Censorship, Re-writing the Uncomfortable.
Something I read this morning has conspired to drive me out of my recent long quiet period :
Earlier today I read a news article, barely more than a blurb mentioning a scholar who is working with a publisher to remove the N-word from Huckleberry Finn. The story has bothered me since I read it. It evokes the memory of a book I read while I was still fairly young. _The Day They Came To Arrest The Book_ by Nat Hentoff, which concerns this very book and the censorship of it. That book and the issue of censorship made quite an impression on me.
I think that is why now I’m so bothered by the idea that they are rewriting Huck Finn now to remove the objectionable language. I think that book should stay like it is. That book should shock, offend, bother, and make uncomfortable anyone who reads the rotgut language in there. Because if we don’t read that book and see that attitude, we will never learn where we once were, and see how far we’ve come since. That book needs to stay the way it is so people who read it can look at the attitude of the people towards Jim, and their less than human attitudes, can so horrify them, that they resolve never to allow that to happen to anyone in their lives.
I think part of the problem is that over the last few years many people have come only to know the book as a boy’s adventure story, with many of the objectionable parts abridged. Then when you come face to face with the real book, you’re shocked and offended. I’m not sure Twain ever intended it only to be a boys adventure story. There is great wit in his work and I’m not sure that the fact that Jim is such a sensible and sympathetic figure in much of his interactions with Huck, and throughout the book isn’t meant to show the very human person of people who were still so often dehumanized.
Though the merits of Huck Finn and it’s language are much debated, it’s not the book itself that bothers me. It’s the subtle blend of censorship and the rewriting of history that horrify me so deeply. I came through school in the bad old days before the rise of Political Correctness and all the changes that have occurred in the treatment of bullying, and positive reinforcement of children. I was bullied, I was ridiculed by teachers in front of the class for spectacular failures. I moved on and developed a tougher shell for what it was worth. But because things were not so sanitized yet, I was also able to encounter many ideas and situations that I don’t see in my children’s curricula. History seems to have been scrubbed of it’s offensiveness, ignoring the fact that it’s the very offensive portions of history that we can learn the most from. If we footnote the horrible treatment of blacks under slavery, or the horrors of the displacement of the Indians into a mere sanitized version, do we really learn anything from it?
Now while I abhor censorship, I must cop a guilty plea to doing so myself. As a parent I find myself censoring material left and right. My husband and I have this little book problem. We have a library of thousands of volumes, sci-fi, mystery, romance, adventure, classics, childrens literature, and lots of non-fiction, ancient-medieval-rennaissance-regency-victorian history, ranging here to there, and off-shoots of military history here and there, building, fixing, making. (Though until recently we were thin on dinosaurs.)
When my oldest was still pre-independent reading, I assumed she would be able to read as interested in our library. But as time has passed, I find myself saying “Not yet, wait and get a bit older before you read this one.” As an extremely widely read child I read indiscriminately, rather desperately of everything available to me. I didn’t have library access per-se so I read whatever I could find in my parents and grandparents libraries. That has left me with memories of reading some books well before I was ready to process them, and I have realized that there are times I would have been happier if someone had told me, “wait… read this later”.
How does this relate to the censorship of the book and history? (Admit it, you’re wondering) In my mind it relates in wondering if rather than censoring and sanitizing our history, if we should perhaps return some of our childhood to our children and stop trying to stuff their heads full of facts and dates, and allow our literature and our history to be unexpurgated and as rot-gut, and horrid as it actually was, and perhaps just teach it at more age appropriate levels, perhaps not only do we have a possibility of learning from the horrors of the past, but not require that it be re-written to fit the views of the present.
For one has to wonder, if we’re allowing our books to be altered to confirm with the vision of the editor and publisher in this case, What is the next case going to be? Where is the next special circumstance, that we will say… well just this one instance, to make it more palatable? Where is the difference between taking the uncomfortable facts out of our treatment of one people, or altering facts to make another group look more noble, and changing another to be the Green Men from Mars out to destroy us all in our beds?
For better or worse I was trained as a historian, and taught by an excellent mentor to question my sources and see the patterns where things were rewritten to conform to the ideals of the author. It’s hard not to see patterns in the changes now that mirror the type of re-writing that took place in times in history that ended badly.
