Rewriting books is doubleplusungood

[gastan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A question to the people who object to the editing of Mark Twain: do you also object to the editing of Agatha Christie? Do you think that "And Then There Were None" should be sold in the USA under the title "Ten Little Niggers", with an island called "Nigger Island" and a nursery rhyme about "Ten little niggers"?

Leave it as it was originally published unless any editing or re-writing is done by the author.

For whatever reason there is a long history of publishing the same book with different titles in Britain and America. The authors have included Joseph Conrad, Peter George, Angela Carter, Bill Bryson, Stephen Fry, Philip Ardagh, Katherine Kerr, and J K Rowling -- not to mention the whole Where's Wally/Where's Waldo series.

Some titles have included "questionable" words but most have not, so who knows exactly why these decisions were made. You would need to ask the author and/or the publisher. Without those people available to defend their judgements the works should stand as written and published.

[boxcorner]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A question to the people who object to the editing of Mark Twain: do you also object to the editing of Agatha Christie? Do you think that "And Then There Were None" should be sold in the USA under the title "Ten Little Niggers", with an island called "Nigger Island" and a nursery rhyme about "Ten little niggers"?

When were the changes made and did she object to any of them?

Originally Posted by WillAdams

... Samuel Clements is long dead, and _Huckleberry Finn_ ...

Did Clemens write under the guise of a pen name because of the sensitivity surrounding the issue of race?

[rogue_librarian]

In case you haven't seen it: http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/12/tom.html
I have nothing to add

[Redcard]

Originally Posted by boxcorner

When were the changes made and did she object to any of them?



Did Clemens write under the guise of a pen name because of the sensitivity surrounding the issue of race?

Twain used a pen name mostly because he was a journalist at the time, and he didn't want his journalistic endeavors to mix with his fictional escapades. He, and many other journalists who were novelists back in "the day", felt it was not fitting for a writer to write fiction and news under the same name.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by boxcorner

When were the changes made and did she object to any of them?

The change from "Nigger" to "Indian" was made in her lifetime; the change from "Indian" to "Soldier" after her death.

[Billi]

Thank you for mentioning and explaining Agatha Christie here. When I read translated books I always look up the original title - German publishing houses can be very creative in this field. And I was really impressed to see "And then there were none" to be translated into „Zehn kleine Negerlein”. I never thought that this could be the original title! The island is also kept as Nigger Island in the German version.

[Fastolfe]

Found this today. I thought it was funny

[jamthecat]

Originally Posted by Fastolfe

Found this today. I thought it was funny

I'd laugh if it wasn't really a possibility in this country.

I don't care which end of the spectrum is trying to censor or change books; it's wrong to do so. Period. End of story. We even have a first amendment that supposedly supports the author's right to put things as he likes, even if it offends people.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by jamthecat

We even have a first amendment that supposedly supports the author's right to put things as he likes, even if it offends people.

We have a first amendment that prohibits the government from banning speech. Which is not quite the same thing.

[boxcorner]

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

[OtterBooks]

"Nigger" may not have been a slur during that time in the same sense it is now, but it was indeed part of the act of human denigration. That's why it remained in use as a slur. It was more accepted in polite society back then because racism was more accepted in polite society. Twain was a vocal critic of racial injustice who likely never wrote a word in his life where he was not fully aware of its greater meaning. To say he used the word innocently because it was a word of the times is oblivious to who he was. Later in life he was publicly vilified for his criticism of American imperialism. He was also pro-labor union and against animal vivisection (a sentiment that didn't gain popularity for another half-century). Mark Twain was not a man of his times.

If that alone does not speak to the intent of "nigger Jim," it is etched in stone by the fact that the usage of the name evolves by the end of the story (as WT Sharpe points out), with Huck calling him "my friend, Jim" and it wasn't because Twain just felt like typing a different word. Jim is an almost saintly character, and the "nigger" in his name was very intentional irony.

"Editing it is better than children not reading it at all."

No, it is not. The book is good because of its story, but like many great works of literature taught in schools it's important because of what that story conveys in a masterful way, and the aspect in question is no minor conveyance. Remove that and you may as well be feeding children Harry Potter. No doubt they find that a good story as well. There's a reason why Uncle Tom's Cabin, which contains disturbing accounts of racial denigration, is taught in schools, and it's not because it's a "fun read."

Once you accept that it was an act of social commentary, the act of editing it out is brought into new light. Removing the word did not remove racism, since the word was not an act of racism but part of deliberate and purposeful criticism of it. The person who did it was a Mark Twain "scholar," so either he was the most incompetent Twain scholar who ever lived, or he knew precisely what he was doing: silencing the message. That isn't naive censorship; it's something else entirely. "Nigger Jim" is not racist. Removing it was. edit: just imho and so forth.

[WT Sharpe]

(Normally I'm not big on resurrecting old threads, but as I doubt seriously that this one contains outdated information, and because the subject of this post directly relates to it, I hope to be forgiven in this case. For those who wonder, my opinion of the matter at hand was given in Post #146 and elsewhere in this thread.)

I don't plan on actually reading it, but just for a lark, today I purchased The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The Patriot's Edition edited by Evil Wylie, in which each occurrence of the notorious "N" word is replaced by "Navy Seal." Now available at Amazon.

Finally, "unencumbered by the weight of white guilt," people of European descent can at last "thrill to the exploits of Huckleberry Finn and his friend, Navy SEAL Jim."

[crich70]

Actually the "N word" as some call it now days wasn't originally meant as a slur at all. It meant that someone was from Africa much as calling someone from Germany a German or someone from Ireland an Irishman identified where they were originally from. I'm sure it did come to a point where it was considered a slur, but I think removing it from the book is a mistake. If the slur is removed it starts the progression from realistic portrayal of the times towards aDisney like interpretation of what life was like back then. By Huck going from using the word to referring to Jim as his friend you see that Huck is coming to understand that some things no matter how commonplace are wrong. That's a lesson we still need even today. That some things that are considered to be 'normal' are still wrong.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by crich70

...If the slur is removed it starts the progression from realistic portrayal of the times towards a Disney like interpretation of what life was like back then. By Huck going from using the word to referring to Jim as his friend you see that Huck is coming to understand that some things no matter how commonplace are wrong. That's a lesson we still need even today. That some things that are considered to be 'normal' are still wrong.

That's the very point I was making in Post #146. I do think it hilarious, though, that someone felt it necessary to produce a "Patriot's Version" where the word was changed to "Navy Seal." Surely it was done with tongue firmly in cheek, and with a poke in the eye toward other versions that censored the word altogether.

While I'm no fan of the word itself, and certainly no fan of its current gratuitous use in rap music, popular films, and elsewhere; it's difficult to imagine how Mark Twain would have got his point across as powerfully as he did without it.

[Worldwalker]

That's the thing so many people (particularly those looking for a reason to be butthurt) just don't get: Jim is the most honorable, sensible, and human character in the book. He's contrasted against the other people they meet and those people (the King and the Duke, anyone?) come out on the short end of the stick. Which I'm pretty sure was Twain's point -- he was too good a writer to do that by accident, after all. The whole point is it's not WHAT you are, it's WHO you are ... and people who can't get past the fact that the story is written within its time period miss it entirely. Well, adults do, anyway; kids, not yet having learned the proper conventions, understand the story right away -- and far better than their parents.