"The fault lies with the teaching, not the book. Dr Sarah Churchwell, senior lecturer in US literature and culture at the University of East Anglia, said the development made her "incandescent" with anger. But controversy over his language is not new: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn came in fifth on the American Library Association's list of the most "banned or challenged" books in the US in the 1990s (it had dropped in the 14th spot by the 2000s).īut the idea of changing the language in the novel in order to boost its popularity is still viewed with bafflement in many quarters.
Twain himself was a passionate critic of American racism, and donated money to a number of civil rights organisations including the nascent NAACP, as well as ironically critiquing prejudice in both Huckleberry Finn and the later novel Puddn'head Wilson. "We may applaud Twain's ability as a prominent American literary realist to record the speech of a particular region during a specific historical era," Gribben added, "but abusive racial insults that bear distinct connotations of permanent inferiority nonetheless repulse modern-day readers." "As a result, with every passing decade this affront appears to gain rather than lose its impact." "The n-word possessed, then as now, demeaning implications more vile than almost any insult that can be applied to other racial groups," he said. Gribben said he had decided on the move because over decades of teaching Twain, and reading sections of the text aloud, he had found himself recoiling from uttering the racial slurs in the words of the young protagonists. It will have the effect, the publisher claims, of replacing "two hurtful epithets" in order to "counter the 'pre-emptive censorship' that Dr Gribben observes has caused these important works of literature to fall off curriculum lists worldwide." The new edition's Alabama-based publisher, NewSouth books, says the development is a "bold move compassionately advocated" by the book's editor, Twain scholar Dr Alan Gribben of Auburn University, Montgomery.
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