That is ATROCIOUS.

Not even from just a literary standpoint, which itself is very valid as...well, "Huck Finn" IS a book, and the product of an author's intentions and as such his statements, and so to posthumously change something in it just because it makes someone feel a little more at ease and happy smacks of the same sort of editorial bastardization that landed Nietzsche and other such writers in some hot water for a time.

No, beyond that...really? Take out the N-word in a book that uses it to showcase its UGLINESS??? What does that say about America today?

I guess Jack Nicholson was right--America, apparently we CAN'T handle the truth!

We CAN'T accept the fact that America was ever anything less than the UTOPIA it is today, the perfect, wonderfully-PC land it is today, completely democratic and free and beautiful with no issues in race relations or class struggles or anything of the sort!

Nope, America was and is a great land, always was...

"Slave?"

Oh, yes, we had slaves...but we didn't EVER demean them or treat them less than human by using a racial slur!

Taking Native American land?

MANIFEST DESTINY! And, anyway, at least while we took over the land we were SURE to be totally politically correct to the people we sent on a Trail of Tears, too!

There are times when I honestly LOATHE American society...

And however childish this rant may seem--and probably is, to at least some extent--I can't rest assured that there are still people more childish than me...

Because such a fact, that enough people ARE so childish and foolishly blind...

That does anything BUT assure me.

If ever there were a case for Huckleberry Finn's rejecting that "sivilized life," as he ends the book by leaving it in disdain and saying "I've been there before"...

Sivilized indeed, Huck...we're surely sivilized, ain't we, folks?

Hey, it's only one version that's being edited. Just follow the don't feed the trolls strategy like we do on here and keep buying the original.

I bet the new version goes to the schools. An entire gen will not know the original is even there. Some day they will edit wars out of history.

I agree with your sentiments 100%. But there's a bit of a factual point I like to trot out.

See, the thing about the Trail of Tears is that the American Supreme Court ruled that resettlement unconstitutional while it was being proposed...so Andrew Jackson, the man we memorialize on the twenty dollar bill, ordered it sped up so that it could be completed before the people executing it could be considered to have received the message of the Supreme Court's ruling. So I have a hard time blaming the USA as a whole for that...it was a fringe group who were acting more or less on their own.

For those wondering, the "n-word" is "nigger" for those afraid to say it. Grow some balls, America.

@ava:

For those of us who have ALREADY read the book, that's all well and good, and what we all should--and likely will--do.

What I worry about is what warspite pointed out--they don't make PC-versions of these things for ADULTS...

No, this WILL go to schools, and an entire generation of American children will grow up not only not knowing what really was written, they won't know what really happened...and they'll also lose the power that comes with the "n-word."

We just read (for msot of us, re-read) the book for my college American Lit: 1865-Present course, and I can tell you...

For ALL OF US it was HUGELY uncomfortable, that word, having to adress it out loud...

And we're grown adults, varying ages, but all adults.

And even though this was the second time for most of us (or even a third or fourth time) it's STILL unconfrotable...

And THAT'S what makes it not only a classic, but a MASTERPIECE, and an achievement for GOOD American thought--the fact that we are made to FACE that word and ACKNOWLEDGE its unsettling power...it adds something to the book, but more importantly, it ads something to the SELF. Coincidentally, we didn't have a single African-American student in that English class--we had a lot of whites and Latinos, but no African-Americans...

And so reading that word KNOWING there were no African-Americans in the room present actually was even MORE unsettling, even the professor commented on that.

Because all the while we read that, seeing no one like that in our class, no one of that race, the thought sort of creeps in...how BADLY these people were treated...how far back they, and we as a nation, might have set ourselves back.

And I live in SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, an hour or so from LA; LA and NYC are probably the most diverse places in the entire nation, so there's the thought that if even HERE, where we have practically someone from EVERY race and religion in a class at one time or another, there's no African-Americans there...

It DOES say something, taken with the book, or at least did for us.



If you DON'T feel uncomfortable reading a book like "Huck Finn," then you've misread the book and shortchanged yourself.

And that's EXACTLY what I fear will now happen.

@SacredDigits:

Fair enough, but it really wasn't a fringe...after all, Jackson disobeyed the court, but he still needed a populace to go along with his breaking the law--and most of America was all too happy to go along with him there.

@Bezborodoz:

Well said, +1.

Holy shit. I can't believe they are actually doing this. I'm seriously considering going out tomorrow and buying a real copy. haha Does this feel at all like a HUGELY Orwellian move? Its disgusting. Absolutely disgusting, to pervert an American masterpiece like that.

