Ideas: Joel Fishbane

Let's Applaud The Huck Finn Censors for Their Honesty

“jam” is different from “fruit spread”, “ice cream” from “frozen dessert”

by Joel Fishbane

With the media whirlwind surrounding New South Books and their bowdlerized edition of Huckleberry Finn, censorship has been a hot topic for bloggers and tweeters. It’s an important debate, of course, but in this case, the debaters have entirely missed the point. The true surprise about the controversy is not that the publishers altered Mark Twain’s work  - it’s that they told us they had done it.

The work of public domain authors has been quietly altered for years. From their earliest beginnings, Disney has been removing the sex and violence from fairy tales while abridged editions of “classic” works still adorn many bookstore shelves. Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables can often be found in a truncated form while J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy is often published with a new title that removes Wendy from the equation.

After Dark, January 18, 2011

The "d-word"—when discussion goes missing
By Gaëtan L. Charlebois


WildSide is done and we, at CharPo, had a very good time there. The site itself grew with the festival's popularity and this week, before the end of seven weeks of existence for us, we passed the magical 10,000 page-view mark.

Much to be happy about but while we were all partying, two stories in the last weeks drew my attention and perturbed me as they should perturb all artists.

On the face of it one of them would seem fairly anodyne: the banning of an old pop song from the airwaves because the song lyric included the word "faggot." (Anecdote: an editor of mine at the Mirror once told me that I could not use that word in print unless I was one so I outed myself to her.)

The other controversy is a little more important because it involves a classic work of literature, one that has literally changed lives and, arguably, the course of history. The work is Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I have only recently reread the work. I was given it and Tom Sawyer in heavily expurgated aimed-at-kids editions when I was a boy. The adult read was an eye-opener. I was not at all horrified by the use of the word "nigger" simply because literature from that age and that place—even works with good intentions—is chockablock with words like that, not to mention stereotypes we would now deem highly offensive (Uncle Tom's Cabin's Topsy, anyone?) if they were written in the present day.