Here is a couple of outside observations on Jane Smiley's opus.

1. One of her major premises is that HF was elevated by efforts of a propaganda machine.
This is reminiscent of L.Tolstoy's premise that Shakespeare was elevated (undeservedly) by efforts of Goethe and Co.
If not for Goethe, Tolstoy argued, works of Shakespeare would not be deemed of any lasting value because X,Y,Z, etc.....

2. The second premise, implicitly present in the opus, is that HF is primarily about race relationships and therefore shall be evaluated based on how race relationships are treated in it.

This is merely a common propaganda trick. If novel X concerns itself with Y then it can presumed to be primarily about Y.

Both premises can be refuted with the following observation.
HF was popular in non-English speaking countries where race relations were a non-issue.

In my youth (60-70th) HF was very popular in USSR, though it was not any part of school programs. The issue of race was too remote to soviet children to matter. The book was read and admired for something else.

Hope this helps to see that there might be more to HF than N-word and race relations.

The literary criticism of Twain’s Huck Finn has a long history, and many well-argued and contrary views have been presented about its characters, themes, structure, and artistic merit. Such ongoing discussions about the book are valuable. I wonder, though, how much this current brouhaha about the book covers new ground or adds significant insight into the debate. Gribben’s reissuing of a language-sanitized Huck Finn seems more like a publication gimmick designed to attract attention and generate sales. As a Mark Twain scholar and expert, Gribben must be aware of the deeper and more serious criticisms leveled against Twain and his book, such as those mentioned by Stephen in his posts. And if that’s where the real problems lie, then why reissue the book with only the offending word nigger removed and the rest of the novel left intact?

With periodic regularity, other classic novels are also put in the stocks and assailed as flawed and injurious works. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men are two well-know examples that come to mind. But because of its stature and its longstanding position in the canon of American literature, Twain’s book commonly heads the list of questionable books and consequently gets thrust into the news headlines more often. This current ruckus, too, will pass, and then it will resurface again sometime. And all the while I will hear Mark Twain saying, “Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.”

Richard

Note: Cross-posted with Roger's most recent post where he raises a point similar to one I make in my first paragraph.

But Dmitri, isn't this how *every* work gets elevated? There's a giant machine of critics, professors, teachers, publishers, other authors, even blurb writers, who promote texts primarily because of their own interests, and through the force of repetition, it becomes a kind of common shared wisdom, a foundation of belief. This is why the subject brings out such strong emotions, as evidenced in this thread.

Often, this machine gets its way, simply through force of repetition. This is especially true when the text is questioned. People have authorities and opinions always prepared, but they especially have the weight of assumed shared wisdom always at the ready. Want to see another example of this? Try telling someone Animal Farm is not a great book. You'll really see the sparks fly then! And if you really want some fun, try telling its defenders that Orwell dedicated most of his life to the service of democratic socialism! ;)

If novel X concerns itself with Y then it can presumed to be primarily about Y.

But Dmitri, sometimes certain elements do tend to overshadow others, in ways the author didn't expect. Take Pound's anti-semitism. It's difficult to separate it out. I love Berryman, but when I was teaching at Fisk it never occurred to me to bring him up. Are the dreamsongs primarily about minstrel shows? Certainly not. But do they overshadow any discussion of the text? I would argue that they do, especially in certain contexts.

Bildungsromans are one of the most popular genres, and HF is likely the most popular bildungsroman of all time. There is a delicious irony here. Guess the most popular mystery of all time? That's right, Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None." Click here to see its original cover. As late as 1977, some places were still publishing it under that title. And I promise you, there were plenty of people saying even then, "Ah, it's not really racist. She was trying to show their positive sides. Besides, it's a great book, and we should accept it as is." And when publishers decided to change the title, you can be certain there were plenty of people who protested. ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Apart from the absurdity of comparing Twain and Christie, the obvious difference here is that Christie's use of the n-word was not integral, or even much related, to the plot or the themes of her book, and there was no way to argue, as I and others have done with HF, that her use of the word was not just "not racist," but, on the contrary, part and parcel of a resounding and forceful and convincing refutation of racism.

