Huckleberry Finn: the sanitized version

Story HERE.

I’m against the sanitization. In response to this point…

“On the other hand, if this puts the book into the hands of kids who would not otherwise be allowed to read it due to forces beyond their control (overprotective parents and the school boards they frighten), then maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge.”

…my response is that maybe we should just leave the book to undergraduate education if it’s really too uncomfortable (and it may well be) to have openly racist language presented in the high school curriculum. I grew up listening to nice (sanitized) audio dramatizations of the novel years before ever reading it, and it was a perfectly good way to be introduced to the basic themes of the book. Maybe that’s the right way to pitch it to kids: as a film or as audiotapes.

I happen to think 120 Days of Sodom is a literary masterpiece (granted, it’s a much more extreme case than Mark Twain), but would never entertain the idea of adding Sade to the reading list of under-18-year-olds. Of course, it would be pretty hard to “sanitize” Sade (though it’s a funny task to imagine: “We are locking you in this castle with no dessert for 4 months!”).

And in response to this rhetorical question about the cleansed Huck Finn:

“It’s unfortunate, but is it really any more catastrophic than a TBS-friendly re-edit of ‘The Godfather’…?”

Yes, I do think it is much more catastrophic. Films are very often edited or cut depending on the venue where they are shown, and I don’t think anyone would expect (in the puritanical USA, I mean) that an unedited version of “The Godfather” would run on national TV. Or at least they’ll edit out the sex; violence is always OK in the U.S. How did George Lucas ironically put it? “You can cut off a breast, but you can’t kiss it.”

By contrast, Huckleberry Finn is one of the handful of greatest American novels, and I do think it’s pretty atrocious to edit the language of it. If the racism is too intense for kids to handle, then don’t have kids read it. It’s important anyway to have a certain number of “forbidden books” to be discovered as you mature (Nietzsche is usually the first, in your late teens; Bataille’s Story of the Eye is a good one for undergraduate years, and no earlier).