Leave Twain alone

A publisher is cleaning up The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. NewSouth Books is replacing the word "nigger" with the word "slave" throughout.

Not that NewSouth Books came up with the idea itself.

Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery, approached the publisher with the idea in July. Mr. Gribben said Tuesday that he had been teaching Mark Twain for decades and always hesitated before reading aloud the common racial epithet, which is used liberally in the book, a reflection of social attitudes in the mid-19th century.

“I found myself right out of graduate school at Berkeley not wanting to pronounce that word when I was teaching either ‘Huckleberry Finn’ or ‘Tom Sawyer,’ ” he said. “And I don’t think I’m alone.”

I think you're alone, Professor Gribben.

What, are you afraid your African-American students will think you're calling them "niggers"? I daresay most college students understood that when a professor reads from a book, he's, well, reading from a book. You know -- using the author's words, not his own.

Do you think the word will scald flesh? Are you afraid it will start a riot? What exactly is your hangup?

Mr. Gribben said no schools had expressed interest yet in teaching the book — nor did he say what ages he thought the edition appropriate for. In his introduction, however, he writes that “even at the level of college and graduate school, students are capable of resenting textual encounters with this racial appellative.”

I'm sure some are. You know something? They need to learn that they're reading a book. They're not being called out by some white guy who has been dead for a hundred years. They're reading a literary work which for generations has been judged worthy of study. If some students want to call that judgment into question, fine: academic debate is a great thing. If, someday, Twain's work falls off reading lists because it no longer seems to have something to tell us, so be it. But if you're going to teach the book at all, you use the text Twain wrote, not the one you wish he had written.

I'm glad that no schools have expressed interest in the book. Without intending malice toward NewSouth Books, I can but hope this edition doesn't fly off the shelves.

The word was common enough in Twain's time for him to feel comfortable using it in a book for the masses. Pretending the book doesn't use it is dishonest, and to my mind astoundingly stupid. Huckleberry Finn comes with baggage, as all books do. Proper teaching acknowledges, elucidates, and contextualizes that baggage. Students don't benefit from, if you will pardon the pun, whitewashing history.

Professor Gribben, you're deeply misguided.