It may be a crucial turning point in American literature. NewSouth Books, the publisher of Mark Twain’s classic ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ will be releasing a censored version of the book next month.
The book will not contain the term ‘Injun’ nor will it contain the ‘N-Word.’ [more info]
For example, this pivotal point of Huck Finn will be censored:
Y
oung Huck Finn, trying to get right with God and save his soul from a forever of fire, sits there with the freshly written note in hand. “Miss Watson,” it says, “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 knows it is a sin to steal and he is whipped by guilt for the role he has played in helping the slave Jim steal himself from a poor old woman who never did Huck any harm. But see, Jim has become Huck’s friend, has sacrificed for him, worried about him, laughed and sung with him, depended upon him. So what, really, is the right thing to do?
“I was a-trembling,” says Huck, “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.”
Publisher’s Weekly reported last week that in this edition, edited by Twain scholar Alan Gribben of Auburn University, all 219 occurrences of the so-called N-word will be cut. Huck’s note will now call Jim a “runaway slave.”
What do you think? Should textbooks, classics, and any other potentially controversial phrase be censored out of classics? While this is obviously a leading question, it begs the follow-up question…will more books be censored?
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