TotallyOz Posted January 7, 2011 Posted January 7, 2011 I hate the N word. But, I also hate that a publisher would change the texts of such a well known book. Or, any book for that matter. Article from CNN: What is a word worth? According to Publishers Weekly, NewSouth Books' upcoming edition of Mark Twain's seminal novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will remove all instances of the N-word -- I'll give you a hint, it's not nonesuch -- present in the text and replace it with slave. The new book will also remove usage of the word Injun. The effort is spearheaded by Twain expert Alan Gribben, who says his PC-ified version is not an attempt to neuter the classic but rather to update it. "Race matters in these books," Gribben told PW. "It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century." Is editing "Huckleberry Finn" a good idea? Tell us what you think Unsurprisingly, there are already those who are yelling "Censorship!" as well as others with thesauruses yelling "Bowdlerization!" and "Comstockery!" http://edition.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/01/04/new.huck.finn.ew/index.html?iref=NS1 Quote
Guest zipperzone Posted January 7, 2011 Posted January 7, 2011 I think it is a pathetic attempt by those with small convoluted minds to "sanitize" history to conform with what is today considered acceptable. Why don't they spend the same effort and money to dissuade African Americans from perpetuating the use of the same word. Quote
Members MsGuy Posted January 7, 2011 Members Posted January 7, 2011 Back in the day ('50s/'60s), the polite word for African-American was colored. Negro was usually restricted to formal/legal settings. N----- was a term of contempt; to use it in the presence of a colored person was aggressively insulting. It's usuage occupied the same linguistic space that queer does for us. Currently the use of N----- implies a rejection of the civil rights era and the change in status of Black folks in the last half century. Hence it's banishment from the public discourse. I suspect that N----- had a different weight in Twain's day. If one were trying to convey the same effect in today's English, Slave Jim might even be truer to Twain's intention than N----- Jim. If I recall the book correctly, the crux of Huck's personal difficulty with Jim was his status as a runaway slave, not his race. ---- Damned if I can see why we have to use god-awful circumlocutions like "N word" or "N-----" to discuss this here. TV, OK, I can see the problem there, but MER? Do we really fear a word that much? Quote
TotallyOz Posted January 7, 2011 Author Posted January 7, 2011 I suspect that N----- had a different weight in Twain's day. If one were trying to convey the same effect in today's English, Slave Jim might even be truer to Twain's intention than N----- Jim. If I recall the book correctly, the crux of Huck's personal difficulty with Jim was his status as a runaway slave, not his race. ---- Damned if I can see why we have to use god-awful circumlocutions like "N word" or "N-----" to discuss this here. TV, OK, I can see the problem there, but MER? Do we really fear a word that much? I think it had a much different connotation then than it does today. History should not be rewritten. Words such as those of Mark Twain are a part of history. It is there for us to get a glimpse of and to see what a writer wrote. As a writer myself, I would hate for anyone to alter the words I put on a published work. I know that Twain would feel the same! Quote
Guest FourAces Posted January 7, 2011 Posted January 7, 2011 I heard of this several days ago. Shame on those who want to sanitize any culture, art or event past, present or future. We can learn from history only if its left as fact not adjusted to fiction or a small minded group of peoples own interpretation. When I first read Huck Finn like most I was quite young. I nor do I recall any of my classmates giggling over the use of the word n----- as we did during sex education when penis or vagina were mentioned. I believe even as young boys and girls we understood the context in which the word was being used. If this is allowed what books will be next? What will future generations miss out on? Quote
Guest zipperzone Posted January 7, 2011 Posted January 7, 2011 If this is allowed what books will be next? What will future generations miss out on? Next? I guess they will start rewriting all books to eliminate the words, fag, queer, dyke, fairy..... the list goes on & on! Quote
Members TampaYankee Posted January 7, 2011 Members Posted January 7, 2011 Next? I guess they will start rewriting all books to eliminate the words, fag, queer, dyke, fairy..... the list goes on & on! What's next? Shakespeare written in eight grade level midwestern English! The lesser part of this problem is that the books were cleansed. The real problem is that the schools/libraries rejected the originals causing this 'solution'. I don't fault him so much for the rewrite as the schools. That doesnt make the final result any better. It just places the responsibility where it belongs. Quote
AdamSmith Posted January 7, 2011 Posted January 7, 2011 What nonsense. Part of Twain's use of that word, over and over and over, was specifically to document and indict the racist hatred of the time. There is for instance that damning passage where Huck says about a riverboat accident: "It warn't the grounding -- that didn't keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head." "Good gracious! anybody hurt?" "No'm. Killed a nigger." Here is that chapter, with the word highlighted. The way it is repeated over and over just drives home the callousness, the casual unthinking hatefulness: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MEy_9WxLF98J:www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/huckleberry/chapter-32.html+anybody+hurt%3F+no'm,+killed+a+nigger&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us Quote
Members MsGuy Posted January 7, 2011 Members Posted January 7, 2011 I stand corrected. ---- On being queried by the Brooklyn Public Library as to why his books should not be banned for their "coarseness, deceitfulness and mischievious practices", Mr. Twain himself came out foursquare for censorship: "I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' & 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave." Quote
AdamSmith Posted January 8, 2011 Posted January 8, 2011 I stand corrected. You think? Twain was such a fierce ironist that it almost never pays to take him (exclusively) at face value. As with the passage you quote -- is he being straight, or ridiculing the question and the questioner? That one can't be quite sure is the genius of it. Quote
Members RA1 Posted January 8, 2011 Members Posted January 8, 2011 Shades of Blazing Saddles. Best regards, RA1 Quote
AdamSmith Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 A bit late, but I just noticed this dead-on indictment of this foolishness: P.C. insult to a Mark Twain classic By Ron Powers, Special to CNN January 7, 2011 7:04 a.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 "nigger" -- has caught the fleeting notice of bloggers and pundits around the country... More: http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/06/powers.huck.finn/index.html?iref=obinsite Quote
Members RA1 Posted February 1, 2011 Members Posted February 1, 2011 Absolutely foolish. Thanks for the links and insight. Best regards, RA1 Quote
