every one of Mark Twain's brilliantly seditious employments of the evil word "******" -- has caught the fleeting notice of bloggers and pundits around the country.
The fleeting notice, let us stipulate. Most commentators have contented themselves with armchair witticisms: Next thing you know, they'll be painting Snuggies on the great European nudes and calling Othello a "nice man" instead of a Moor -- that sort of thing.
Keith Staskiewicz of EW.com, in a post reprinted on this website, actually refers to Twain's novel as a "product" and yawningly remarks, "It's unfortunate, but is it really any more catastrophic than a TBS-friendly re-edit of 'The Godfather,' you down-and-dirty melon farmer?"
Yes, Keith, it is. It really is.
It gets worse: The progressive Mother Jones' blogger Kevin Drum considers the announcement and goes positively limp. "(T)he problem with 'Huckleberry Finn,' " he writes, "is that, like it or not, most high school teachers only have two choices these days: teach a bowdlerized version or don't teach it at all." If bowdlerization is inevitable, in other words, lie back and enjoy it.
But why should this evisceration of America's greatest novel -- let's dispense with that quaint term "bowdlerization" -- be inevitable? Who is NewSouth Books, and by what tradition, by what authority, should its editors be forgiven for disfiguring one of the most challenging, and instructive works of art ever published?
The "who" of NewSouth: It is a Montgomery, Alabama-based publisher of books with ingratiating titles such as "Alabama, One Big Front Porch," whose grandmotherly author clucks on about how life in the state has always been about folks gatherin' on summer nights to tell tales and to talk family. Selma notwithstanding.
And "The Other Side of Montgomery: Growing Up White in the Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement," a comfy, Haley Barbour-esque memoir about the "casual neighborliness" of the town in which Rosa Parks risked her life for a dignified ride on a bus.
The question of NewSouth's "authority" leads us into far more provocative territory. The publisher has couched its announcement of the "******"-emancipated "Huckleberry Finn" in divertingly unctuous tones.
Its website offers "a word" about the new edition in which it bemoans the original author's use of "hurtful epithets" (including "injun"), which NewBooks has helpfully replaced with "less offensive words." And it cites the wise, enabling counsel of the scholar, Alan Gribben, who "compassionately" urged the publisher along its revisionist course.
Gribben was also quoted in a Publishers Weekly article in which he explained, "After a number of talks, I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person they said we would love to teach ('Tom Sawyer') and 'Huckleberry Finn,' but we feel we can't do it anymore. In the new classroom, it's really not acceptable."
That particular line of apology, as it happens, was brilliantly countered in the December 30 edition of the New York Daily News by the eminent Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Responding to an entirely separate attack on the legitimacy of racial slurs in the mouths of Twain's less-than-heroic characters, Fishkin wrote:
"It's ironic ... that the principle (invoked) to ban Mark Twain's anti-racist classic -- that books filled with the N-word shouldn't be taught -- would also ban from the nation's classrooms many of the greatest and most inspiring works by black writers in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Cutting n-word from Twain not censorship
"The N-word is key to critiques of racism found in nonfiction from Frederick Douglass' "Narrative," to W.E.B. Du Bois' "Souls of Black Folk," to Richard Wright's "Black Boy," to James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son," to "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."
Fishkin concludes: "To expose a racist society for what it is, you have to show racists as they are, speaking as they would speak. ... Taking one of the greatest American anti-racist novels out of schools because the persistence of racism today makes the book's language painful is wrongheaded and counterproductive."
Is Twain's inspired irony really so hard to grasp? And are today's public school teachers really so enfeebled and so intimidated that they cannot teach it?
The timing is unfortunate. This year is the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession from the Union, which ignited the Civil War. This anniversary has been marked thus far by elaborate celebrations -- balls, parades, theatrical re-enactments -- celebrating the great event ("an act of tremendous political courage," a ball sponsor from the Sons of Confederate Veterans called it) and by even more elaborate denials, contrary to overwhelming historical evidence, that the rebellion had anything whatsoever to do with slavery.