Eh, Jackson only really needed the army to go along with it, not the entirety of the US. I think that it removed natives from...four states? Five? Even if you factor that in as compliance, I still don't believe that a majority of people were for it. Although I'd be happy to see evidence of it.

I just noticed:

The publishing company's name?

NewSouth Books.

...

I honestly can't remember the last time I was THIS digusted with my country...

I'll be honest... this disgusts me, as Obiwan is pointing out... They're not only manipulating a classic book, but DESTROYING the history of the time. Like it or not, children will believe what they read in books - and the U.S. can't ignore this part of their background...

@jman:

TOTALLY Orwellian...and sadly enough, I somehow get the feeling kids in the future will hae plenty of TWILIGHT on their reading lists, but no Big Brother or Huck...

@SacredDigits:

Even so, non-action is sometimes as bad as acting...I don't think there were very many "Save the Native American Homelands!" demonstrations in protest by Americans.

This is not the first swipe at Mark Twain. I recall in the 70's of some high schools banning Huck Finn for the very reason they are editing it now.

You're taking a strong stance, though. Is it not possible that this change is being made not to TEACH them what happened, but so they can feel like they're there without being as uncomfortable as it was for you? I'm from Canada, and we never read it in our classrooms, and that might well be why I don't think it's THIS bad. Naturally, the idea of replacing CORRECT books with SENSITIVE books it just disturbing... very disturbing...

See, let me back up that sentence, obiwanobiwan.

"I don't think there were very many..."

Well, that's the point. You don't know. Take some time to research it, then get back to it. Jeremiah Evarts, Davy Crockett, and several other prominent Americans fought against the removal.

obiwan You need to place your self in the early 19th century. I don't think most people even know what was happening, and those areas affected had few whites at that time.

@Rommeltastic:

Maybe it is the fact you're not an American, maybe not, I don't know.

But DEFINITELY for America it means something extra, the same way that any culture surely will be reviled upon reading "Mein Kampf," but I'd imagine it'd be extra repuslive and painful for a German to see that book.

But the fact is, people MUST face those things, which is actually why, oddly enough, when I first learned how strict Germany was and is now about banning all Nazi-related material, I was actually somewhat disturbed; obviously I don't want happy memories of the Reich or another Hitler or anything, but very often when a nation bans something like that, it tries to forget it ever occured.

And that's the WORST thing a nation can do--because if you FORGET it occured, you also tend to forget why it occured, and how painful it was, and so it occurs again.

America today likes to pretend it's politically correct and racially healed, that after the Civil War and the beating of Irish immigrants and the turning back of Jewish refugees during WWII and the Civil Rights momement and Japanese Internment Camps and Cesar Chavez and anti-Muslim demonstrations, that after all of that we've finally gotten to the point where we've overcome racism totally, and "all men are created equal" rings true in the hearts of all Americans.

And then the "World Trade Center Mosque" comes along, an suddenly you ahve huge demonstrations and that pastor publicizing his "Burn the Koran Day."

Or LA finally erupting in violence after the Rodney King incidents.

Or what Arizona's doing now with immigration.

Or Prop 8.


Again, you CAN'T teach a history that IS charged with racism WITHOUT making people feel uncomfrotable and do ir right.

Again, if you feel fine reading "Huck Finn" or hearing about the past atrocities in America or Germany or any other nation and are able to feel totally detached, if kids are able to feel COMFORTABLE knowing that these events occured...

Really--what have they learned? What have WE learned, if we are comfortable with it?

obiwan I think you can a better example national amnesia if look at Japan.

"get a better"

Alright, maybe I overdid the Trail of Tears thing...

I just meant it in relation to the book, really, the point being that we treated the Native Americans badly too, and that also is being sanitized in this new edition of one of the first and best books to point out how hypocryphal America was about that whole "all created equal" bit.

It IS one of my favorite books, I do think it's "The Great American Novel" and easily in the Top 10 ever written--"1984," "Les Miserables," "Don Quixote," "Crime and Punishment," and "Moby Dick" would be others I'd rank comparably, just off the top of my head, I'm not going to go too far off track and make a whole list--but even beyond that, it's been so enduring partly because of the controversy.

Take away those words and the discomfort and you still ahve a great book, but it's missing that extra something that makes it a timeless classic and one that rings true with a people.

There's a REASON that book is controversial and has been for over a century now.

To deny that aspect of the book is to deny the full experience of the book, the full power of it...from a literary standpoint it's somewhat comparable to that "No Fear Shakespeare" garbage, ie, making a complex text easier and more pallateable for a new audience that doesn't want to make the effort to learn the original in all its glory, and from a historical standpoint its acting like those terrible events weren't THAT terrible...

