Times Editorial Suggests Huck go to College

An Editorial in the New York Times written  by a  novelist suggests that Huckleberry Finn with it's Nword pedagogy hit the road and go to college. Her rational is one that African American students could not decipher the onslaught of NWord idioms and that the racism of the nineteenth century to the IPhone hip hop generation just simply would not compute nor should it. African American students should wait until they get older and by the time they are in college they will be able to decipher literary intent from out and out racism or at least they would understand verisimilitude and all it's connotations. This is idiocy.

Surprising to hear a writer sign on to this kind of have it your way literature. I would like my Huck Finn sans Nword and hold the mayo and any other characters that smack of prejudice. I hope her novels are as ubiquitous in their appeal as cable television where there is a channel for every viewer. It would seem the essence of literature must again bow to the fatuous demands of Twain scholars and novelists who write politically correct essays for the Times. What is more PC than saying yes this is offensive, lets hold off until the laboratory of college where the adults can dissect this ante-bellum sickness.

This is exactly the type of thinking that got the scholar revved up enough to think that because we run around with smart phones and IPADs that we can just delete the offensive material from literature and serve it up in the same way we download a tune for ninety nine cents. The novelist brings up the fact that African Americans hearing the same NWord spoken in their music will not be offended as much by the silent printed word of Mr. Twain. That it is quite fine for their contemporaries to sing the Nword, rap it, because this has been sanctioned, but the repetitive hurtful rants of Huckleberry Finn is just really a burlesque show of racist minstrels and white people whooping it up. Rubbish.

To the novelist who wrote this editorial, I would simply say this. Literature stands. Period. If thy book offends thee pluck it out does not apply to art. You should know this. If a high school decides not to teach Huckleberry Finn then so be it, but that is a disservice to the student. Literature is not about our time. It is not about our twenty first sensibility. It is about saying what cannot be said otherwise. Literature defines things we cannot and brings it down to us through the ages. It is an intellectual exercise that informs the same way a painting or watching a great ballet performance or music does. There is something there we cannot lay our finger on, yet it speaks to us.

To say that African American High school Students cannot handle Huckleberry Finn or until college is demeaning to them. Worse, it cheats the students from the literary experience of reading the first modern American novel. Literature should not be held hostage to the winds of contemporary taste.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in February

3/5ths OF A Person, SLAVE, or that darn NWORD!

Seems the 'publicans don't like the word SLAVE that darn Twain scholar used for the NWORD and they don't like 3/5ths OF A PERSON neither. They just read the Constitution in the Senate and conveniently skated right over the part about a slave being 3/5 of a person which is exactly what that Twain scholar decided the NWORD in Huck Finn should be replaced with: SLAVE. Good thing that Twain scholar studied up because I'm sure he wouldnt' want to use a whole person when he can use three fifths. I wonder how much of a person an NWORD is? Makes you think don't it.

But the 'publicans don't believe there were SLAVES no how. Seems they forgot the part in the Constitution that said if a slave escaped up north to a free state then they were not automatically free. In fact Dred Scott proved they could be sent back down South. So I guess they were still 3/5ths, NWORD, or SLAVE. Seems we just don't like to think a-tall about our history and we can't decide what word we like. We would just assume it didn't happen except them pesky books keep laying around with those bad words that we sure don't want our highschool kiddies to read with their IPODS of Kanye and the boys. Lord knows they are virgin ears that might be scorched by them 3/5 people.

You know come to think of it maybe we should just get rid of the NWORD altogether and go with 3/5. Kind of has a ring to it and not as clumsy as NWORD. Course now the 'publicans don't seem to like 3/5 neither so that won't work. And SLAVE dont' work. And the NWORD don't work. How about we just call em 7/8? Its a little higher than 3/5 and don't have none of them slave connotations that the Twain scholar likes to use for everybody. We could just put 7/8 where ever an NWORD existed and we could maybe put that in the Constitution to show our liberality. Then 'publicans could read that and say if a 7/8 person escaped to a free state and picked up an 1/8 then they could become a whole.  Just to show they are forward thinking group of people. Huh. Wonder if that makes em' free?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man should blast off in February

You Can't take the N-WORD out of the Huckleberry

No sir. You cant. Cant do it. The N-WORD is as much a part of Huckleberry Finn as the Mississippi or Jim or Huck or the Duke or the King or the Widow or his drunken no good father. You can not take a piece out of the painting just because you don't like the color. Nor can you take a word from the book because you don't like the word. You just can't do it because you happen to be a Twain scholar (so called) in the year of our Lord 2011 and think that you have the right to tinker with someone else's book because you want high school students to read it. You dont' own that right and the faster you are dust the better.

Mr. Twain did not prefer the word slave over his colloquialism. It is not a matter of offence. Literature or art or books do not bow to the latest PC movement. If it did we would have no art, no books, no music. For literature cannot be made to bow to some man's idea he knows more than the author. He don't. He never did. He never will. The author made the book and it is stone for better or worse. Forget that the offending word now comes out nine year olds IPOD. It does. I have heard it more than once. Or that our most famous rappers broadcast that word the way you would say hello now. Forget all that. You do not tinker with a man's book who is not around to defend it.

But if Mr. Twain were here he would surely laugh and then he would be angry as hell. He cared about his words so much that in his autobiography he took out the commas and exclamation marks and little inflections his typist had put in for flow. In my second novel Tobacco Sticks I too used the NWORD. A man who listened to one of my readings with repetitive NWORDS came up to me at the end. I was very nervous as he was an African American. He nodded to me and said I liked your reading.  Now would he have liked it more if I had taken out the offending words? Should I care that he liked it? Or should a book stand as written regardless of the consequences?

Sad to say we will pass on and Huckleberry Finn will persevere. Our all important ultra self conscious sensibilities will pass on too. And mabye some boy or girl somewhere will pick up Mr. Twain's book or some adult and he or she will read it and laugh and be entertained and maybe offended and maybe cry and maybe throw the book down in disgust. But he or she should not be restricted from reading the book as it was written. Censorship of any kind is an insult to all and the gravest of insults to Mr. Twain's book. You just can't have your cake and eat it too. The man whose biography is selling so many copies the press cannot keep up would not condone such a bastardization. You just can't take the NWORD out of the Huckleberry and still have Huckleberry Finn. It just don't work that-a-way.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man should roll out this month