Mark,His Words

Books are,among other things,markers of their time,its fascinations and concerns,prejudices and revulsions. And so is Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1885,which captures both the inflections and attitudes of 19th century America; a bildungsroman as much about the adventures of two boys as its a story about pre-Civil War Missouri and its realities,especially racism. So when a Twain scholar called Alan Gribben decides to replace the word nigger which occurs,people have calculated,219 times in the book with slave in a combined edition of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer to be published by NewSouth Books in Alabama next month,it is cause for consternation.

Gribben argues that the word nigger could upset modern-day readers,especially young students. The presence of the racial epithet has been controversial many times earlier. But by expunging the word,Gribben is tinkering with the entire social and linguistic context of Huckleberry Finn. Thats not education,thats erasure. You dont have to dumb down Mark Twain for America,or the world,thats come over a hundred years forward and is still so fascinated with the author that his hefty autobiography has become a bestseller. The new classrooms of the world and their inhabitants should be able to discuss and debate Twains lexicon,the text and the context. Be horrified and be enchanted by it,but read it nevertheless like Twain wrote it.

It is also cause for consternation because if the Gribbens of the world had the last word,then Lolita would be blacklisted and Shylock would be deracinated. Mark Twain himself pointed out in an explanatory note to the book how a number of dialects are used,to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary Pike County dialect. Let us not,like the Widow Douglas tried to do to Huck Finn,sivilize Mark Twain.