Ultimately, it seems to me that just about no one actually prefers to have the n-word excised from HF in the sense that they think it improves the book, not even the editor who has perpetrated and defended the expurgation. The sense I get is that the pro-expurgation crowd is saying that the book is so important, and so necessary for students to read, that they are willing to suffer the necessary evil of expunging the n-word in order to get it into schools and classrooms that would otherwise not be able to offer it to their students in any form.

If I'm right, then we've been debating a non-issue to a large extent. There's not a single person I know of (unless I've misunderstood people here) who claims that for grown-up, intellectual, sophisticated and literary readers, the book is superior without the n-word and Mark Twain should be thanking us from his grave for the brilliant alteration made to his masterpiece. No, I think we all agree that the book is actually superior as written, and the question really is whether it is worth injuring HF in order to save it, at least for certain audiences. Delete the n-words alone, or delete the entire text. That, apparently, is the sad choice in so many school districts.

If we focus only on that question, my preference would be not to teach the book at all. Let people come to the actual book when they come to it. There's quite enough other things to teach them while they are in high school than to teach them lies and desecration. As much as I revere HF, just toss another Shakespeare play into the curriculum if HF is too much for our children to be exposed to. Preferably not Othello.

Well said, Roger, except that you may be mistaken in your suggestion quoted above. In many high schools it would be difficult to toss another Shakespeare play into the curriculum because his plays have already been tossed out.

Richard

Well, I suppose that this particular turn of rhetoric is inevitable in any discussion of this sort; it's just too tempting. And to be fair, there's probably an element of (retributive?) justice to it as well. After all, those who are fond of Huck Finn may well feel that they are themselves being indirectly accused of racism, or of condoning racism ("perhaps unknowingly"), when the book itself is criticized as such. So the inevitable turn is not always a bad turn necessarily; if nothing else, it serves to remind everyone involved of how much may be personally at stake for participants in such a debate, and the concomitant importance of assuming good faith among them.

For example, I am quite sure that Roger is sincere in his view that Huck Finn is a "a resounding and forceful and convincing refutation of racism" (post #54 above), and that moreover, he sees that as a positive thing. In other words, he is against the promotion of racism, and for its eradication, and he believes that the book can do good work toward that end. (I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I suspect that he would say that the book has other virtues--aesthetic, intellectual, historical, etc.--as well; I don't mean to reduce his advocacy of it to a matter of politicizing literature, or propaganda.)

That said, I think his formulation of the issue of stereotyping--"the stereotype that the reality has sometimes spawned"--is unfortunate, since it plays into the old fall-back defense of bigots that there must be some truth to a charge, or it wouldn't be a stereotype in the first place. Which may indeed be true, of course, just irrelevant: the reason that a stereotype is noxious is not that examples corresponding to it can never be found, but that its promotion as a defining feature of a group unfairly characterizes all members of that group in a negative way. But while Roger inadvertently leaves the door open to the "some-truth-in-it" bigot, I don't imagine for a moment that he's left it open for himself. In other words, to repeat, I'm quite sure that he's sincere in his anti-racist convictions.

The problem is just that others don't see Huck Finn in quite the same way, and they too deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the sincerity of their beliefs. For example, while appearing largely sympathetic to the book, Tony Barnstone still notes in his post (#14) above, In other words, Jim as stereotype. Of course, one can argue--as Ellison does in the quoted passages, and as Tony does himself in the paragraphs that follow--that the "stereotype mask" is essential because it is from behind it "that we see Jim's dignity and human capacity -- and Twain's complexity -- emerge." And indeed, this is the standard defense for the book from those who wish to preserve its status as a "must-read" part of the canon--the argument that the racist surface image is necessary if readers are to be confronted with it and challenged to look beyond it. Or as Roger puts it above, "Twain shows you what you think you already have seen, and then shows you that you haven't seen it accurately at all."

There's a good deal of plain common sense to this argument, and I think that those who advance it sometimes underestimate the degree to which those who are unpersuaded by it nonetheless are quite capable of understanding it. At any rate, two obvious objections can be set against it. The first, of course, is that whatever the "educational" value of the confrontation process in theory, the racist surface of the text itself is just so offensive that in practice it does more harm than good. That's a subjective question of course--it will depend, in effect, on where a given reader is "coming from" on the relevant issues--but I have to say, I do think that the sensitivities of African-American readers who object to the book (and no, as Richard notes, there is no reason to imagine that African-Americans are "monolithic" in this regard) should be taken very seriously. That said, the objection itself is an argument from personal experience, and as such is best left to those readers with the relevant background. It is not, at any rate, my argument here.

