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In a bid for more readers and classroom acceptance, a new edition of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is giving the Mark Twain classic a slight but significant makeover, Publishers Weekly reports. Gone is the N-word.
The word (which this newspaper does not print) appears 219 times. In its place, Twain scholar Alan Gribben of Auburn University is substituting "slave." He's also doing away with a slang term for Indians in the forthcoming edition from NewSouth Books.
"After a number of talks, I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person they said we would love to teach this novel, and Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we can't do it anymore," he told PW. "In the new classroom, it's really not acceptable."
Gribben said that he grew up never hearing the N-word and that while reading the novel aloud during his 20 years of teaching he replaced it with "slave."
Naturally, the news is being greeted with cries of "political correctness" and "censorship." Others say it's bad scholarship.
Legal blogger Jonathan Turley calls the editorial decision an "offense against the original work."
The editing of a classic raises very troubling questions from the right of an author to have his works remain unchanged to the integrity of literary and historical works. Like all great works, the book must be read with an understanding of the mores and lexicon of its time.
To Right Pundits, "One of the great novels of all time is about to be neutered" for "today's politically correct, racially sensitive culture."
Removing the n'word from Huckleberry Finn will instantly remove much of what makes the novel so great. It may remove the very essence of the story. Huck Finn learns throughout the book that most of what he's been taught about blacks is not correct. He also learns that Jim, his friend and companion who happens to be black, is a man worthy of respect and admiration. He learns he's not at all like those with prejudices towards blacks have made him out to be.
