My Huckleberry Friend

As a child, I remember Dad reading me the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and his comrade Huckleberry Finn

And we watched the 1938 film together in the early 1960s on our little black and white TV.

Dad told me all about Mark Twain aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens where his pen name came from, his witticisms and how Twain loathed racism.

So I wasnt altogether happy to read [here] that Huck Finn is being republished in a Bowdlerised version. According to the BBC website

First published in 1884, Huckleberry Finn is considered one of the great American novels.

While telling the story of a boy's journey down the Mississippi River some time between 1835 and 1845, the novel satirises Southern attitudes on race and slavery.

"The book is an anti-racist book and to change the language changes the power of the book," said Cindy Lovell, executive director of The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri.

"He wrote to make us squirm and to poke us with a sharp stick. That was the purpose," she told Reuters news agency.

The novel has often been criticised for its language and characterisations and it is reported to be the fourth most banned book in US schools.

The "N-word" appears 219 times in the story.

I feel that the book should remain as it was written in order to make the point. I am aware that the N-word is now offensive, and would not use it but then it was in common usage and it is, to my mind, an essential part of the book. Surely it is part of the task of the teachers of literature to explain such things ot their pupils?

Can we take all classic literature and obliterate the parts which represent attitudes which are currently considered to be inappropriate/offensive/wrong? Who is going to decide what stays and what goes? And if that happens, what will be left?

Twain himself was very particular about his words, and did not take kindly to editing. He is quoted as saying that "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter".

The New York Times has said in an editorial

There is no way to 'clean up' Twain without doing irreparable harm to the truth of his work

It does seem that the majority opinion in the States is that this new edition is pointless.

It may be the 4th most banned book in US Schools [what are the others?] but after all, Twain himself did say

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

I think I shall stop ranting

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt