Oh, Huck

Maybe I wrote about this, or maybe I just Gchatted to my sister about this. Audible must have been offering a reduced price on books because my iPod is now filled with classics. One of these was Huck Finn. You may have read or heard the controversy about an educator who has published an altered edition of this book. He took out all the Southern bastardizations of Negro and substituted slave. He did this because civilized people don't use that word. It's ugly when White people say it. It's ugly when Black people say it. And it's ugly when we read it to ourselves.

I had to stop reading this book at one point. Of course, someone was reading it to me. I just couldn't stomach it. That doesn't mean I haven't said the word. When I was living at Los Robles and Reg had his two sons over for a weekend, we were all sitting around the pool and chatting about lots of stuff. It was a lovely evening as I remember. Until. I mentioned that I was reading this book and talked about what it had to say.We must have been talking about school. I thought it was an interesting concept if only because it made me realize that "the" word was about a place in society. It had morphed into a state that any person could find him/herself in. The boys were appalled. I have never uttered that word again.

So I'm all for doing something that makes Huck Finn easier to read. I'm not sure slave is the answer. As the guy on the Daily show said, the new edition exchanged an adjective with a job description. He also said that skipping over the language that was used at the time Huck Finn was written is like not reading all the parts of the Constitution, no matter how stupid they were. He was 3/5 behind reading the whole thing. I somehow finished the book. It took a lot of internal discussion to convince myself that this was history as well as fiction. And a darn good story about a wily boy.