Lightning and the lightning bug: Arguments against Gribben’s censored Huck Finn
Over the past week, the Internet has been crackling with angry reactions to NewSouth Books’ upcoming n-word-free edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, edited by Alan Gribben. Many of of these reactions, including my own recent blog post, carried a good deal of anger and shock. But as a writer and a teacher of literature, I think I need to step back now and take a more dispassionate look at Gribben’s reasoning — reasoning which is deeply flawed. I have no doubt the man is sincere and well-meaning. He’s probably even a great hugger. So let’s forget outrage for awhile and just think this through.
His inspiration for this gentled edition comes from his experiences as a lecturer (all references in this article come from his introduction — Hat tip, Frank Wilson):
Through a succession of firsthand experiences, this editor gradually concluded that an epithet-free edition of Twain’s books is necessary today. For nearly forty years I have led college classes, bookstore forums, and library reading groups in detailed discussions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in California, Texas, New York, and Alabama, and I always recoiled from uttering the racial slurs spoken by numerous characters, including Tom and Huck. I invariably substituted the word “slave” for Twain’s ubiquitous n-word whenever I read any passages aloud. Students and audience members seemed to prefer this expedient, and I could detect a visible sense of relief each time, as though a nagging problem with the text had been addressed.
As someone who has lectured most of his adult life, I understand the invisible weight that one bears during the reading or discussion of racially-charged literary selections. I have taught “multi-cultural literature” classes and it is far from easy — especially teaching, as I have, in a college in an urban environment whose student population is especially diverse. I also understand the comfort Gribben must have felt, himself, as a result of the “visible sense of relief” his audiences exhibited. The problem, though, is that “the nagging problem with the text” had not been “addressed” — it had been avoided.
An “expedient” is not the proper goal of a teacher of literature, neither is the comfort of his classroom. The job of a literature teacher is to attempt to get to the core of a novel’s messages. If Twain wanted readers to be comfortable, he would have left the word out himself — in much the way he chose to do in the case of the adult Tom Sawer, in the companion book. Gribben says:
Although Twain’s adult narrator of Tom Sawyer is himself careful to use the then-respectful terms “colored” and “negro” in Chapter 1, the boys refer to slaves four times with the pejorative n-word.
Again, these are Gribben’s own words. Is this not an indication that Twain had an artistic reason for choosing to use the n-word instead of “colored” or “negro”? — or, “slave” for that matter? Is Twain’s artistic choice not something that should be inviolate? If Twain can’t be consulted (and he certainly cannot unless we want to break out the Ouija boards) these changes should not be made. A man who was so particular about words — who saw the right word and the wrong word as the difference between lightning and the lightning bug — had a reason for his choices.
Let this sentence resonate in your head for awhile and then get back to me with your conclusions: Mark Twain, America’s literary giant, picked the words; a literature professor named Alan Gribben picked new ones.
I don’t think Gribben’s argument that there are other texts out there that are not, let’s say, “revised” helps justify this edition’s existence, either. And I don’t think his reference to the availability of the handwritten editions makes as poingnant of a point about literary purism as he thinks it does:
. . . a facsimile of Twain’s holograph (i.e., handwritten) manuscript of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been published in a two-volume edition (1982), and Twain’s holograph manuscript of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is now viewable in a CD issued in 2003 by the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.
I see this as an jabbing implication that those who object to his edition are literary purism extremists who would prefer to read Twain’s handwritten copy. That’s a stretch and a failed preemptive strike at the “literary purists” he feels will object. It’s not blind purism we are talking about, here; it’s a question of being faithful to the work of a genius — of wanting to keep his work in its originally crafted state.
Gribben also mentions that although numerous other critics have defended the use of the word in the text, Langston Hughes once expressed his distaste for the word existing anywhere in literature, regardless of the author’s intention:
. . . Langston Hughes made a forceful, lasting argument for omitting this incendiary word from all literature, from however well-intentioned an author. “Ironically or seriously, of necessity for the sake of realism, or impishly for the sake of comedy, it doesn’t matter,” explained Hughes. African Americans, Hughes wrote, “do not like it in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so sympathetic. . . . They still do not like it.”
Hughes’s objection to the use of the word by an author is not necessarily the same as claiming that books ought to be censored when an author has made the choice to use it. (The quotation above comes from Hughes’s memoir The Big Sea — source — which I have not read in its entirety, admittedly, so please feel free to comment if you know the quotation in context from the whole work.) I would like to think that Hughes was calling for the “omission” of the word from works in the future, as opposed to ones already in print. The words “omission” and “removal” are as different as . . . “slave” and — oh, never mind.
I understand the strategy of referencing the objections of a brilliant African-American writer, but Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison (both African-American writers, as well, of course) seem to have seen numerous reasons to use the word. And I am sure they wouldn’t disagree with Hughes — I am sure Wright and Ellison didn’t like the word either. I’d be willing to bet it disgusted them more that I could ever imagine. Perhaps that’s exactly why they chose to use it in the context of their groundbreaking work.
Gribben goes on to mention:
James S. Leonard, then the editor of the newsletter for the Mark Twain Circle of America, conceded in 2001 that the racist language and unflattering stereotypes of slaves in Huckleberry Finn can constitute “real problems” in certain classroom settings.
Yes it can. So?
Would I argue that Huck Finn should be taught in every classroom situation? No. Not in situations where there are lousy teachers who are petrified and who lack the necessary critical background to be able to handle the sensitive challenges of teaching such a multifaceted book. Not in situations where teachers, like Gribben, would rather be comfortable than get to the heart of one of the greatest works in American literature.
But, in the hands of a great teacher . . .
In the end, it is not a tragedy if districts choose not to include the book in their curricula. American literature is full of good books on important themes. If a district doesn’t trust its teachers to teach Huck Finn, fine. This is not censorship — the choice of curriculum is based on supporting effective instruction. If a district feels its teachers cannot effectively teach the book or that its students might not effectively comprehend it, the choice to exclude it is valid. (I didn’t read it until grad school, by the way.)
Granted, it is one of the most important books in American lit, if not — if you ask Hemingway — the most important one. But do middle school kids need to read it? Are they ready? Are their teachers equipped to teach it properly? Of course, one way to deal with these questions is to take Gribben’s route and to sugar the medicine. But is that manufactured comfort and the possibility of increased awareness of the book among adolescents and teens worth teaching kids either that Twain wrote something different that he actually did or that, in America, one is not allowed to write and publish things that make others (even profoundly) uncomfortable? — worse, that one cannot be sure one’s voice will be accurately heard after his death, even if the life that preceded it was as important to literature as was Twain’s?
Gribben’s intended kindness is not unlike the “kindness” of a parent who does not want to make the tough decisions with his kids. Give up on the green beans and buy McDonald’s every day, and the cherubs will be happy. But what about in twenty years?
If we take the icky taste out of Huck Finn, more people will be able to comfortably read a book that Twain did not intend. I don’t see that as an achievement. I see that as a symptom of an often wheezing culture that is, currently, being devoured by its own fears, in the streets, in politics and, now, in the academic and artistic world.
Chris Matarazzo’s ARTISTIC UNKNOWNS appears every Tuesday
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