No one has posted an objection to any school or individual choosing to use this book. They are reacting to the fact that a publisher has made this book available. They appear unhappy about this.
Besides, there’s no antecedent to your “they.” I said “People who want to ban [the book].” Those people want to ban the book by definition. If you want to say that no such people appear in this thread, then say so. Don’t be disingenuous.
Most people in this thread have said they are opposed to altering the book. Regardless of whether that counts as a “ban” or not, don’t call them idiots while you are posting in Cafe Society.
Didn’t Twain originally implicitly deny that choice by writing the actual book that he did?
Yes, I know, abridged, bowdlerized and expurgated versions of published works have existed for years but we’re talking about excising key words in a work of literary significance, words that were chosen to emphasize the authori’s message and intent in creating that work.
I think **Johnny **was being ironic with his initial suggestion, and whooshed both you and me.
If this is an objection to doing it, when the alternative is banning the book altogether, then the implication is that it is better to ban the book than be embarrassed. No one has suggested that reading and teaching the original isn’t preferable when that’s possible. Were talking about what to do when that isn’t possible.
You are correct, and I apologize for being careless. Replace “most” with “some.” I have no idea how widely used Huckleberry Finn is, nor how widely used it would be without the squeamishness about its language.
Again, we’re discussing an edition of Huckleberry Finn that was designed to meet the needs of teachers who feel unable to use the original in the classroom. Either using a redacted version of a controversial text is worse than not using it at all, or it is preferable to not using it at all. If the latter, your objection to the availability of a redacted edition is misplaced. If the former, then you should equally object to the availability of a redacted version of Summer of My German Soldier. If we shouldn’t have used those copies, we might have had to read copies of something else the school had.
But surely you see that the issues are the same. Either a censored version is better than nothing or it’s worse than nothing. Where the censored copies come from is irrelevant.
Then you support the publisher making the new edition available for people to purchase or not? The publisher isn’t promoting this as a superior version everyone should read instead of the original. They are promoting it as an alternative that should be made available for people to choose. There is nothing preventing a classroom from making both versions of the text available, and the simple ability to do so might make it possible to teach the novel at all, even if no one chooses to use it.
The school districts that want to censor books are a suitable target of opprobrium. The publisher who wants to make it possible for students in those school districts to read some version of Huck Finn is not. And the publisher is the topic of this thread.
I would strongly object to anyone attempting to replace the original, but that’s not what’s going on here. It is being offered as an alternative to meet a specified need.
There is also the argument that changing the language makes it more closely match the author’s intentions. I may not agree with that, but it is a reasonable argument, and I don’t have a problem with people updating classic texts, as long as it is clear to the reader what is being done.
I think there is a stronger argument (though perhaps a less compelling one) that even if changing the words doesn’t restore the original meaning, that it is what Twain would do if he were alive today. Others have noted that he was an avariciously commercial author, and modified his writings based on the reaction of people he read them to. If he were writing today, he wouldn’t use the word the way he did. That doesn’t mean we should change it, but if someone wants to try, more power to them. Again, it’s not replacing the original.
Are rap lyrics next on their list?
I would guess the answer would be no.
Of course, altering either are unacceptable. Once you open that door, where do you stop?
Sort of. I think they should really do it, but for ironic reasons. It’s not a thumbs-up to censorship. It’s a thumb-in-the-eye. The fact that Marley23 finds the idea repulsive and I find it constructively smart-assed is well within the desired range of responses.
What I was saying is that the proposal is embarrassing because it’s an insult to people’s intelligence. I’m thinking bup was correct that the post was a joke anyway, so I’m going to drop this.
That’s not the only issue being discussed here. Most of the discussion has been about Gribben’s idea to censor the book, and I think we’re agreed that it’s not necessary. I haven’t read Summer of My German Soldier, but I think you lost a lot less in reading a blacked-out version than a student is going to lose from reading a version of Huck Finn where the words have been changed or deleted. People already know the Nazis were racists; America in the 1840s is less familiar territory and the racism is something Twain brought up intentionally.
I think the publisher is trying to make money. Gribben, on the other hand, is a nitwit. Making the book available to more people is a noble goal, but he’s chosen a stupid way to achieve his goal. Last year was the centennial of Twain’s death and his autobiography is being rereleased. That sounds like a perfect time to try to start a conversation about why this book should not be banned or excluded from schools on sensitivity grounds. Instead he’s changing the book to cater to the sensibility of people who don’t know what it’s about.
My opinion is exactly the opposite of this.
A school district may freely choose which books to teach in its English courses. I don’t feel that not choosing any particular book is tantamount to censorship. Any students who wish to seek out the book on their own are similarly free to do so.