Denials and other lies, amplified enough, congeal into contaminated legitimacy -- "fake reality," in Leo Rosten's phrase. Whitewash washes white not only its target but, over time, any memory of the target. That is the purpose of whitewash.
Denying the role of slavery in triggering the Civil War and denying Twain's insight that "******" was prevalent and dehumanizing enough in that era to irradiate his most enduring anti-racist literature feed into the same polluted basin: the spreading pool of disinformation about America's past.
Whether these assaults on history are intentional or merely fatuous hardly matters. The people involved, in both instances, should know better.
Oh, and, sorry: It is not enough that NewSouth Books plans to replace the N-word with "slave." Huck's companion Jim is a slave -- no getting around that. But the latter word, unlike the former, has lost most of its emotional impact in this century and a half after abolition.
Call me a cynic. But I know this territory. I've been there before. We've all been there before.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/06/powers.huck.finn/index.html?hpt=C1 (http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/06/powers.huck.finn/index.html?hpt=C1)
And that's why, many years ago when I started teaching, I taught The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer exactly as they were written -- as a satire on the Antebellum South and an accurate representation of the deeply entrenched racism of the time.
The resistance I encountered was surprising, given the northern location and what seemed to be the prevailing attitude of equality within the community.
Nevertheless, the vestiges of racial attitude even there were surprising to me at the time, probably because of my youth and being naive. Today, I would not be surprised at all.
It's all sad. It's very sad. I'm beginning to lOse hope for the future of our country. Thinking isn't valued anymore.
It seems like an off topic comment,but it's not. How many times has reading caused you to make comparisons, do analysis, or thirst to know more and understand? For me, almost everytime. The classics never fail to inspire me. I get on these reading jags and can't stop until the thought stream is played out.
So now, let's dumb them down, censor them so there's nothing left to think about. Who needs to be offended? Shocked? Appaulled? Enthused? Encouraged? Challenged? Certainly emotion can't inspire the love of reading?
I'm on a tangent and I'm sorry. This just really upsets me.
Quote from: Sandy Eggo on January 06, 2011, 08:42:08 PM
It's all sad. It's very sad. I'm beginning to lOse hope for the future of our country. Thinking isn't valued anymore.
It seems like an off topic comment,but it's not. How many times has reading caused you to make comparisons, do analysis, or thirst to know more and understand? For me, almost everytime. The classics never fail to inspire me. I get on these reading jags and can't stop until the thought stream is played out.
So now, let's dumb them down, censor them so there's nothing left to think about. Who needs to be offended? Shocked? Appaulled? Enthused? Encouraged? Challenged? Certainly emotion can't inspire the love of reading?
I'm on a tangent and I'm sorry. This just really upsets me.
I don't think your post is a tangent at all, I believe it goes to the very core of why this action is wrong and why it is indeed one of the worst choices our educators can make surrounding the enlightenment of our future leaders.
I whole-heartedly agree with you on every single point you make. It is a
key attribute of what everyone who is opposing this action is saying! :yes:
The fact that classics cause one to be offended, shocked, appalled, encouraged, challenged, etc, is one of the primary reasons they are classics.
The emotional response that triggers thinking is the reason they were written in the first place.
Hang in there, Sandy, the Philistines haven't pushed all cogent reasoning out of this country yet.
Not as long as threads like this exist.
Quote from: followsthewolf on January 06, 2011, 09:04:57 PM
The fact that classics cause one to be offended, shocked, appalled, encouraged, challenged, etc, is one of the primary reasons they are classics.
The emotional response that triggers thinking is the reason they were written in the first place.
Hang in there, Sandy, the Philistines haven't pushed all cogent reasoning out of this country yet.
Not as long as threads like this exist.
Exactly my friend! Spot on!