They're "updating" Mark Twain

[ellid]

Gacked from otterdance:

A new edition of Huckleberry Finn will substitute "Slave" for "N----r".

Supposedly this is being done to avoid censorship, or to "modernize" the text by omitting an offensive term. That it will gut one of the greatest passages ever written by an American doesn't seem to have crossed their minds:



From Chapter 31, when Huck is tempted to betray his friend Jim in the name of goodness and rightness and being a Christian:

"So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up. "

Comments

[roonilwazlib6.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, doing that IS censorship. We read Huck in high school and I loved it. This really, truly angers me.

[roonilwazlib6.livejournal.com]

It also ruins a hilarious Family Guy joke, lol.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

On a very basic level, it guts the book by softening the author's message - and I too read the book in high school. Damn near fell out of my uncle's car laughing over the part where Huck stays with a family that worships the memory of a girl who drew and wrote incredibly maudlin junk, like a picture of a dead bird and the caption "Alas I shall not hear thy cheerful chirrup more."

I need to reread the whole thing....

[gmonkey42.livejournal.com]

I agree, changing it is censorship.

[busaikko]

I am of two minds about this! On the one hand, I don't like people reading abridged or modernized editions instead of the original.

On the other hand... when I read books out loud to my children, I can't bring myself to read "Jap" or do the "funny Asian accent" ("Lice, preese!"), because the author is talking about them (and their dad, and their grandparents, and everyone they know). I change the words as I read and feel pathetically grateful that they can't read English (yet). I cannot imagine, as a teacher, the nightmare of reading a text using racist language to a high school class especially when the racist language is currently used against students who are likely in that class. The alternative would be to teach a different book, and leave the problematic text off the curriculum. Changing one offensive word seems a fair compromise for educational purposes.

[persevero.livejournal.com]

The one occasion this has arisen for me, I discussed it with the kids in advance to underline that the author's views were those of his time and not acceptable now - but nevertheless we should enjoy his story-writing skills.

[persevero.livejournal.com]

Pffffttt. I don't normally accept the slippery slope argument, but once they've decided to censor one story without regard for its date of writing and its historical context, what next? The casual antisemitism that doesn't offend me in Dorothy L Sayers? All mention of smoking in practically everything in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century? Barbarians.

Incidentally, since I've discovered that films we rate PG can get an R in the States because the word 'fuck' appears more than the maximum of once, do they remove swearwords from US editions of British children's books? I realise the swearing in HP is mostly in the films, but presumably other books get changed for the American market.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about swearing in children's books other than HP (which I'd say contains more than the average), but any use of 'fuck' gets a 12A/12 from the BBFC.

(One of the few things I like about Jill Paton-Walsh's "Thrones, Dominations" Sayers continuation is that whilst she modifies a lot of attitudes to make them more "acceptable"*, she does at least have Harriet smoking whilst pregnant.

*Which annoys me. Not least because I don't find her acceptable attitudes acceptable, and would rather have the original period-appropriate prejudices than new ones.)

[persevero.livejournal.com]

Agree about Thrones, Dominations: it's like the television version of Poirot, with period detail but sanitised of the period prejudices, which are even more evident in Agatha Christie's books. I don't know if Christie was actually more unpleasant than DLS or if she was simply aiming at a lower rung of the market. I've been no fan of Christie's since I was about eleven and read, I think, Death in the Clouds, in which our heroine happily agrees that she doesn't like 'negroes'. Much more offensive than DLS's slightly off but joky attitude to her Jewish characters.

[orphandani.livejournal.com]

That's censorship. :(