So, now back to your regularly scheduled cyber rot.
Earlier today I read a news article, barely more than a blurb mentioning a scholar who is working with a publisher to remove the N-word from Huckleberry Finn. The story has bothered me since I read it. It evokes the memory of a book I read while I was still fairly young. _The Day They Came To Arrest The Book_ by Nat Hentoff, which concerns this very book and the censorship of it. That book and the issue of censorship made quite an impression on me.
I think that is why now I’m so bothered by the idea that they are rewriting Huck Finn now to remove the objectionable language. I think that book should stay like it is. That book should shock, offend, bother, and make uncomfortable anyone who reads the rotgut language in there. Because if we don’t read that book and see that attitude, we will never learn where we once were, and see how far we’ve come since. That book needs to stay the way it is so people who read it can look at the attitude of the people towards Jim, and their less than human attitudes, can so horrify them, that they resolve never to allow that to happen to anyone in their lives.
I think part of the problem is that over the last few years many people have come only to know the book as a boy’s adventure story, with many of the objectionable parts abridged. Then when you come face to face with the real book, you’re shocked and offended. I’m not sure Twain ever intended it only to be a boys adventure story. There is great wit in his work and I’m not sure that the fact that Jim is such a sensible and sympathetic figure in much of his interactions with Huck, and throughout the book isn’t meant to show the very human person of people who were still so often dehumanized.
Though the merits of Huck Finn and it’s language are much debated, it’s not the book itself that bothers me. It’s the subtle blend of censorship and the rewriting of history that horrify me so deeply. I came through school in the bad old days before the rise of Political Correctness and all the changes that have occurred in the treatment of bullying, and positive reinforcement of children. I was bullied, I was ridiculed by teachers in front of the class for spectacular failures. I moved on and developed a tougher shell for what it was worth. But because things were not so sanitized yet, I was also able to encounter many ideas and situations that I don’t see in my children’s curricula. History seems to have been scrubbed of it’s offensiveness, ignoring the fact that it’s the very offensive portions of history that we can learn the most from. If we footnote the horrible treatment of blacks under slavery, or the horrors of the displacement of the Indians into a mere sanitized version, do we really learn anything from it?
Now while I abhor censorship, I must cop a guilty plea to doing so myself. As a parent I find myself censoring material left and right. My husband and I have this little book problem. We have a library of thousands of volumes, sci-fi, mystery, romance, adventure, classics, childrens literature, and lots of non-fiction, ancient-medieval-rennaissance-regency-victorian history, ranging here to there, and off-shoots of military history here and there, building, fixing, making. (Though until recently we were thin on dinosaurs.)
When my oldest was still pre-independent reading, I assumed she would be able to read as interested in our library. But as time has passed, I find myself saying “Not yet, wait and get a bit older before you read this one.” As an extremely widely read child I read indiscriminately, rather desperately of everything available to me. I didn’t have library access per-se so I read whatever I could find in my parents and grandparents libraries. That has left me with memories of reading some books well before I was ready to process them, and I have realized that there are times I would have been happier if someone had told me, “wait… read this later”.
How does this relate to the censorship of the book and history? (Admit it, you’re wondering) In my mind it relates in wondering if rather than censoring and sanitizing our history, if we should perhaps return some of our childhood to our children and stop trying to stuff their heads full of facts and dates, and allow our literature and our history to be unexpurgated and as rot-gut, and horrid as it actually was, and perhaps just teach it at more age appropriate levels, perhaps not only do we have a possibility of learning from the horrors of the past, but not require that it be re-written to fit the views of the present.
For one has to wonder, if we’re allowing our books to be altered to confirm with the vision of the editor and publisher in this case, What is the next case going to be? Where is the next special circumstance, that we will say… well just this one instance, to make it more palatable? Where is the difference between taking the uncomfortable facts out of our treatment of one people, or altering facts to make another group look more noble, and changing another to be the Green Men from Mars out to destroy us all in our beds?
For better or worse I was trained as a historian, and taught by an excellent mentor to question my sources and see the patterns where things were rewritten to conform to the ideals of the author. It’s hard not to see patterns in the changes now that mirror the type of re-writing that took place in times in history that ended badly.
So, now back to your regularly scheduled cyber rot.