On the other hand, presenting a work of literature as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when it is actually NOT The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (not the one Twain wrote, at least) is intellectually dishonest. For any school to have the altered version on the curriculum is exponentially worse than not having it at all.
This is the point. The word exists. It is out there, and nothing will bring it back, but it is only offensive when used as a pejorative, not when discussed in a dispassionate, academic setting. Huckleberry Finn is a perfect opportunity to explore the historical context and etymology of the word without having to question the user’s intent. Bowdlerizing the text eliminates that.
That’s funny, because I was going to propose it as a (rhetorically) serious suggestion before I saw Johnny Angel’s post. Like I said, that’s what they did in my school, and it was only a minor annoyance.
I’m afraid you’re wrong. Summer of My German Soldier is about the relationship between an Arkansan farm girl and a German POW in WWII. The American characters are the ones who use the word “nigger.” The girl’s father especially, as I recall. It is central to the book in demonstrating that the Americans are just as racist as the Germans and that both the racist girl and the Nazi boy are in possession of “a sound heart and a deformed conscience,” as Twain described Huck.
Maybe, maybe not. I understand NewSouth is a small, independent, academically-oriented press that regularly publishes works at a loss if they believe them to be important. Whether they expect this book to be one of the losses or one of the commercial successes that subsidize the losses, I have no idea.
For Gribben’s part, he is not catering to the sensibility of people who don’t know what the book is about, but to middle-school and high-school teachers who told him they love the book and want to teach it, but cannot because of the language used. The conversation you suggest (which I think this book has done more to cause than anything else Gribben could have said or done) doesn’t, by itself, meet the needs of those teachers. Is it really better that they continue not to teach the book they believe best serves their students rather than to teach it with some modification which the students are made aware of and capable of circumventing? To me, that’s the only relevant issue.
And if it is better that they continue not to teach the book, why would it not also have been better for my 7th grade teacher to teach something other than the book that she chose, which was modified in very similar fashion. My life was improved by reading a censored version of the text in a way that reading a lesser book that had no cause to be censored would not have. My teacher had no problem with the unexpurgated text, but someone clearly did. And if that person hadn’t been given the opportunity to censor the book, my class as well might have had to read Green Eggs and Ham or Johnathan Livingstone Seagull or whatever pablum the school district could find for cheap.
Instead, we did talk about racism, and about the N-word, and about how society can warp our consciences.
At least someone is willing to admit to the logical implication of opposing this book. But see what I wrote above. As long as the students are made aware of the changes, it may be cowardly, but isn’t intellectually dishonest, and it certainly isn’t worse than allowing schools to avoid any work that might raise controversy, which is cowardly and intellectually dishonest and harmful.
It isn’t as simple as saying that not choosing controversial books isn’t actually censorship, so it must be OK. Whatever it is, it is worse than censorship that allows itself to be seen. It is insidious, and teaches children that there are no controversies. It hides from them the fact that there are words other people don’t want them to read. It chills the discussion not only on the controversial topic, but on what works should be controversial and why. Works that are incapable of inspiring controversy are pablum, they are junk food for the mind. And while, they are fine as an indulgence, they cannot replace the real intellectual meat of literature. Public schools are the only way most people are exposed to literature, and they are also the most vulnerable to the mob. Closing down the public schools wouldn’t be censorship either, but it also wouldn’t solve the problem. Eliminating Biology class isn’t teaching creationism, but it’s no better.
Society needs a system that will give real meat to the minds of growing students. The one we have is badly flawed, and one of the biggest flaws is that small, starved minds can try to limit what is taught. We have to fight those people tooth and nail, but you can’t save the village by destroying it and you can’t save literature by taking it out of the classroom and telling students that if they want it they can go to the library after class, but right now they have to read “My Little Pony” Goes to the Zoo.
Huh. That is weird because he also said:
Though I detect a hint of sarcasm 
OK. C’est la vie.
Same difference. He’s trying to get the book taught by appeasing the people who can only see one word of the text.
I think if anybody ends up using this text, not all the teachers are going to make it clear that it’s an altered version and either way, most of the students won’t care enough to read the original. There aren’t that many kids out there who will do that kind of extra work. So the end result is much closer to a fraud and a misrepresentation of what Twain wrote. Is that better?
It would have been better if nobody censored your book, and failing that, if would have been better if the censored versions had been replaced.
I’m against censoring the book, but this quote immediately brought to mind Deadwood. In it, David Milch attempted to square past sensibilities with modern cultural zeitgeist, and succeeded fantastically, IMO. Whether it could (or even should) work in the reverse I couldn’t say.
