Posted on 01/04/2011 7:18:59 PM PST by markomalley
Mark Twain wrote that "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." A new edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" will try to find out if that holds true by replacing the N-word with "slave" in an effort not to offend readers.
Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the books, said the N-word appears 219 times in "Huck Finn" and four times in "Tom Sawyer." He said the word puts the books in danger of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once humorously defined as those "which people praise and don't read."
"It's such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers," Gribben said.
Yet Twain was particular about his words. His letter in 1888 about the right word and the almost right one was "the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Will they “ET” all the guns out of Blazing Saddles next?
But that would contradict the assertion that all black people back then were slaves. ;)
A false grievance is being used to cover up an account of a real wrong.
It was not, in many areas, a blanket perjorative, but reserved for the lowlife. Words like "Cracker" and "White Trash" were the equivalent in caucasian circles.
Descriptive euphamisms from "Colored People" to "Negro" were used to describe more resepctable folks with dark skin, and "Black" came in later, at least where I grew up.
But, take a word out of historical contest, and you start creating problems...
There was a time when piling faggots up and burning them would be a great centerpiece for an outside party ("faggots" were then known as bundles of firewood).
Now, you'd probably get a SWAT team response to any such announced gathering. Not to mention the 'green' police and a host of alphabet organizations with acronyms, which when one attempted to pronounce them, would sound like someone drowning in a toilet bowl.
I think Samuel Clements would have been appalled at the progress the ninnies of the nanny state have made, and the thinness of American skin in this era of alleged "well adjusted-ness". Chances are he'd have preferred his books be banned, at least that way, people would rush to read them--as written.
As for me, I never saw a "right to not be offended" anywhere, and with so many people around so willing to be offended (unless they are in abject denial of another's attempt to be offensive), it is probably a good thing.
Huzzaa!
We read this in high school and the teachers used it to open a discussion on how society had changed in the last hundred years. It was a good teaching tool.
I guess they are also removing this word from the works of Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison... right?
I don’t think Mark Twain would mind a book burning of these Marxist revisionist books.
To me the expression “the N word” is repulsive, indicating we’ve regressed to kindergarten.
I have heard a Black woman calling a small boy the N-word in a store. I almost burst out laughing. I guess using that word to call their chilluns must be another “black thing”. {:0)
Thank you.
To do so would have demeaned both child and mother as low class, in an age where respectability was paramount.
I did witness that. I was at a check out counter at a store. The little boy was acting like a boy his age. I felt sorry for her until the name calling started. It was really funny to me.
This is not a tough call. It is the easiest call in the world. Has anyone ever read the book? It is probably the most profound call for racial comity every written. A black man and an innocent white boy thrown together by circumstance on a raft traveling toward an inevitable destination. Do I need to beat you over the head with a club to get the symbolism? Change a single word of the text? - Never.
“black, coming from the Latin niger, by way of various Romance languages.”
I don’t now anything about the evolution of this part of language, but I’ve had a theory that TheOnlyWordThatWouldGetMeBanned actually was an alliteration of “negro” (may I say that?) - poorly spoken by poor-spoken people.
Oddly enough, "TheOnlyWordThatWouldGetMeBanned" came first. Then came the reasonable, 20th-century idea that we were entering a new era of more cosmopolitan respect for black folks. It was thought that we therefore needed a new word, inasmuch as "black" seemed stark and rude—which it is, if you happen to think there's something wrong with being black. Which the educated elites still did. They started substituting "negro" for "black," "colored" and less polite terms. To the elites, "negro" seemed more polite than "black," because it was an exotic, technical-sounding, foreign (Spanish) word . . . for black.
By the time I was a kid, southern whites had adjusted this to "nigra," which began to sound a lot like TheOnlyWordThatWouldGetMeBanned.
And of course, in due time, "Negro" became anathema to young black firebrands, because it reminded them of old black firebrands, to whom they felt superior, because the old ones went to church, and they didn't. You know the rest: Afro-American, black, African-American . . . and whatever is next. If you're in the grievance business, the term of 20 years ago always seems tinged with bigotry and surrender.
I don’t see how that’s quite true. “Negroes” was being used way back on 18th century broadsides advertizing for slave auctions. It has always been a “proper” (as opposed to slang) word for blacks as far as I know from history, and was around a very long time.
As far as I can see, “negro” went out about 100 years ago, defintely by the ‘40s, and was sort of replaced by “colored” (my gramma referred to them this way). TOWTWGMB was always a slang or slur term, never proper.
As far as I can see, “negro” went out about 100 years ago, defintely by the ‘40s, and was sort of replaced by “colored” (my gramma referred to them this way). TOWTWGMB was always a slang or slur term, never proper.
Maybe there are regional variations here. You're right, I have seen "negro" used in centuries-old writings. What I'm saying is that in the early 1960s, in the Northeast, among liberal Democrats like my family, "colored" was replaced by "negro" as the polite term. It was to us a slightly more exotic, delicate, foreign term. MLK Jr used "negro" in his speeches. In the early 1960s, it was commonplace in public discourse to talk about "the place of the Negro in America today."
Twain was writing in a transition period in which average people used TOWTWGMB without thinking and without malice—and yet, without regarding blacks as human in the same sense as themselves. These were not educated people. Meanwhile, a century earlier in New York, former slaves like Pierre Toussaint were running successful businesses and supporting their former masters (from Haiti) who had fallen on hard times.
I found the book completely readable in high school without any isssues. How about modernizing Shakespeare’s various dialects too?
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