Honestly--hows is it MORE settling that we can "just" write "slaves" in there instead of the n-word and THAT'S OK?

We can handle slavery? That doesn't make anyone uncomfortable, not what was done to fellow human beings but simply what we called them?

Alright, this I'll agree with. It pisses me off that most places won't perform Merchant of Venice because of the over-the-top anti-Semitism at the end of it. It was over-the-top for a reason, Shakespeare was making a point that needed to be made. It's not his fault that most people misinterpreted that as being genuine rather than satyrical.

I agree 100% on your points. The real concern I have is the slippery slope. What next?

Oh dear.

Seriously. This is one of the most disgusting things I have seen done in my life. I am glad though that it is receiving as ferociously hostile a reception as it is though. Really the worst part is that it WILL go too the schools because heaven knows a school CANNOT be or have ANYTHING REMOTELY un-PC related to it. My god. So annoying. And really why stop there? Why say that America ever participated in slavery at all? The road just gets darker and more disgusting as you go farther down.

@warsprite:

What next?

How about...

"The Merchant of Venice" with a Christian Shylock, so that whole, nasty religious/ethinc bigotry theme is downplayed?

"1984" with a happy ending where Julia and the narrator live happily ever after, thus ridding us of our wariness of the government and the growing systematizing of life and the reach of the beauracracy?

"To Kill a Mickingbird" with Aticus Finch's climactic courtroom speech edited to take out the fact that Mayala was raped at all or that she lied to the court to prevent being scorned by a society that would have condemned her for a crush on a black man?

We don't need such "smut" as "Catcher in the Rye," right?

And that Faulkner guy, with "Go Down, Moses" and "The Sound and the Fury," HE pulls the race card--a few races cards--quite often, and paints a picture of older Southern values as being relics and social crises--WE CAN'T HAVE THAT! PEOPLE MIGHT GET OFFENDED!

Tennessee Williams does the same thing in "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" and "The Glass Menagerie" and has the AUDACITY to have Tong Wingfield rant in the latter about how man ins instinctive and NOT naturally perfect, "naturally, Christianly-composed," as his former Southern belle mother believes...HERESY!

Also...

Does Humpty Dumpty HAVE to fall off that wall? See, that always depressed me as a kid...can't all the king's horses and all the king's men just put Humpty together again? I was just SCARRED by the thought of a magical egg man being scrambled...jsut too damn violent for kids!

If I remember right, the books calls Jim "Nigger Jim" quite a bit, to the point where you have to think Twain was trying to lay some meaning behind when he used the word with Jim's name and when he didn't. What will this new edition do? Slave Jim, like the article seems to imply? Doesn't that destroy the literary meaning?

This is shameful, but not surprising. Bowdlerized books is nothing new. A bigger problem is how a teacher can tell my class not to read the chapters on the Duke and King when we had this book in high school. How can you teach a book when you cut out a quarter of it? The further I get away from non-college schooling the less I can believe that I could have tolerated the idiocy kids have to put up with.

My god, people are acting as if every Huck Finn book out there is going to have these words replaced. Has anyone bothered to read the rationale behind the English professor's decision to do this? He did it so more people would read the book, because he found educators and others dropping the book because of the 219 uses of the n-word. This is an option for those uncomfortable with the language, so more people can enjoy the stories. It's not as if it sanitizes race relations to call a guy "slave". It's one version of the book, calm down.

"America today likes to pretend it's politically correct and racially healed"

And it tries to do this by pretending there's this "PC onslaught" out to stifle free speech, so we don't need to worry about language because we're a post-racial society, and heaven forbid we move beyond disgusting bigoted language because it inconveniences the bigots.

"the beating of Irish immigrants"

This myth won't go away.

obi - Julia and the NARRATOR? You mean Winston Smith, right?

You're a moron.

To Kill A MICKingbird? You mean MOCKingbird, right?

You're a moron.

Aticus Finch? You mean Atticus Finch, right?

You're a moron.

Mayala? You mean Mayella Ewell, right?

You're a moron.

Catcher in The Rye? You mean THE Catcher In The Rye, right.

You're a moron.

TONG Wingfield? You mean Tom Wingfield, right?

You're a moron.

Stick to Star Dreck, loser.

############################################################

Seriously, does anybody actually BELIEVE that this pathetic poseur has ANY English Lit education at all?

Wow, that was un called for :S

Maple, what's your opinion on the effect of political correctness on the literary cannon?