Friday, January 7, 2011

Frontier talk


A fair-to-middlin' American writer named Ernest Hemingway once observed, famously, that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. …All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Good old Hem's opinion hasn't prevented repeated attempts to ban the novel from American high schools. The reasons advanced have varied over the years. In earlier times, the problem was primarily with Huck's character and with the plot. Huck, the hero, is rebellious. He repeatedly gets the "nice boy," Tom Sawyer, into trouble -- and does so with the author's apparent full approval and enjoyment. He runs away from home and floats down the Mississippi with a runaway adult slave for his friend. (A prominent literary critic argued in the 1950's that Twain was suggesting an interracial, pedophile relationship!) He encounters a number of American frontier types, none of whom is in any way admirable or edifying.

At the end of the book, after returning to Aunt Sally and the world of respectability, Huck confides to his readers, in one of the more memorable final paragraphs of any novel, that he plans to run off again:

But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.

Not the sort of lesson that many adults wanted impressionable young students to learn.

Later, the concern seemed more with the texture of the novel. Mark Twain excelled in casting dialogue in the dialect appropriate for each of his fictional characters. Huck's language is full of grammatical solecisms. "Ain't" is used regularly and consistently. Jim, the slave, speaks in the black dialect of the time. Even the earliest critics of the novel complained of the "coarseness" of the language. It was, well, too realistic.

Many of these earlier complaints have continued up to the present, but the issue is now primarily "racism." Use of nineteenth century black dialect by black characters, such as Jim, connotes ignorance, it is claimed. Particularly when the novel is used in the classroom, it hurts the feelings of African-American students and suggests inherent black inferiority to the others. Why not have all the characters speak standard English, even if none of them would have done so in real life? Why, for that matter, I suppose, should Charles Dickens have differentiated between various classes and regions of England by writing each character's dialogue in an appropriate dialect?

All these arguments tend to be summed up in the horror often expressed with respect to the frequent use (219 times, according to someone's count) of the word "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn. (Note: I actually said "nigger" (there, I did it again!), unlike almost all recent journalistic reports on the subject. I didn't say "n-----" or "the n-word" or any other euphemism. I'm daring that way. I even italicized it for you.)

"Nigger," of course, began as a sloppy pronunciation of "Negro," which in turn is the Spanish word for "Black." Like most offensive words, there's nothing offensive in the word itself, but in the use that has historically been made of it. Dictionaries advise that the word was used in a derogatory fashion from the very beginning, but has become markedly more offensive in recent years. Fashions come and go in many words; once offensive words become accepted and once accepted words become offensive.

In pre-Civil War days, when the novel takes place, the word was widely used, even in "polite" society. It was derogatory even then, but it was -- after all -- applied to persons who were treated by the law as the chattel property of their owners. African Americans -- being mostly slaves -- were not highly esteemed in law, by society, or by the great majority of the population. As a result, there was not much concern over the nicety of the terms used to describe them. I suspect that "nigger" in those days was considered considerably less offensive than we would consider "spic" or "kike" to be today.

In any event, the word was in daily use.

My present concern stems from the well-publicized recent publication of an expurgated version of Huckleberry Finn, where the expurgator (Alan Gribben, an Auburn professor) has converted every use of the word "nigger" into the word "slave," in an apparent belief that it's better to be called a slave than a nigger. The book is intended primarily for use in the schools, where young ears and young ears' parents might be offended.

Should we give in and go along with it? Don't be silly. Huckleberry Finn is considered a classic for many reasons, all of which remain valid right up to the year 2011. You don't tidy up classics to meet changing tastes, any more than do sane people put plaster fig leaves on nude Renaissance statues. And modifying 219 appearances of one word won't satisfy the novel's vocal critics.

Today's issue of the Seattle Times contains a letter from a reader, responding to a news story about Gribben's "masterpiece." The letter concludes:

Our shared humanity is now beyond debate, and we have outgrown Huck and Jim. There are more modern books that accept the premise of "Huckleberry Finn" as given, and address the more subtle questions of race that still exist. Those books should be read and discussed in schools, and "Huckleberry Finn" should be honorably retired.

This well written and non-inflammatory letter seems to miss the entire point of teaching English literature. Mark Twain's novel is a story of the American frontier and of the conflicts confronted by an intelligent and perceptive, but uneducated, adolescent. It's not a sociological tract. Would the writer suggest that we now have a better understanding of religious and sexual values, and that therefore Hawthorne's rather disturbing novel, The Scarlet Letter, should be retired from the curriculum in favor of a book about a modern pastor who provides wise counseling to unmarried couples who are expecting a child?

Teachers, teach the classics; don't tamper with the text; and do discuss the books with your students. The kids aren't oblivious, but if there's any doubt in your mind as a teacher, go ahead and explain that "nigger" is not acceptable language today, and that it was insulting even in Twain's day. Also explain that "ain't" is dialect, not standard English, and that "sivilize" is just plain bad spelling. Get all that out of the way. Then talk about the lessons Twain was teaching in the novel. Tell the students how times, values and conventions were different from those they are familiar with today. And make sure they discover for themselves how -- all didactic intent aside -- the book is just an exciting, funny and entertaining read.

Oh -- and by the way -- Gribben also converts every use of the word "injun" to "Indian." (I guess Injun Joe now becomes Indian Joe.) Don't even get me started -- at least he doesn't call them "cardinals."

-------------------------
(1-9-11) Leonard Pitts, a syndicated, liberal, African-American columnist, in a well-reasoned column opposing Gribben's "modifications" to Huckleberry Finn that appears in today's Seattle Times, concludes:

Huck Finn is a funny, subversive story about a runaway white boy who comes to locate the humanity in a runaway black man and, in the process, vindicates his own. It has always, until now, been regarded as a timeless tale.

But that was before America became an intellectual backwater that would deem it necessary to censor its most celebrated author.

The one consolation is that somewhere, Mark Twain is laughing his head off.

No comments: