Bowlderization

Parent Cafe
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<p>I enjoyed the discussion of this topic on NPR’s “Tell me More” (host Michel Martin is African American) had: [Should</a> The N-Word Be Purged From Mark Twain?s Classic? : NPR](<a href=“Should The N-Word Be Purged From Mark Twain’s Classic? : NPR”>Should The N-Word Be Purged From Mark Twain’s Classic? : NPR) . They read a passage with both the n-word and the word substituted with “slave”. I didn’t think it was an accurate translation at all. The consensus there by the way, was to keep the text, though one guy thought if it got more people reading the book perhaps you could justify it on those grounds. While Twain still has some 19th c. stereotypes, it’s still fundamentally imo a text about freedom and at heart anti-racist.</p>

<p>I think we give words too much power.</p>

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<p>Why? It’s not as if the African-American kids haven’t heard the word, – and my guess is that most of the white kids have probably listened to rap music.</p>

<p>A good teacher would confront the issue head on – and perhaps lead a discussion about the impact of language and words, as well as changing cultural conventions. </p>

<p>I mean… I might see a problem with teaching to 5th graders. I shared the discomfort of some posters with the Dr. Dolittle books, which were a favorite of mine as a kid – but when I was an adult and reading aloud to my kids who were then too young to read on their own, I was surprised at some of the language, which I hadn’t remembered, and I skipped over or changed the parts that made me uncomfortable. But it’s very different to read a story to a 6 year old than to teach a work of literature to 10th graders. I don’t think young kids are able to appreciate the nuances or to read on a critical level… but that is precisely what is expected of high school students.</p>

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<p>I really needed to come home to a good chuckle.</p>

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<p>What? Mark Twain was the first author to fully support himself? What about Louisa May Alcott? Trollope? Austen? Dickens?</p>

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<p>It seems to me that there would be a way of doing this in a version for young readers that I might find acceptable. It would be to replace the word with “n-----.” That, at least, wouldn’t do injury to the meaning.</p>

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<p>^^</p>

<p>But how do you pronounce that when reading it aloud or even silently? Even when I read a post on CC and see asterisks to fill in the blanks for a word, it disrupts my train of thought. I wonder if removing a word, or letters in it, gives the word more power.</p>

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<p>Yes, every reader will always KNOW what the “real” word was, that word that cannot be spoken… I think Walt Whitman once said: “The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.”</p>

<p>And it was Twain who said, “In America - as elsewhere - free speech is confined to the dead.” Although I am sure he would appreciate the irony that, apparently, even the dead no longer have any rights to free speech (unless of course they hold a copyright). ;)</p>

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<p>Be very careful. </p>

<p>A hundred years from now the current popular opinion about our era may hold that the people of our time who supported abortion rights should be considered at root to be baby killers. </p>

<p>It’s a nasty but not impossible prospect. </p>

<p>Message: Be cautious when retroactively imposing present-day values upon past generations.</p>

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Ooops. I meant to say “American author”, since Dickens and Trollope preceded him by a decade or so, and Balzac and Dumas by more. I’m not sure about Alcott, but she was almost exactly Twain’s contemporary, so it hardly matters. As for Austen – she never actually had anything published until five years before she died, and lived with her mother and sisters all her life, supported by male relatives. I don’t think she qualifies.</p>

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<p>If they change the words of the published text it will be just another example of “newspeak”. I don’t like living in a “1984” society, but that is just my opinion. </p>

<p>I also would not be so quick to assume that the word was meant to be less offensive when Twain used it. In no small part a lot of the behavior in the book was meant to convey the idea that it was offensive (especially Tom Sawyer"s in the escape/rescue scene.) It actually was not easy to be/have been an abolitionist in Twain’s era, since many politicians in the North were not for ending slavery even in the late 1850’s. Of course that is for another day’s discussion.</p>

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<p>One of my favorite stories as a child was “Little Black Sambo” which I remember being a story about a little african boy being chased by tigers. The tigers ended up running around a tree and turning into butter for pancakes.</p>

<p>I had a copy I read to my own kids who also adored the book.</p>

<p>I never thought of this book as portraying his family in a negative manner. Just an african family living in the bush. (This is only how I remember it)</p>

<p>This book has a long history of being pulled off shelves and reillustrated and renamed. What I find amazing is the story itself always holds up as a classic kids story.</p>

<p>Of course it has existed through times of racial strife in one form or another. Here is the wiki history</p>

<p>[Little</a> Black Sambo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Black_Sambo]Little”>The Story of Little Black Sambo - Wikipedia)</p>

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<p>JHS: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Emma were all published, to some commercial success, during Austen’s lifetime. As for Alcott, Little Women was published in 1868 and even before that was making money as a writer. Twain’s Innocents Abroad (his first book; before that he’d been working as a journalist) was published the same year. </p>

<p>Huck Finn was not published until 1876, after the Civil War (and slavery) ended.</p>

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<p>I have been thinking a lot about censorship, since our school district has been hearing petitions to remove Brave New World from the high school reading list.
( although as is typical- the media & the public got it wrong, it isn’t a " required" book & even if taken off the " suggested" list, teachers would still be free to teach it.)</p>

<p>It is befuddling to me- that often times the same books that are taught in high schools, are the same ones that * I was taught* in high school, & I daresay the same ones my parents were taught.</p>

<p>Yes there are some great classics out there that have influenced other works, but there often ( IMO) more modern works that are worth studying as well.</p>

<p>I liked what my daughters school did in upper elementary & middle school, which was reading literature that was of the period that they were studying in history, it added a depth to the study I think.
( I can’t remember- but perhaps they also did something like that in AP in high school?)</p>

