Language_Today Language Today
A new edition of Huck Finn substitutes "slave" for the n-word -- NYTimes Room for Debaters are mostly appalled: http://nyti.ms/ekBe0L
This is the tweet, and coinciding article, that I chose to do a journal entry on. My first thought was this: What if I wrote a book? I wrote it meticulously, I combed through every sentence, I chose every word. Some of my best writing involves such a process. I get to a point where I have read and reread certain sentences so often that I have certain paragraphs committed to memory. If I am taking that time to pick out my words, how would I react if someone went in and change 219 of them. I think Twain, who knew a thing or two about society and about the craft of writing, chose the words he used with care. And he knew the art of getting a rise out of people through his writing. I can understand hopefully altering an old text so that people who might not have gotten anything out of it just might. People who might have been offended, will look at the text with new eyes and learn the lessons Twain intended them to learn. However, from a writer's standpoint I cannot help but feel undermined. I would hate to see my work changed in this way, but would Twain have hated it? I am not sure. I bet his tweet or blog entry would be far more capable of addressing this issue. For now, I'll leave the actual conclusion up in the air.
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