Wednesday, January 12, 2011
BY STEVE JANOSKI
Words are perhaps the most powerful of things. They can illuminate, devastate, and forever alter the realities of the world, exposing the fraudulent and eviscerating the powerful within the single sweep of an ivory page.
They can erupt in explosions that dwarf the fiercest bomb, and from the printing of the first Bible to Thomas Paine’s legendary "Common Sense" to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s "Uncle Tom’s Cabin," they have inspired new thoughts, generated new beliefs, and ignited revolutions.
In our shallow society, many remain unaware of the potent power they possess by putting pen to page, but for proof of its impact in the present day, one need look no further than, of all places, Montgomery, Alabama, where the literary world has been set ablaze over the controversial decision of editor Alan Gribben of NewSouth Books Inc.
Gribben has decided that NewSouth will attempt to strip Mark Twain’s classic "Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn" of its racist epithets in an upcoming edition due out in February; in it, the word "nigger" is to be replaced with "slave," and the word "injun" is to be replaced with "Indian."
Gribben’s reasoning? The book is left off of many school reading lists because of its use of the words, and isn’t as widely read as a consequence, he says.
"We may applaud Twain’s ability as a prominent American literary realist to record the speech of a particular region during a specific historical era," writes Gribben in the introduction to the book, "But abusive racial insults that bear distinct connotations of permanent inferiority nonetheless repulse modern-day readers."
Gribben goes on to say that for 40 years he has discussed Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in public forums such as college classes and libraries, and he has always refrained from using the slurs.
"I invariably substituted the word "slave" for Twain’s ubiquitous n-word whenever I read any passages aloud," he said. "Students and audience members seemed to prefer this expedient, and I could detect a visible sense of relief each time, as though a nagging problem with the text had been addressed."
Well yea Alan, by eliminating the blatant racism that’s built into this piece of nineteenth-century literature, you sure do eliminate a lot of those "nagging problems," don’t you?
Now, instead of the children who receive this book thinking about how horrific the thought process was of the average white American back in the 1840s, they can believe that slaves and masters alike walked hand-in-hand in harmony under the magnolia trees.
They might even wonder why Jim was trying to escape in the first place….if Gribben mixes in a little "Gone With the Wind," I do believe he could construct his very own mythical history of the Old South.
Hell, while he’s at it, why doesn’t he just go take out the parts mentioning slavery altogether?
We’ll call Jim a "runaway servant" instead, because the term "slave" will surely offend the Southerners who still call the Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression." They’d jump at the chance to throw some white paint over their blood-red history.
And, instead of making it along the Mississippi River, let’s have it take place along the St. Lawrence River, so we don’t generalize and make it seem like the South was the only place that owned slaves.
Oh wait, it was? Well, what’s that matter? We’re revising history, so let’s move the Mason-Dixon somewhere up around New York State to make them feel even better.
We should probably edit the letters of Abraham Lincoln too, being as he used now-derogatory racial terms frequently, and even once said that he didn’t believe the black man was equal to the white.
If people knew this, they might be repulsed! Cut it!
What Gribben conveniently forgets is that literature is supposed to make us confront difficult issues— even if it’s the hideously revolting racism that lies in America’s past, as evidenced by our active participation in the subjugation of a race of people.
When it comes down to it, the removal of these words and the butchering and desecration of this American masterpiece by one pompous editor from a book company based in the first capital of the Confederacy is a crime nearly unparalleled in literary history.
It is a historical whitewashing of epic proportions that is equivalent to tearing out the pages of every German history book that covers the years of 1933-1945.
George Orwell once wrote that, "Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past."
I’ll be damned if I’ll ever let a member of the politically correct Gestapo control the past, and this publisher should be boycotted and driven out of business; its revisionist filth should be burned in glowing piles in the streets.
E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com
They can erupt in explosions that dwarf the fiercest bomb, and from the printing of the first Bible to Thomas Paine’s legendary "Common Sense" to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s "Uncle Tom’s Cabin," they have inspired new thoughts, generated new beliefs, and ignited revolutions.
In our shallow society, many remain unaware of the potent power they possess by putting pen to page, but for proof of its impact in the present day, one need look no further than, of all places, Montgomery, Alabama, where the literary world has been set ablaze over the controversial decision of editor Alan Gribben of NewSouth Books Inc.
Gribben has decided that NewSouth will attempt to strip Mark Twain’s classic "Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn" of its racist epithets in an upcoming edition due out in February; in it, the word "nigger" is to be replaced with "slave," and the word "injun" is to be replaced with "Indian."
Gribben’s reasoning? The book is left off of many school reading lists because of its use of the words, and isn’t as widely read as a consequence, he says.
"We may applaud Twain’s ability as a prominent American literary realist to record the speech of a particular region during a specific historical era," writes Gribben in the introduction to the book, "But abusive racial insults that bear distinct connotations of permanent inferiority nonetheless repulse modern-day readers."
Gribben goes on to say that for 40 years he has discussed Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in public forums such as college classes and libraries, and he has always refrained from using the slurs.
"I invariably substituted the word "slave" for Twain’s ubiquitous n-word whenever I read any passages aloud," he said. "Students and audience members seemed to prefer this expedient, and I could detect a visible sense of relief each time, as though a nagging problem with the text had been addressed."
Well yea Alan, by eliminating the blatant racism that’s built into this piece of nineteenth-century literature, you sure do eliminate a lot of those "nagging problems," don’t you?
Now, instead of the children who receive this book thinking about how horrific the thought process was of the average white American back in the 1840s, they can believe that slaves and masters alike walked hand-in-hand in harmony under the magnolia trees.
They might even wonder why Jim was trying to escape in the first place….if Gribben mixes in a little "Gone With the Wind," I do believe he could construct his very own mythical history of the Old South.
Hell, while he’s at it, why doesn’t he just go take out the parts mentioning slavery altogether?
We’ll call Jim a "runaway servant" instead, because the term "slave" will surely offend the Southerners who still call the Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression." They’d jump at the chance to throw some white paint over their blood-red history.
And, instead of making it along the Mississippi River, let’s have it take place along the St. Lawrence River, so we don’t generalize and make it seem like the South was the only place that owned slaves.
Oh wait, it was? Well, what’s that matter? We’re revising history, so let’s move the Mason-Dixon somewhere up around New York State to make them feel even better.
We should probably edit the letters of Abraham Lincoln too, being as he used now-derogatory racial terms frequently, and even once said that he didn’t believe the black man was equal to the white.
If people knew this, they might be repulsed! Cut it!
What Gribben conveniently forgets is that literature is supposed to make us confront difficult issues— even if it’s the hideously revolting racism that lies in America’s past, as evidenced by our active participation in the subjugation of a race of people.
When it comes down to it, the removal of these words and the butchering and desecration of this American masterpiece by one pompous editor from a book company based in the first capital of the Confederacy is a crime nearly unparalleled in literary history.
It is a historical whitewashing of epic proportions that is equivalent to tearing out the pages of every German history book that covers the years of 1933-1945.
George Orwell once wrote that, "Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past."
I’ll be damned if I’ll ever let a member of the politically correct Gestapo control the past, and this publisher should be boycotted and driven out of business; its revisionist filth should be burned in glowing piles in the streets.
E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com
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