Try and remember last week when that professor at Auburn University announced he was releasing an edition of Huckleberry Finn where the word “nigger” was replaced with “slave”. He also, for the record, plans on replacing the word “Injun” with “Indian” (OK!) and “half-breed” with “half-blood” (What? No!).

Still angry about it? Me too! You know who else is? Michael Chabon! (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union) Check out this wonderful article Chabon wrote for The Atlantic where he sympathizes with professor Alan Gribben (even admitting to performing the same omission while reading Tom Sawyer out loud) while ultimately condemning Gribben’s decision “for its cowardice, mealy-mouthedness, and all-consuming fallaciousness”. My favorite part is where he lays out the discussion he had with his children before reading Huck Finn to them – the kind that this book should be inspiring in the classroom:

I explained to them that because this book was written in Huck’s own voice, and because in the time and place of its setting people of both races commonly referred to black people as “niggers,” and because there were a number of black characters, major and minor, in the book, I was going to be obliged to say, or not to say, that word, a great many times. I explained that saying the word made me extremely uncomfortable, that it was not a word I ever used, that some black people still used it sometimes to refer to each other, but that was importantly different, and that black people I had known were just as uncomfortable using the word around white people as white people were using it around them. I told them about my childhood friend Harry, mentioned in a prior post, who when discussing the Richard Pryor album Bicentennial Nigger with me, a fellow Pryor fan but, unlike Harry, a white boy, used to refer to it by the codename “Bice.”

Next I reminded them that Mark Twain was a great artist, a moral man and, furthermore, an accurate writer. I said that as a writer myself the idea of somebody taking the words I had worked so hard to get absolutely correct and spatchcocking in whatever nonsense made them comfortable made me insane. Then I asked them what they thought I ought to do, whenever I arrived at the word in the course of the next few months. I told them how I had substituted “slave” while we were reading Tom Sawyer, but that in this book the word was going to mean so vastly much more, and less, than that.

You feel that, Gribben? You just got ChaBONED!

Boom Cha-kalacka-bon!
  • /GALLEYCAT
  • Boom Cha-kalacka-bon!

h/t to Jacob Schraer

10 replies on “Michael Chabon Weighs In on the Mark Twain Whitewashing Issue”

  1. Once more unto the breach, eh Dave?

    My gut response is “that is some spectacular bullshit, Chabon”, but I should probably read the article before I weigh in further.

  4. For fuck’s sake. Dude might as well come down hard on Woody Allen for filling his work with neurotic Jews. He does the same thing with his children! Jesus.

    Is he just drawing the line at spoken word? Or are the intended audience of this edition not wringing their hands first enough for his taste?

    That is some spectacular bullshit, Chabon.

  5. I like the problem of self-censorship vs. censorship inherent in Chabon’s point. Essentially saying: “If I don’t want to say the word I won’t, but you can’t change the word for someone else.” Self responsibility, what a novel idea in times when pointing fingers has become a fine art.

    The problem only escalates when those who will read that new (and ill fated) Huckleberry Finn miss the point. The modern issue with hurtful language cannot undo the historical reality of the inhumanity that language reflected. Take away the embarassing hateful language, and you remove the embarassment and hate. It’s HARD to read HF, it should be, it should make us cringe, until Huck figures out that the prevailing attitudes are hateful and worth rebelling against.
    Self responsibilty all over again.
    It’s not JUST slavery, it’s the demeaning words used, and how they’re used. Remove that?
    Then it’s just a funny story about a spunky kid on a raft.

    Funny how it’s called “Whitewashing”, isn’t that what Tom Sawyer used when he suckered his docile buddies into helping him paint a fence? Now there’s a metaphor- get as many people on your side to make something appear different, be it the fence, or the painting of the fence.
    Twain foresaw the whitewashing of HF, and is pitching his own rebellion by way of that metaphor! Twain for Mayor!

  7. Nothing like white people telling “colored people” what they can and can’t be offended by in the course of teaching.

    I, for one, welcome this change; never again will practical concerns temper my virulent racism.

    Thanks DB

  9. I don’t understand why people are so pissed about this… it’s not like all original copies are getting destroyed and replaced. I appreciate this person’s explanation to his students and love of literature… but he obviously wants to force his sentiments on people because he thinks he’s right. if changing certain terms makes it bearable for a human to be able to read a book without feeling shitty about his/herself, then what is the problem? I’m not saying shelter them from history… I’m all for explaining the reason for the language in the book and explaining why terms were changed in the new version, talk about it openly… address concerns…. and then let the kids CHOOSE which version they want to read going forward. As long as they know the deal, isn’t the point to get them to think and to read? It’s like an old wealthy man being against abortion. I appreciate the viewpoint, but you have no idea what it is like to be in that position … so who are you to decide how someone who is should feel about it?

    Have your opinions about it… and let other people decide for themselves.

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