Stephen:

Fairly stated. My apologies for letting my rhetoric run away with me at the close of my last post. It was a rather cheap shot.

Yes, we can agree to disagree. And I wonder if we could agree on something else. Shouldn't students be allowed to engage in the same debate that we're having on this board? Shouldn't students be allowed to read Huck Finn as Twain wrote it, form their own opinions, discuss the book with the instructor and classmates, and examine the various scholarly and critical interpretations that have been put forth?

When I was in the classroom, my approach with Huck Finn, as with any subject, work, or topic I taught in any course, was not to proclaim or sermonize. A crucial part of my job as a teacher was to guide students in comprehension, analysis, and synthesis. Isn't that what education's about?

Richard

Hi All,

It's been an interesting thread to read--so many good arguments on all sides, and six pages of it in short order. If I were teaching the book and it generated this much passion and discussion and questioning of assumptions in my students, I would consider that a fine day of teaching. For what it's worth, I don't stand behind a single argument I made in my earlier post. My job as a prof is not to tell students how to think about the book, but to let them in on the conversation and ask what they think about the arguments on various sides of the issue. To paraphrase Frost, I'd rather they think it for themselves. I suppose I'm making the argument that precisely because these issues are so troubling they should be taught. Or perhaps I'm not. I find the arguments to the contrary to be pretty convincing as well.

Best, TB

""Teachers of Literature are apt to think up such problems as "What is the author's purpose?" or still worse "What is the guy trying to say?"

Dmitri,

Thanks for your note. I hope you'll forgive me for saying I've grown weary of this argument, and, after today's events, suspicious of polemics in general. There are some moments when one simply desires to head for the hills, and this is one of them. I suppose that even today's event is simply one step down a long path, and I don't like thinking about what's at the bottom of that staircase. I don't find the argument particularly amusing, and I'm just not interested in anyone's high dudgeon.

On the other hand, I did enjoy your note. Did Nabokov think he had anything to say? Did he think *any* novelist worth his salt has anything to say? Of course not. He just wanted to combine two things, to make a harlequin. Or rather, he was simply trying to draw the bars of his own cage. He would have laughed at the idea that Twain had a message worth listening to. And who knows? Perhaps Twain would have as well. I'm told he had a sense of humor... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

I'll add one more thought and then grow weary along with Bill.

Even if we all agreed that the n-word has to be stricken from the book," slave" remains a stupid choice. Why not something like "Negro" to maintain the word as a racial category instead of a description of a person's condition of servitude?

One could even argue that saying "Negro" in place of the n-word would improve a modern student's understanding of the book because the n-word, though still offensive, was less explosive and deliberately provocative in the context of Huck's world. If someone calls a black person the n-word today, it is meant as fighting words, but in Huck's world, I believe, it was ingrained in common usage and was not reserved for those occasions when someone was deliberately setting out to be a provocative and bigoted asshole. One could argue that someone reading the book today who is unaware of this change in meaning would misinterpret its use, and that something like "Negro" (which has become mildly offensive these days as the un-preferred or obsolete term) would therefore better convey the sense of those who used the word in the book. (If HF were translated into another language, I suspect that the translator might well choose a modern term in his own language that is less offensive than the modern n-word is in ours, and he would do so out of fidelity to the original, which took place in a world where the n-word didn't have quite the same impact as it now does).

I would ultimately reject this argument and stick to my guns, but at least it makes a little bit of surface sense -- unlike "slave," which is silly.

I've enjoyed this long discussion, and I've learned from it. I've learned from those with whom I tend to agree and from those with whom I've disagreed. I'm not weary, but I am ready for a break.

Richard

Wonderful thread. I've listened and considered. I react with horror to any fiddling with established literature, and applaud the idea that students should be encouraged to engage in discussions like this one. But I'd like to add another suggestion to Roger's.

When I read HF it sang to me in the diction of the Mississippi. I can't hear "Negro" in those voices. But since "Nigger" now carries unpleasant overtones from elsewhere, could it be replaced in this instance with the phonetically-correct "Nigrah" which keeps the music of the word without the subsequently-added baggage? And was not this the origin of "Nigger" anyway?

Yes, slave is a bloody silly choice of bowdlerisation. It removes the race element, not just weakening but amputating an essential aspect of the book. We are supposed to find this uncomfortable - it is good that we find it uncomfortable.

When this version is taught in schools, will teachers announce: 'Kids, every time you read "slave" Twain actually wrote "nigger"'? If so, an elephant the size of Lucy the Roadside Attraction walks into the room. If not, a fundamentally important aspect of the novel is effectively tossed to the winds, or brushed under the carpet, as most of the book's readers from here to eternity are obviously going to be schoolchildren. And that effective brushing under the carpet is, well, a bit racist, isn't it?

Just a note from me to say that I too have enjoyed the discussion here. Although I wouldn't want to claim too much for it--my own contributions included!--as representing, say, an ideal model for emulation (never a good idea to get too satisfied with one's own productions, right?), I'd certainly be happy enough to second Anne's motion in post #66 above that "students should be encouraged to engage in discussions like this one."

Of course, I'm not sure that Huck Finn itself necessarily has to be the occasion of such discussions (assuming that we're talking about issues larger than just the book per se), hence my own contribution to the "con" side of the debate here. But while that argument involves emphasizing the possibility of harm arising from classroom encounters with the book, I don't wish to imply by that that teachers who do teach it are unaware of, or insensitive to, that possibility. On the contrary, I know from my own experience and personal acquaintance--and see, moreover, plenty of evidence in the posts of participants in the discussion here--that teachers do take such matters very seriously indeed. So the disagreement over Huck Finn is a disagreement about means, not ends, and it certainly shouldn't be seen as impugning the sincerity, or good intentions, of anyone on either side.

Richard, thank you for the gracious words above.

Steve C.

.

Michael Chabon on reading Huckleberry Finn to his kids at bedtime:

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/a...ammies/69369/#

Twain DID have a message worth listening to, Bill.

Those lines where Huck knows for sure he's going to go to hell, but just won't turn in Jim anyway.
That's what the book is about.

Two thirds of Huck Finn was more than enough to make Twain immortal.