My argument--the argument which I share with Jane Smiley and Leo Marx in the essays that I've linked to above--is just that whatever Twain's good intentions in terms of exposing racist stereotypes, he effectively sabotages that project in failing to take its implications seriously, especially in the last chapters of the book. In effect, having led Huck (and by extension, presumably, the naïve reader) to a recognition of Jim's fundamental humanity, and to a principled rejection of the inverted social mores that would deny him that humanity, Twain promptly reverts back to stereotype in a fashion that winds up insidiously reaffirming those mores after all.

To use a metaphor from aviation history, it's as if Huck Finn is the first--disputed--instance of powered flight. "Look, look," cry the defenders, "it's in the air! It's flying!" And that may well be true. But others (party poopers!) are there also, and they point out that while yes, the wheels do in fact leave the ground for a moment or two, they promptly touch back down again . . . and the plane winds up crashing at the end of the runway. Huck Finn in a nutshell.

In short, my contribution to the argument is just to say--in agreement with Smiley, and Marx, and others--that while Huck Finn has many virtues as a book, it ultimately fails, and on its own terms at that. As such, the argument that it is essential to the canon on the grounds of literary merit, whatever its detractors may say of its contents, really doesn't hold water.

Not for this reader, anyway.

.

Stephen:

I can follow your argument (although I don't agree with it), and I'm familiar with Leo Marx's essay and the writings of others that take a negative view of the book. Yes, Marx's famous critique is well-argued, but let us not pretend it's the last or only critical view that should be embraced. I've also read the essays by Lionel Trilling and T. S. Eliot that triggered Marx's response. Their views, of course, are largely positive.

I don't intend to go into a long lecture here, but many critics have presented sound and detailed arguments countering the views of Marx and his critical camp. A few of these writers whose essays are worth reading are Richard P. Adams, "The Unity and Coherence of Huckleberry Finn" and Thomas Arthur Gullason, "The 'Fatal' Ending of Huckleberry Finn" and Luariat Lane, "Why Hukleberry Finn Is A Great World Novel" and Albert Stone, "Huckleberry Finn and the Modes of Escape."

Every sound argument you present, Stephen, is countered by equally sound interpretations in the above mentioned critical reviews. In fact there are reputable scholars who maintain that the ending of Huck Finn is both inspired and brilliant.

I will offer just one example. In his essay, Lauriat Lane writes:

The first real novel and the first world novel is, by almost universal consent, Cervantes' The Adventures of Don Quixote. The most important thing which Don Quixote has bequeathed … is the theme which is central to Don Quixote and to almost every great novel since, the theme of appearance versus reality. This theme is also central to Huckleberry Finn. In the final section of the book, the theme of appearance versus reality reaches almost philosophical proportions.

So, Stephen, which critic should we recognize as giving the final word on Twain's Huck Finn? Certainly readers should make up their own minds about the book and take to heart any critical views that they deem sound from scholars. But trying to come up with "the final verdict" on Huck Finn is like trying to come up with "the definitive" interpretation of Hamlet.

The fact that Huck Finn is the focus of such continuing and voluminous and opposing critical analysis is one demonstration that it is an important book and an essential part of the canon. Yet you choose to dismiss contrary views, ignore scholarly examination that disagrees with your chosen critics, and embrace a single narrow view that claims the book is a failure. To paraphrase Thomas Paine, you are making yourself a slave to your present opinion and precluding yourself from the right of changing it.

Richard

Bill, not really. But that's what the giant machine of
critics, professors, teachers, publishers, etc. want the rest of us to believe. A good blurb or a brilliant critique, be it negative or positive, can induce one to read a dozen pages of a book, but hardly a hundred. I lived for a long time in a country where books were published with no exalted praise printed all over their cover and no one cared what critics were saying, since they were all employed by a propaganda machine. Books were elevated by word of mouth. Some were even published underground (called samizdat) because of the interest spurred by what is now called "guerilla marketing". In short, it is possible to elevate any book but efforts of that giant machine you describe, but only temporarily. If a book is published in many languages for 100+ years, there is probably something else, something other than orchestrated efforts of the PR machine.

