Kathleen Parker on Professor Alan Gribben — Is She Sanity’s Voice against “Illiterates” Who Would Alter Mark Twain’s Words?

© 2011 Peter Free

 

08 January 2011

 

 

No sanely normal person cares about this, but — there is a “painful-truth” principle at stake

 

Mark Twain expert, Professor Alan Gribben, has revised The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) to eliminate the words n****r, Injun, and half-breed in favor of slave, Indian, and half-blood.

 

Reportedly, his reasoning is that removing painful words will open new generations to Twain’s writing ability.

 

Kathleen Parker’s column is the best that I have read at explaining why many people think that Professor Gribben’s revision is a bad idea.  Here are some snippets:

 

[L]et me add my voice to the chorus of those who, in the name of all that is hallowed, object to the alteration of literature for the benefit of illiterates.

 

The fellow who edited the new Twain edition, Alan Gribben, isn't illiterate, of course, and therefore has no excuse. He's a professor of English at Auburn University.

 

No one would find this more offensive than Twain, who was, not least, reliably pithy about the small-minded and overly sensitive.

 

And no one would argue that the word in question isn't emotionally charged and, in certain contexts, highly offensive. The issue here isn't whether the word is good or bad . . . but whether one should rewrite another's literary work.

 

[S]electively editing literature, like history, is denial by any other name. When it comes to denial and truth, as everyone knows, never the Twain shall meet.

 

© 2011 Kathleen Parker, Leave Twain alone, Washington Post (09 January 2011)

 

Revising history is a troublesome thing

 

How is Professor Gribben’s effort essentially different than Chinese (or Soviet) revision of their history?

 

 

For sensitive or offended people, myself included, don’t read the books

 

I’ve seen and experienced enough pain not to need the fictional kind.  While a kid, I read Sawyer and Finn, probably as a school assignment.  Twain didn’t show me anything new about bigotry.  Racial cruelty was visibly manifest in the Border States where I grew up.  It was painful.

 

The lesson in both Twain books is their window to the past.

 

Kathleen Parker is right.

 

And Gribben is (arguably) a well-intended history-revising fool.  Well-meaning scat-for-brains are often the most insidious kind.

 

But that might be an ex-cop’s bigotry toward righteous fools talking.

 

Edit me out.