Niggers, Injuns and Huckleberry Finn

No, not the title to my most inflammatory blog yet, more the intro to a quick message regarding the new imprint of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by NewSouth Books. Put together by Professor Alan Gribben - eminent, no doubt - this offers all four volumes in the same edition for the first time and a little bit of specific text editing. It's the latter that's caused all the problems and negative reactions.

Professor Gribben has seen fit to change the terribly offensive N-word (Nigger) with the apparently less offensive word 'Slave' and the I-word (Injun) with 'Indian'. Frankly, when you've enslaved one race and stolen the other's country it's only right to be polite to them afterwards. The Professor's reasons are rather different however, he believes that the repeated usage of the offensive terms has led to the story not being read by African Americans -his full reasoning behind his decision is reprinted here.

I respect his choice, which he is after all free to make, more than many of the knee-jerk responses I've read. It seems reasonable to me that someone who has been on the wrong end of an offensive racial epithet may not enjoy reading a book - however good - which uses that epithet every page. You can explain the historical context of the words to people so effected until you're blue in the face, they're still going to feel bad reading Nigger or Injun constantly and just go and read a different book where it doesn't occur.

I'll let you into a secret. When I wrote the title to this blog I was a knee-jerk reactionary - historical textual purity was all I'd really considered. But after reading about it, looking at people's responses, and the Professor's eloquent introductory explanation, I've changed my mind. As long as pure copies are always kept, and people know how NewSouth Book's edition has been edited, I no longer see it as such a terrible thing. Who'd have thunk it?

There is a complete (virgo intacta) version of this book available for free on the Kindle store (software for viewing Kindle books is available for free on many platforms) - Niggers and Injuns best avoid. Gulp.