I agree that there’s an argument to be made that if a book needs such editing in order for it to be appropriate for a certain age group, then the book might simply not be appropriate for said age group. But it also might, or at least it might have a lot to offer that a teacher would want at his/her disposal.
I don’t agree at all that editing this one word “takes away the point of teaching it at all”. Changing details of the plot would.
The thing about watching those interviews I mentioned earlier, is that I realized this is not a problem of adults trying to shield kids from things that they (adults) find inappropriate. The discomfort was coming directly from the kids. And perhaps it’s not the worst thing in the world for kids to take home an assignment that they do in the privacy of their own home, perhaps with guidance from their parents, and be made to feel uncomfortable. I would have no objection if all the reading took place silently.
My sympathy though goes out to the shy kid in the class who’s forced to read passages from the book out loud and can’t absorb the meaning because he is too concentrated on the fact that he has to keep saying this word which carries so much pain and discomfort. (and to the poster in this thread who joked sarcastically about black kids not being comfortable saying the word “nigger”, c’mon do you really need the difference explained to you?).
A good teacher should make it absolutely clear that the book has been edited, and that every instance of the word “slave” was originally “nigger”, and why that word is so important to the book’s meaning. Perhaps they should even be given copies of the original version to read at home, while the edited version is used only for in class reading. I dunno, but this is one rare case where I understand the logic of something I would ordinarily find abhorrent.
(I remember incidentally how utterly idiotic and wrong it was when we sang “A LIttle Help From My Friends” in 6th grade chorus but they made us sing:
You confused me for a second. I thought you meant Samuel Langhorne Clemens!
But rap lyrics are already censored on the radio, which is the closest media equivalent to public school. I hate it when songs are censored on the radio, but the logic, I believe, is fairly consistent. The FCC bans indecency, which it defines as follows:
Clearly those guidelines are pretty subjective, but I think one can make an argument that the language in certain books may be obscene in some people’s eyes; or rather, no more obscene than a rapper referencing drugs or guns.
I am not sure radio stations ban curse words and drug references solely because they are afraid of FCC fines, but I would have to imagine that’s a large part of it. Nowadays, if the musician hasn’t recorded a clean copy, they just bleep out the words they think people might find offensive. All of this is deemed to be kosher because they operate on the public airwaves. If you can censor songs because it’s in the public interest to do so, then I don’t see why you can’t censor a book at a public school. Keep in mind that a kid can always go buy a regular copy for herself. This is not a outright ban; just a by a publisher and/or a school deciding to not use an uncensored copy.
Obviously, I don’t think it’s an ideal situation, but if you aren’t going to have an opportunity to have a class discussion about the context and the historical period, then I can see why some people may be okay with censorship. Particularly if reading passages aloud (as written) makes the kids themselves uncomfortable.
Additionally, people seem to be getting all up in arms when their ox is being gored, but far fewer were rallying behind Howard Stern when he was basically forced to go to satellite radio due to FCC fines. I don’t see people suggesting it’s an insult to their intelligence to have Ceelo Green singing, “forget you”, rather than “fuck you” on the radio. Yes, Twain’s work is of far more significance, but the principle is the same.
More importantly, the books wouldn’t have been produced, nor will they sell, if there wasn’t/isn’t a market for it. If there are other, easily accessible and affordable options out there, then the censored copies will only sell if people want to buy them.
A question for all those who are vehemently opposed to schools/publishers doing this: Are you against all forms of censorship? Should radio stations be allowed to play whatever they want? Should Hollywood movies be able to show anything they desire? If not, then what makes Mark Twain’s work (or literature in general) so special that it is not subject to our evolving sense of decency?
IMHO, not a true comparison:
In this case, Huck Finn is not being broadcast in audio or film format, so the FCC has no jurisdiction.
A truer comparison to the printed media would be CDs, which of course are not censored by the FCC (nor should they be).
Bizarrely, when I was ten, I played Jim in a stage version of a passage from Tom Sawyer. Bizarrely, because I’m not even one of those tan Germans like Boehner. I don’t remember how I got that role, except there were no black kids & one SE Asian kid in our class. (OK, I probably volunteered. I liked Jim.) Maybe the audience just figured I was some other Jim.
I always called the character “Jim” as a kid, and just “Jim” is probably better than “Slave Jim” which seems off to me. “Nigger Jim” is weird enough a nickname, but at least a dark-skinned man is a dark-skinned man wherever he goes, whereas a slave kind of stops being a slave once he’s well away from his master (as Jim was for most of the book).
That said, I now feel inclined to defend the use of the nickname “Nigger Jim” which I don’t even recall from the book, or would if I could recall Huck calling him that. Wasn’t he mostly “Jim” past the introduction? Was I reading a bowdlerized version then, or has a quarter-century confused me?