Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
1. Allow free and uncontrolled access to the original book.
2. Remove the book from all school libraries.
3. Allow only controlled access to the book, in an environment where its cultural context can be explained.
4. Rewrite the book, thus preserving a good story, but removing the context that is culturally unacceptable.
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2 and 3 aren't acceptable in a free society. 4 isn't an option either, as removing the "culturally unacceptable material" arguably does NOT preserve the story. That's the whole point...
Besides, rewriting a book is a complete no-no as far as I'm concerned: once something is published, it should become uneditable. If editing was allowed, the very base of our culture would become shaky, as you could never trust what you read.
Imagine if a text published a certain year didn't quite match another with the same title, same ISBN and same author but published another year! That's what happens when Winston constantly rewrites historical records to fit the political situation du jour in 1984. My head spins just thinking about it. If I couldn't trust what I read, I think I'd go peculiar.
There's actually a perfectly acceptable 5th option: those who insist on cleaning up Huck Finn should create a new edition entitled "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - the corny edition" or something, add the revisionist's name on the cover alongside Mark Twain's, give the book a new ISBN number and market it to delicate people, the same way Cleanflicks sells sanitized movies, claiming they give added value. That way, it becomes a new literary work - an exegesis of Mark Twain's work as it were - that leave the original work untouched and available to those who want to read it as-is.