A new version of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will remove racially insensitive terms from the text. Critics say it is taking political correctness a step too far
New editions of Mark Twain’s classic novels about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer have triggered a row by removing all uses of the word ‘n*****’.
Publisher and Twain scholar Alan Gribben claimed the word – which occurs 219 times in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and four times in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – had prompted schools to stop teaching the works over concerns about racism.
In Dr Gribben’s editions the offensive word has been changed to ‘slave’, while mentions of ‘injun’ will become ‘Indian’ and ‘half-breed’ is altered to ‘half-blood’.
But the decision has prompted charges of political correctness and censorship and a row over whether the books are racist.
Ishmael Reed, a prominent black American writer, accused Dr Gribben of ‘philistinism’. He pointed out that Twain, a passionate critic of American racism, had portrayed Jim, the black slave, as ‘one of the few characters in the book with any kind of integrity’
It is considered one of the greatest American novels – but is also the fourth most banned book in U.S. schools.
Dr Gribben, an English professor at Auburn University in Alabama, said: ‘It’s such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvellous reading experience and a lot of readers.
‘Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.
"Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."
Mark Twain
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
When the book was written these terms were perfectly acceptable. However, in our 'enlightened' age we must protect our innocent eyes and ears from the past.
They'd better start banning the bible then as there's a lot of shit in there which was perfectly acceptable when it was written but isn't anymore.
Why is it that when Miley Cyrus gets naked and licks a hammer it's 'art' and 'edgy' but when I do it I'm 'drunk' and 'banned from the hardware store'?
Taking out the original language does a disservice to anyone who wants to know the mores and norms of the period. In fact I cannot think of a single GOOD thing about Bowdlerising it.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
It's just more sheer idiocy from the PC police. Even if it weren't acceptable at the time, Twain chose to write it that way--if some object to the language, don't read it. What possible reason would anyone have to want to read or teach from) a work of literature that was rewritten by some hack? It's kind of like putting clothes on a naked statue-oh wait, that was done a while back by another hack.
Agreed everyone. As the NYTimes said yesterday, if you rewrite it, its simply no longer Huck Finn or Mark Twain. So then what's the point?
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
The original and still the most screamingly stupid example of this kind of literary rape was Thomas Bowdler:
Bowdlerize To expurgate a book. After Thomas Bowdler, an English physician (1754-1825) who published editions of Shakespeare and others in which he removed "those words and expressions ... which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family".
Crackpot wrote:I hear Gribbens next task is going to be an n-word free version of Blazing Saddles.
Being someone who is flatulence enhanced, I take issue with the beans and campfire scene. So I'm going to protest for an edited version to remove that.