A relatively recent example of a book becoming elevated despite the efforts of PR machine, is Nabokov's "Lolita".

What Nabokov said in the afterword to Lolita ("On a Book Entitled Lolita") can be used to undermine the argument that Stephen puts so concisely here:
Nabokov wrote:

That is to say, one has to pretend to know what book's own terms are to claim it fails on them. Following Nabokov, it is possible to say that the problem with HF discussed in this thread might be entirely an invention of "Teachers of Literature."

I had the same thought when I first heard of the flap. The timing of the announcement of the new edition with the release of Twain's 100-year autobiography seems too coincidental to not have significant profit as one of the chief motivations for the new edition. Add the continuing growth of the Tea Party movement, whose membership would likely embrace the sanitized edition of HF, and you've free book publicity catered toward your ideal audience.

A lot of school districts will shell out what little funding they have for this n-word–free edition if it will make outspoken school board members and parents happy. In my teaching experience, that same district would say no to purchasing a new unchanged edition of the same book, even if the copies being used in the classroom were so worn that pages were falling out.

To answer Jim Burrows question back on post #34, No, not in most public K-12 school districts anyways. Curriculum committees, usually comprised of several teachers of that grade level and subject discipline, will meet to decide the curriculum and choose the textbooks that all teachers in that district will use for the next several years. If you teach in a rural area where you are the only teacher for that discipline, then you usually get to choose your own materials. I don't know how private schools handle this. I've worked at both public and private universities and individual faculty have always had the freedom to choose their own course materials. When I was in college years ago though, I recall one of my professors apologizing for making us read Bleak House because the department chair insisted upon it. I don't know if times have changed in the intervening years or if it just varies by institution or even academic department.

Laurel

Richard, you're confusing the act of advancing a position (in which one does indeed make a case, along certain lines, from a certain point of view) and being closed to the consideration of all other positions. This too, of course, is a predictable turn of rhetoric in debates like this: one's opponent is declared "a slave" to his idée fixe, willfully blind to counterevidence, and thus beyond reasoning with. Which of course is to imply (retroactively, as it were), that any arguments advanced by that opponent may be dismissed in their turn, as the product of an unreasoning monomania. I prefer not to play that game, myself.

Am I likely to be unaware that critics have answered Leo Marx in the half century since his article? I admit, of the articles you cite as responses, the only one I have previously read is Gullason's, but I'll be pleased to look at the others, provided I can find them without too much trouble. And of course, I could add to your list such titles as Chadwick Hansen's "The Character of Jim and the Ending of "Huckleberry Finn," Richard and Rita Gollin's "' Huckleberry Finn' and the Time of the Evasion" and Stacey Margolis's "Huckleberry Finn; or, consequences" (the last being a specific response to Smiley's article), which I read along with Smiley and Marx, etc., last summer as I sorted through my reactions to rereading the novel. (They're all downloaded on my hard drive here.)

Of course, it might be urged against me that I didn't give these alternatives their due, since I came down, in the end, so firmly with Smiley and Marx. But so it goes with these things; nothing I've read on the pro side of the argument has been sufficient to persuade me that my gut instinct, on finishing the novel, was somehow wrong. Like Jane Smiley, I was stunned; like Leo Marx, I shook my head in wonder at Twain's "glaring lapse of moral imagination." But I was not unwilling to consider other points of view. On the contrary: I wanted to know what it was that other people saw in the book that I presumably was somehow missing. So I considered their arguments. I just wasn't persuaded.

Is it possible that I might someday change my mind? I suppose. But I'll have to see a persuasive argument first. In the meantime, I have given my own arguments here; if you're not persuaded by them, that's okay with me. Should I insinuate that you're close-minded because you don't agree? That you are "a slave" to your own present opinion? As I said above, I prefer not to play that game. So perhaps we'll just have to agree to disagree.

For now, at any rate, I stand by my opinion. Say it ain't so.

.