<p>I believe in reading a work as written. I realize that music compositions are " interpreted" and adapted for the instruments & performers, but a novel should stand on it’s own, and to alter it- IMO, is to plagiarize it, because you are changing the words, but leaving the authors name on them. ( possibly not the word I want- but how I was taught)
It concerns me, because it is a very slippery slope I think.</p>

<p>If you don’t want to teach the book- don’t- or teach excerpts or teach something else.
Heaven knows there are more books worth reading than any of us can manage to get to them all.</p>

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<p>I attended a fascinating lecture once by a musician who was expert in his field. He demonstrated what happens when you change the key to accommodate a performer’s vocal range. One key will have a different feel and be brighter (or darker) than another and he discussed how composers chose the key they wrote in very specifically based on that sort of thing. Even what might seem like a very subtle or practical change alters the artist’s intent and choice. It just doesn’t seem right, whether it’s in music or literature, to alter an artist’s work.</p>

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<p>dmd77: Yes, Austen had publishing success for a few years, but she also lost money on publishing ventures, and she continued to live with her mother and sisters and to be supported by her brothers. She might have become self-sustaining had she lived, and maybe she was self-sustaining for a year or so there, but I think she falls short of qualifying as the first truly professional author in English.</p>

<p>Alcott I just don’t know enough about. I thought she continued to live with her family, too. I would guess that Little Women made a lot of money, but I’m not certain how much she made on her other books. Twain, like Dickens, and like some modern authors, made a lot of his money giving public readings and speeches; I’m not certain how much of that Alcott did. In any event, as I said, she didn’t meaningfully pre-date Twain; maybe they share the status of first American self-sustaining author.</p>

<p>Tom Sawyer was published in 1876. Huckeberry Finn was more than a decade later. It was a period piece when it was written.</p>

<p>sax:

It’s so interesting. I remember it that way, too, and so do most Americans I’ll bet. But . . . there are no tigers in Africa. “Black” has/had different meaning in England and in America, and the little boy in the original story had to have been Bengali or Tamil, not African. But I think the illustrators of American editions helped turned him into an African.</p>

<p>emerald: I think if you look, you will see a lot of churn in the high school literature curriculum since we were kids. Books like The Things They Carried, The House On Mango Street, Song Of Solomon, are all pretty ubiquitous in high school curriculums. And I don’t think my kids ever read anything by George Eliot, Hardy, Conrad, London, Hesse, Dos Passos, Greene, Hemingway . . . all mainstays of my high school English courses.</p>

<p>Also, if you (and others) believe in reading a book only “as written”, does that mean you (plural) refuse to read anything that has been translated from another language? Including, say, the Bible? The Old Testament in Hebrew is a very different work from any of its English translations. I don’t know that there is any translation of anything that does not alter (and detract from) the original (or, in some cases like the recent Stieg Larson trilogy, perhaps improve it).</p>

<p>It’s nice to voice these slogans of respect for art, but we chisel on those all the time. The principle can’t be “Not One Step Beyond The Original”. It has to be “Which Steps Are OK?”</p>

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<p>JHS: I went and checked on Wikipedia. [American</a> literature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_literature]American”>American literature - Wikipedia) claims that Washington Irving was the first successful American writer. Not one I’d have thought of. It also mentions Hawthorne and Melville, who I think we should both have thought of. It certainly appears that the mid-19th century was a pretty good period for writers.</p>

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<p>I think that for the younger readers, pre high school age , the books should be censored with the offensive words changed. Once in high school, books with the original language should be used. </p>

<p>For the same reason, certain movies should not be shown in k-8 settings. There is a very big step up expectation that occurs in 9th grade, and with it can come the change to the original materials.</p>

<p>I am currently assisting with a play production at a middle school. We are doing a Shakespearean adaptation. Adapted for younger thespians. I don’t think doing the actual production would be valuable for the kids. Too advanced, themes too adult, but the adaptation works well, and it introduces the literature to the kids so that when they do get the original writings to read, they will be that much ahead. No reason why other literature can’t be handled that way.</p>

<p>I do believe that the kids and parents should be made aware of the censorship and changes in wording in the literature so that they can be discussed.</p>

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<p>The mid-19th century WAS a good time for writers. But I am pretty certain Hawthorne did not support himself writing for long periods of time. Melville had early success with Typee and Omoo, but spent most of his life in continuous financial embarrassment. The works for which we remember him failed in the marketplace or were never published at all until long after his death. I guess I should check into Poe, too, and Stephen Crane, but I can’t now. </p>

<p>Irving was certainly the first commercially successful American author, but I don’t think that means he made enough from his writing to live on, at least until very late in his life. He always had more-or-less full-time non-writing jobs.</p>

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<p>I think there is a difference between a live performance or even a movie version that is different from the book and changing the written text of the book in its own language. You know that the play and the movie are interpretations, not the original thing. If you read a translation, and I have read many great novels which were not written in english in translation, you know it is a translation, and you know that you have lost some of the original. Very often, you have lost a great chunk of meaning, but without time to learn russian, french, czech or japanese, the translation will have to be the poor substitute. Shakespeare’s works appear in modernized form, and imo this is not worth the time taken to read it. Perhaps a page by page edition of “modern” with the original on the side would be of value (as is often done with Hebrew bibles.) </p>

<p>If we sanitize our own American writers, we should at the least say that it is Huck Finn as reinterpreted by whomever is the editor, and be very clear that this is not the original. There are always reinterpretations of the classics (usually in movie form - from Shakespeare or Greek plays), and these have value, but they should not be viewed as the same as the original.</p>

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<p>I wonder how THIS passage will be rewritten (from ch. 6):</p>

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