Posted on 01/04/2011 7:18:59 PM PST by markomalley
Mark Twain wrote that "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." A new edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" will try to find out if that holds true by replacing the N-word with "slave" in an effort not to offend readers.
Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the books, said the N-word appears 219 times in "Huck Finn" and four times in "Tom Sawyer." He said the word puts the books in danger of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once humorously defined as those "which people praise and don't read."
"It's such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers," Gribben said.
Yet Twain was particular about his words. His letter in 1888 about the right word and the almost right one was "the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
</sarc>
It’s also a pain in the ass for historians.
Leave the bloody work alone. It helps us to know what the originals said.
Slave please!!!
Why change it to slave, and not Nagin?
Nagin please!
When I read The Life and Times of Fredrick Douglas, one passage about speaking to a group of his supporters has always stayed with me. After speaking to a group of abolitionists, he considered the evening a great success, because at the end of his talk he believed they were convinced he was equally human with them. Those who saw the TV show Roots can remember the president of the black college being asked to sing by his benefactor to convince the woman she was with about how valuable these people were because of their wonderful voices. Even the strongest supporters of blacks questioned whether they were as fully human as themselves.
Now comes Mark Twain in1876, just a few years after the decline of the KKK, saying that even “poor white trash” like Huck Finn can figure out that “Nigger Jim” is just like him. Twain washes away the entire pretense built up from etiquette, education, wealth, etc. that people generally use to form their opinions of themselves and others. Because of his precise choice of words, what remains on that raft is two people who can look directly into each others’ eye.
In his final indictment Twain through Huck Finn tells the reader that the accoutrements of civilization prevent one from being human and recognizing the humanity in others. I guess I find that lesson timeless.
Censorship requires a government banning something. This is just a rewrite by a private company. You still have the opportunity to buy or check out the original text.
While I would probably lean toward the original text, there are some books by Twain where he goes overboard with dialectic gibberish. Make it unreadable.
I hear these words and much worse among the celebrity of rappers and black comedians. This is called “diversity”
it’s oh so chi-chi.
Speech police applies only to conservatives.
“Mark Twain wrote that “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.””
That’s not what he said - that would have hardly been memorable. Here’s what he said.
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
I don't think it's a tough call at all. The book should be presented the way Mark Twain wrote it, not in some watered-down politically correct form. Mark Twain was one of the most enlightened people of his era, and as Retain Mike noted:
Now comes Mark Twain in 1876, just a few years after the decline of the KKK, saying that even “poor white trash” like Huck Finn can figure out that “Nigger Jim” is just like him. Twain washes away the entire pretense built up from etiquette, education, wealth, etc. that people generally use to form their opinions of themselves and others. Because of [Twain's] precise choice of words, what remains on that raft is two people who can look directly into each others’ eye.
In his final indictment Twain through Huck Finn tells the reader that the accoutrements of civilization prevent one from being human and recognizing the humanity in others. I guess I find that lesson timeless.
Mark Twain fiercely opposed censorship. In light of the totality of what we know about him as an individual, both the facts and nuance mitigate strongly against censorship of Twain's works.
It borders on the absurd, in my book...
I guess that means virtually the whole country was disgusting, since they all used that word for blacks. That's what it means—black, coming from the Latin niger, by way of various Romance languages. Usage changes with time and fashion, and reading books in their original words, such as Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare, is one way schoolkids learn this.
Twain's usage—and note that he was a big liberal—is not a reason to put Wite-Out over literary history. Look at the barbed humor kids would miss, from Tom Sawyer: Here Tom is describing a horrific steam boiler explosion he witnessed. AUNT POLLY: Was anyone hurt? TOM: No ma'am. Killed a n______. What are the kids supposed to do when they read any other books published more than 5 minutes ago, and discover how the polite word for blacks has changed frantically just about every decade for a half-century? Just in my lifetime: colored, Negro, Afro-American, black, African American . . .
What I find funny is that the blacks are erasing their own history. They are too blind to see what their ancestors have overcome. Words offend them now. What sissies. They are changing a white man's words. Blacks have more power now than they ever had before. What in the blazes are they whining about now?
On my recent cruise in the Med, I visited the new library of Alexandria in Egypt. Amazing place. They have a monthly essay contest on classic books. Found it interesting that September’s was Huck Finn! So much commentary, so little time.
First we get rid of offending words, like the forbidden N-Word, then we get rid of the offending words like Republican and Sarah Palin, and maybe Christ. Its a slippery slope that can only end in Tyranny for all.
In Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and many other states down there, it was certainly a black and white issue. If that were not the case, then blacks would not have left in droves to go to the safety of the North.
In Orwell’s novel 1984, Winston Smith had an acquaintance named Syme. He was an employee at the Ministry of Truth, in the Newspeak section. His specialty was destroying words with the objective of completely replacing Oldspeak, or standard English, with Newspeak by 2050. He did this by editing out the Oldspeak words from the texts of literature as well current publications.
Unfortunately, Syme became an unperson. He was replaced by Alan Gribben.
If the great evils are demonized, how are Leftists supposed to relive them without resistance?
It’s an insult to be expected to read literature where offensive epithets are removed to protect the reader’s sensibilities. If there are people who are lame brained enough to need this kind of protection, they would be watching situation comedies on TV instead of reading books.
It creates confusion too. Twain sometimes used the word “slave.” Now one can’t tell where that happened. Also in that era, free Negros were sometimes called n*ggers because of the racial biases of the time. I think many a Negro of that time would turn over in his grave at this new lack of candidness about his situation. To forget history is to be doomed to repeat it.
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