Excerpt: Nationally, more than a few jaws dropped over Auburn University professor Alan Gribben's plans to publish new editions of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" with the words "nigger" and "Injun" excised from the texts so as not to offend readers.
The offensive idiocy of vandalism masquerading as sensitivity need not be belabored here. Suffice to say that this is one of those ideas so utterly and breathtakingly off the mark that it isn't even wrong. What's extraordinary — and extraordinarily dispiriting — is that Gribben's destructive presumption is supported by more than a few of his academic colleagues. Twain scholar Judith Lee, for example, said this week that she found nothing objectionable about Gribben's redactions. She argued that Twain's use of racial epithets was meant to be read ironically but that an appreciation of irony was an "advanced interpretive skill." For a "general audience," Lee said, a bowdlerized version will do.
Related article:
Huckleberry Finn without the offensive words? It's already been done. (1/6/2011)
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