Yeah, I have, and the argument advanced wasn’t too bad: this edition is not intended for general use, but rather, is intended for children at that impressionable age when they’ll thoughtlessly imitate and parrot anything that they read about, and at which age any substantial discussion of the realities of the racial politics of Huck’s day would be beyond them.

Which is why Huck Finn is really not a good choice for children’s literature especially in pedagogic environment. There are much better choices of literature for the age group this is intended for.

Rainbow-coloured paint at the ready to slather over our past and erase our mistakes, so that we may conveniently forget and inevitably repeat them. Ugh.

Perhaps so: but that must remain a matter of opinion, and the choice of the parent or teacher.

My aim was simply to repeat the argument for, or in favour of, this bowdlerization that I had heard from someone other than the publisher, as requested by Mandeliet.

I cannot say that I adopt it as my own; nor that it wholly justifies this edition of Twain: nevertheless, IMO it is not a bad argument.

Also, censorship for the “right” reason inevitably leads to censorship for the “wrong” ones too. it’s best to leave books as they were intended and to stand or fall on their own merits.

However, you have to ask what the intent is of giving them the book in the first place. If it’s because you think it’s worth reading?

Do the supremely racist, sexist elements really do ‘make the book’? Or can the book be edited for children? In thinking about that, don’t give me the boringly predictable excuse that children are ‘mollycoddled’ these days, blah blah blah. This sort of argument have no validity and nothing behind it of substance.

We ‘modify’ many things to make the comprehensible and suitable to children of various ages and this is a reasonable thing to do. However, at an age when they can grasp the context, then the ‘unexpurgated’ versions should be available.

There are silly examples though. For instance, when buying “The Three Little Pigs” I found lots of versions where the first two idiot brothers survived their encounter with the big bad wolf and raced off to their engineer brothers house. REALLY! Very small children can manage these experiences when assisted by their parents. My youngest watches shows that I’m sure would’ve scared me at the same age, but she’s been educated
to understand that these things are make-believe and she also has a very strong innate sense of personal safety and security which we’ve worked hard to support.

Additionally we have friends who’s older children are frightened by the very things my youngest finds unconcerning.

Learning experiences need to be provided at an age when they can be managed and integrated – Huck et al can be edited so the story can be read at an appropriate age and the original version read later when it too is provided at an appropriate age.

Still, “editing” equals censorship. Time, place, and context are what lends the Sawyer/Finn saga historical relevance (arguments that have been made hundreds of times elsewhere, far more eloquently than I could ever manage).

Huck’s a great story for kids and for bedtime reading: and that N-word can really jar the kids and spoil the mood.

Apparently, from the comments posted on the CBC discussion I linked to above, Twain did not consider Huck to be a children’s book at all, and had had no objection when it was dropped from a school’s reading lists in his own lifetime.

But seriously, if the thing’s out-of-copyright, it’s fair game for those who would edit or re-write it: I would only insist that such monkey-shines be clearly indicated on the cover.

So that I a least would not buy it by mistake.

I too prefer and wish my materials to be unabridged, unedited and uncensored (and untranslated too, if I’m capable) – but that does NOT mean that children’s editions of those same materials should not be judiciously abridged, edited or censored.

This can be seen clearly in the way that Huck and Jim are frequently depicted as being on the river, or dipping their (fishing) poles into the river, and relying on the river for their livelihood – while at the same time ignoring the plight of the river in the form of pollution from riverboats and the occasional drowned corpse. The undertones of sexual exploitation and abuse of women are too obvious to need to point out.

This is further underlined by Huck choosing to run away from a woman rather than be adopted by her and “sivilized”. Clearly he’s gynophobic. He might also be homosexual, given how Jim constantly refers to him as “honey”.*

Until all of these egregious slights are corrected, Huck Finn will never be acceptable as a modern work of classic literature.

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* Plus, there are no tits in Huck Finn. Evidence suggests there was a scene involving Becky Thatcher that had originally been written for Tom Sawyer, wherein Tom convinces Becky to exchange a flash of her breasts for a crystal doorknob. This scene was later cut from the novel. Some speculate that this was the origin of the New Orleans Mardi Gras tradition of exposing breasts in exchange for beads.