Sorry if this was brought up in another thread, but I just saw they are replacing the "n" word in Huck Finn with "slave". Would like to get RM's thoughts on this.

Niggers gotta nigg

Are they really? What a classic example of missing the point. Undercut the whole message because you don't fucking get it.

Its not a government mandate or anything, its just some publisher is doing a small test run.

Slave Jim, just doesnt sound correct.

Disgraceful if you ask me.

A new edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is causing controversy because of the removal of a racially offensive word.

Twain scholar Alan Gribben says the use of the word "nigger" had prompted many US schools to stop teaching the classic.

In his edition, Professor Gribben replaces the word with "slave" and also changes "injun" to "Indian".

But the publisher says hundreds of people have complained about the edits.

First published in 1884, Huckleberry Finn is considered one of the great American novels.

While telling the story of a boy's journey down the Mississippi River some time between 1835 and 1845, the novel satirises Southern attitudes on race and slavery.

History of controversy

"The book is an anti-racist book and to change the language changes the power of the book," said Cindy Lovell, executive director of The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri.

"He wrote to make us squirm and to poke us with a sharp stick. That was the purpose," she told Reuters news agency.

The novel has often been criticised for its language and characterisations and it is reported to be the fourth most banned book in US schools.

The "N-word" appears 219 times in the story.

Professor Gribben, who teaches English at Auburn University Montgomery in Alabama, said he had given many public readings of Twain's books - and that when he replaced the word with "slave", audiences were more comfortable.

Continue reading the main story
“
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There is no way to 'clean up' Twain without doing irreparable harm to the truth of his work”
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New York Times editorial
He said he wanted more people, especially younger people, to be encouraged to read the novel.

"It's such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvellous reading experience and a lot of readers," he said.

But the idea has been condemned by other scholars, teachers, writers and rights activists.

"Trying to erase the word from our culture is profoundly, profoundly wrong," said Randall Kennedy, a Harvard Law School professor.

Dr Sarah Churchwell, a lecturer on American literature, told the BBC that it made a mockery of the story.

"It's about a boy growing up a racist in a racist society who learns to reject that racism, and it makes no sense if the book isn't racist," she told BBC World Service's Newshour programme. "You can't make the history of racism in America go away."

Power of words

Twain himself was very particular about his words.


Mark Twain did not take kindly to editing He is quoted as saying that "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter".

And when a printer made punctuation changes to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain wrote later that he had "given orders for the typesetter to be shot without giving him time to pray".

The publisher of this new edition of Huckleberry Finn, New South Books, says dozens of people have telephoned to complain and hundreds have sent e-mails.

The press have also weighed in to the debate, generally in defence of the original version.

"What makes Huckleberry Finn so important in American literature isn't just the story, it's the richness, the detail, the unprecedented accuracy of its spoken language," the New York Times said in an editorial. "There is no way to 'clean up' Twain without doing irreparable harm to the truth of his work."

In the UK, an editorial in The Times called the new edition "a well-intentioned act of cultural vandalism and obscurantism that constricts rather than expands the life of the mind".

The sanitised version will be published on 15 February, in a joint reissue with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which also has the offensive epithets replaced


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12126700

Whats disgraceful, changing the book?
or being upset about it?

I'll get back to you.

I would like to think that any teacher that cares enough about their work to include Huck Finn in the curriculum would use the racial terms as a jumping point for a discussion on racism and the power people give words. Anyone who's read the book and has more than 2 brain cells to rub together knows that the use of the N-word is not gratuitous.

Or at least include a discussion that Huck's casual, "learned behavior" type use of the N word even as he shows that he respects and ultimately views Jim as an equal was a purposeful social message on his part. It was an intended and typically-sarcastic message from a man who decried racism.

Slave Jim

I rather be a nigger than a slave.

It's still someone fucking up an American Classic.

Shouldn't Injun be changed to Native American?

I can understand the wish to circumvent book banning and get this great piece of art into the hands of more kids, but we really should be working to stop book banning.

this needs to be preserved, so it can be taken out of context at a later date

Just another example of how America is becoming a nation of pussies.

Ed Rendell agrees with this post.

*FTFY

It's not really about whether or not we're "protecting ourselves" from having to see such words written in print. It's more about the idea that the word is more powerful than the message. That we are more impacted by the sight of a hateful word than by the text's methodical and rhythmic destruction of it is sad to me, I guess.