In the original game of Trivial Pursuit, the brown pie piece represented the category covering Arts & Literature. I've often toyed with appropriating those categories for my own use on this blog, because sometimes the topics I cover don't fit within the categories I have. Today's Arts & Literature question (for the brown pie piece) is a subjective one: Does the publication of a revised Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to remove a certain offensive racial term detract from its overall value and importance as a major work of American literature?
According to Publisher's Weekly, NewSouth Books plans to release a new edition of Mark Twain's classic that removes all references to the notorious "n-word." (Yes, let's just get this out of the way: I see no reason to type out a word that I personally don't use. I don't mind being called a squish on this one). The primary intent (besides making a little extra money) is to reintroduce Twain's controversial work back into schools and libraries that have banned the book over the last several decades. Admittedly, it has been over 25 years since I read Huckleberry Finn, so I had to peek at its page on Wikipedia to refresh my memory on its major themes.
In principle, I am generally opposed to the attempt to alter an original work by one of the most acclaimed American authors. Twain's works were often controversial because the man himself was controversial. He held very strong views on a number of subjects, and his works were in part designed to illustrate those views through entertaining storytelling. Indeed, it is the controversial nature of Finn that necessitates its inclusion in the classroom, because the debate it engenders forces a hard look at the values of yesterday, against which the values of today can be compared (or contrasted). (Indeed, the hardest book I've ever read on racial topics was Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Hard, but eye-opening). If we whitewash the fence (ahem) that is Huckleberry Finn, we risk doing to Twain the same thing that has happened to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Few of us think of Swift's work as the satire and parody it was written to be. The context, without educational aids and discussion, is lost to us. Twain's work is not so far gone, but there are those who would just as soon see Twain disappear behind a vault as mysteriously as did Disney's Song of the South. Granted, not all works have redeeming value in and of themselves, but works that expose life as it was (and is) can be redeemed in the sense of what we learn from them. Twain could have softened his vernacular, yet he did not. From an artistic standpoint, what matters most is not just the words he used, but the story and the commentary he wanted to convey.
However, if by some chance this scrubbed edition of Huckleberry Finn changes the minds of book-banning administrators (still a difficult challenge, I think), then the question remains, will it detract from a substantive review and discussion in the classroom? I used to read through various volumes of the Reader's Digest abridged books. I did not know what I was missing because honestly, how could I know? I remember as a preteen reading an abridged Robinson Crusoe, but until a few years ago did not fathom just how much of the book's heart was actually "abridged." If Finn is exposed to the intellect of a new generation in a serious way, is that not a good thing even if the artistic vernacular is watered down so as to be less offensive? I'd like to be a steadfast purist on this, but I confess that I take a contrarian position with movies on TV that contain dubbed-over dialog. Such editing allows me to watch these movies with my kids, whereas I would be much less likely to allow them to watch the same in their original released format (until they are older anyway). With the dubbed-over language, the movies are more accessible to a broader audience. Therefore it is not such a stretch to think the same argument can apply to a book like Huckleberry Finn.
In the end, I find myself coming back to the position of the textual purist. While I can acknowledge the incongruity of taking this position with my leanings in the preceding paragraph, I believe we do a disservice to Twain's legacy to take his work and refashion it in our own image to fit our modern sensitivities. Although, if the author were alive today, I don't doubt for a moment that he might himself amend it if doing so helped him sell more books (he wasn't exactly proficient at managing money). It just seems to me to be an infringement on the artist's original intent. Still, if the end result of this new edition is that Huckleberry Finn finds itself in the hands of a greater number of students than before, I'll certainly find it difficult to grieve over such a perpetuation of a classic of American literature.
3 comments:
Jim - Although I have refrained from comment on previous posts (this is your story, not mine), I can't let this one go. It is the casual taken-for-granted disdainful treatment of African Americans (listen to me) that provides the baseline plot for Huck Finn. Removing the notorious "N-word" to avoid offense seems abundantly trivial when the obscenity was the treatment of AA's itself. Are we to believe there was no subjugation of an entire race? I suggest we need to face that reality head-on, rather than whitewashing the fence.
(In fairness, I am also not overly thrilled by any Biblical quote of other than King James heritage. I am similarly offended by the neutering of hymns in the Methodist Hymnal. "Good Christian FRIENDS, Rejoice?" Be real.)
I suppose I am a believer in "changing the channel" censorship. If I am offended by content, I don't view, read, or listen. But I don't ask the artist to paint so as to hide the warts. At some point our children need to see those warts. Don't fix the story, fix the librarian. Love, Dad
I very much appreciate the comment, and I think it adds much to the topic. I don’t disagree with any of it, (except perhaps on the matter of Bible translations and authoritative rendering of the original Greek and Hebrew, but that’s another matter). My initial reaction to the Huckleberry Finn report was quite negative, and as I said, I come down firmly in the camp of leaving it as the author intended it to be. On the argument of whether such a revision “should” be done, clearly I’m opposed. But knowing that the revision “will” be done regardless of that position, I do wonder what the real world impact will be. Will replacing the occurrence of a word change the story? Will it allow for reintroduction to the classroom? Will a substantive analysis and discussion of the book occur in the classroom? On each of these, I can only speculate.
It is the juxtaposition of the principle vs. the practical. Outrage on the basis of principle (in this case) will have little effect in the practical. I don’t anticipate a new wave of interest in the revised edition, especially in curriculums that have already weeded it out. In the classroom, dealing with the realities of historic race subjugation depends much on the quality and capability of the instructor, so I don’t see any real way to measure the effectiveness or impact of using the original vs. revised editions. But changing the word does change the story, because it alters the context and potentially dulls the reader’s cognitive reaction to it, which in turn may impact the analysis. Or it may not. And I honestly don’t know which is worse: to have a serious race discussion with a tainted work, or to not have the discussion at all. I’m honor-bound to stand on principle, but if the book isn’t read, what good is it? Which is why I find myself in the crosshairs of the principle and the practical.
The answer of course, is a perpetual copyright to protect works according to the author’s original intent. But that is never going to happen.
Oh, and fix the librarian.
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