Does anyone have the right to change an author's words?

[Marcia Mayne]

The release this week of a new, sanitized edition of Mark Twain’s, Huckleberry Finn, which substitutes the contentious N-word for the less problematic, slave, disturbs me. While I understand the emotional charge of the N-word, I wonder if anyone has the right to change an author’s words no matter how offensive they might be. I can’t remember this happening before.  Do you? Do we, does anyone (besides the author) have that right?  

[Marcia Mayne]

I agree with you, Zohar.

 

[Sara-Jayne Slack]

As much as I'm against bowdlerisation, I do think that people are blowing this a little out of proportion. Alright, I understand that it could be a slippery slope...but this is simply one edition of a very popular and highly published book. People are hardly going to be unable to go out and buy the 'real copy', as it were. You could argue that this way, parents may feel more comfortable reading this story to their children at a younger age.

 

I remember reading a version that didn't have the contended word in (I'd write it here so as not to be hypocritical about not caring one way or the other about the word, but I don't wish to break any site rules), and it didn't dampen the message for me, really.

 

~Sara, from Inspired-Quill

[Sara-Jayne Slack]

Although you could argue that this is what Editors do all the time. To speak about what I know best; however good an anthology of - say - Medieval literature may be, putting a poem titled 'The Wife's Lament' next to 'The Seaman's Lament' subconsciously leads the reader to believe that they are interrelated...when in fact, 'The Wife's Lament' was just a fragment, had no name, and we don't even know if it was a wife that was lamenting.

 

How is this really any different from changing 'quente' in Chaucer's 'The Millar's Tale', to 'thigh' or 'hip' in modern editions? (Both of which I've seen). When in fact, he meant...well...-delicate cough-.

 

Have you ever read Roland Barthes' essay 'The Death of the Author'? I think it applies really well in this case, and it'd be interesting to look at this from a different angle.

 

Books may be written to make a statement, but how much is actually lost by replacing that one word? If a book's message hangs on the meaning of a single word, then the author needs either more confidence, a better thesaurus, or a deeper plot.

 

(All in all, still a rather facinating discussion. -Chuckles-)
~ Sara, from Inspired-Quill

[Sara-Jayne Slack]

-Nods- I see what you mean there.

 

Authorial intent is something that I had to look at in detail during my undergrad degree. I suppose my question would be 'How different is the overall feel of the book / story / intent, now that the word has been altered'.? Was that word really integral to the story, or can the story still stand up on its own without that prop?

 

(Half playing devil's advocate, by the by).

~Sara, from Inspired-Quill

[Marcia Mayne]

Thanks, Shawn, you said it much better than I did.

[Marcia Mayne]

Thanks for responding Sara-Jayne.

I hear what you're saying but I don't agree. I also don't think it's being blown out of proportion. This is supposed to be a 'classic' work, which I think should - along with all classics - not be changed. 

This particular word is a painful one, especially for me as a black woman, and as uncomfortable as it is for me to read, I wouldn't want it changed. 

Marcia

 

[Lyn Fuchs]

Marcia,
I am an opponent of political correctness, because I believe it substitutes nicety for morality. The effort to encourage use of sensitive language (the meaning of which depends on context) is a noble thing and I support this in general. Testosterone-laden gorillas (like myself) do need cleaning up and civilizing from time to time lest their raucous behavior in the wrong place wound unnecessarily. However, the political correctness I despise is the seeming obsession to clean the outside of the cup rather than the inside, which Jesus condemned - fix the language, but ignore the character issues. This extreme of political correctness seems to say, I'm not concerned about the kids starving in the street, but for decency's sake close the blinds. For example, humanity has often ridiculed the mentally slow. PC says don't call them retarded. That doesn't get it. Adolph Hitler and most of history's villans were geniuses, yet go to many McDonald's restaurants and a mentally slow person making almost no money will usually try to encourage you with a smile and devote all the neurons he has to doing a good job, while teenage geniuses "working" in the back pick their zits and complain about life. Truth is when we see a mentally slow person, someone should shout, "Look, there's a retard!" and half of us should run to get his autograph while the other half lay down palm branches for him to walk on." But most of the time, we're not good enough to think like that, so PC says "Keep thinking you're better than someone else, but use nice words." I'm too much of a romantic idealist to believe that we need to devote much effort to fixing words when winning hearts and minds is possible. Mark Twain was a prophet in a desert of racist inhumanity. Step outside the comfort zone of North America and much of the world is still a place where Rosa Parks can't even buy a ticket to sit on the back of the bus. Fixing Twain's harsh words to avoid hurting overly-sheltered North American sensitivities misses the real battlefront. We need rude prophets such as Twain to keep us striving against serious oppression and not getting distracted by mere words. I write travel books like my recent Sacred Ground & Holy Water: Travel Tales of Enlightenment to give Americans perspective on other places, where the luxury of our hyper-sensitivity doesn't seem very sensitive.

[Marcia Mayne]

 

Thank you, Lyn - yes, we do go to great lengths to make ourselves feel better by putting a gentle face on things that are unpleasant but that just doesn't make them go away. 

Your book sounds right up my alley. I'll get a copy. 

Thanks for sharing,

Marcia

[Book Calendar]

After a book is out of copyright, you can do anything you want to a book and its content.  It is free to mix up mashup edit and be creative with.  Huckleberry Finn is long out of copyright.  You could make Huckleberry Finn With Zombies, or Huckleberry Computer if you wanted.  This is after 70 years past the copyright date. 

 

Claiming a public domain book is yours is illegal.  There are fines associated with this.  You can only claim the parts you added yourself.

 

Plenty of books are cleaned up.  Readers Digest Condensed Books clean up the language of a lot of the books they condense, but this is expected of them.

 

It is the sensationalization that is the problem.  Also, the marketing to political correctness is disgusting.  They replaced the N-word and the word Injun with the word slave.  It is not just offensive because of the language, it is also offensive because it is essentially incorrect, most Native Americans were not slaves, and a lot of black people were not slaves.  It destroys the context of the language.

[Lyn Fuchs]

I respectfully have concerns about this practice despite its legality. Plato and Aristotle's writings were nearly lost, due to the fast and loose care given to old books in Europe at one time, but the Islamic empires thankfully preserved these classics for us. Biblical books were given politically correct editions and subtractions by scribes, so that scholars have gone blind reconstructing the ancient text. If you "clean up" Twain, please indicate in large print: reader's digest condensed version, or children's version. or comic book version, but let's be sure and protect Twain's version.

[Lyn Fuchs]

As a writer, I deeply regret the fact that a picture is worth a thousand words. But for a little comic relief on the slippery slope of modernizing the historical document Huck Finn, check out the following cartoon:
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/12/tom.html

[Stephen Lawrence Brayton]

Very apropros to show the absurdity of this whole matter.