LITERARY CRITICISM
Come Back to the Raft, Huck Honey
9 January 2024
As a teacher of language who often touches upon deconstruction, I’d like to rest for a moment upon an old controversy around Huck Finn. 
For those of you too concerned about the real news of The Crown’s final season, the Golden Globes, and the unending econo-quake of the Eras Tour to be concerned with such a marginal issue as the censorship of art, there was a time, not that long ago, when co-founder of the Mark Twain Circle of America Alan Gribben re-published Huck Finn without all the racist and offensive language. He did it, he said, to head off so much of the self–censorship the book was receiving, to protect its availability to schools and new readers.
The beauty of the book: found in these Romantic images of two friends.
In our cultural climate sensitive to racial identity and oppressive rhetoric, Gribben had noted correctly that many public schools have removed Huck from their reading lists. I might suggest that there are other reasons to remove it than the literal vocabulary challenges it poses–the relevancy of a white 19th-century author’s portrayal of black identities, for example–but that is another topic altogether. Gribben was largely correct in his premises: it is challenging enough to teach the novel’s social critique and humor without “obsessing” over the racial slurs.  As a teacher of the novel himself, Gribben (a white teacher like me) said that using the word made him “uncomfortable,” hopefully an understatement.

At the time, critics of the move raised several issues, of course.  One does not alter a classic.  If kids aren’t ready for it, don’t teach it to kids. Political correctness has gone too far.  Censorship violates our Constitution. Today’s students say and hear far worse than anything Twain would write. Et cetera.  

Gribben the Copycat

But we might just as well be discussing any number of parallel cases.  I’m thinking of Disney’s attempts to build historical theme parks around Gettysburg or Manassas, the outcry over sacrilegious construction around “Ground Zero” in New York, the Taliban destruction of Buddha statues, revisions of the works of Michelangelo, Spielberg’s regrets over the doctoring of ET, and the Politically Correct Bible.  In all of these cases, defenders argued for a sacred historical center which must be preserved: the words or ancient art around God or prophet, the intent of the artist, the memorial of death. In Spielberg’s words: “For me, it is sacrosanct. It’s our history; it’s our cultural heritage. I do not believe in censorship in that way.” 

To be sure, while these issues all contain some common threads, a nuanced analysis of the rhetorical spaces a cultural artifact occupies (locally and beyond) will reveal other arguments and strategies, though along the way both conservative and liberal have been accused of polarizing the discussion. For now, we’ll stick more closely to Gribben’s choice.

One issue with the defense of Twain’s original text is the claim that such an historical center exists and that such grounds are worth preserving.

No Defense for Twain

One issue with the defense of Twain’s original text is the claim that such an historical center exists and that such grounds are worth preserving. There is fair evidence that Twain expected his tales of Huck and Jim to be a long-running series, not a single novel.  The opening line of the novel was revised at least three times as different drafts of the novel (written, stopped, rewritten, and redirected over seven years) reveal. And the novel has already been revised countless times in various forms since the original text, including a 1955 version that erases Jim’s character completely.  

But presume that Twain’s original text as published is the one deemed worth preserving. What is the integrity of meaning which Gribben wishes to preserve?  Is it, as he suggests, the social critique?  It is difficult to ignore Twain’s biting commentaries in the work, everything from domestic violence to religious zealotry, and from literacy to politics. By removing “nigger,” does Gribben refocus contemporary readers on what they “should” be finding or does he obscure some of that same social commentary? Is Twain’s original text about politics or about the humor, an attack on American romanticism or—just an adventure story? We cannot and do not know what Twain wanted us to read into the work (if anything more than chuckles); all we have are his pen strokes, readerly cues, scripted in a late 19th-century context of readers.  As 21st century readers, we cannot expect his cues to be understood the same way as his own historical readership. My only point here is that while we can make historical studies of Twain’s meaning, we cannot reliably name an original meaning which insists upon preservation. Just ask any Constitutional scholar.

Stripping Twain down to his original meaning.
Suppose, however, that we set meaning aside and defend Twain’s work as it was originally set down on the grounds that it is historically accurate in its original form, that history (or an author’s work) should be preserved for its own sake, regardless of value or meaning. Here again, we run into problems.  For one, why then would we obsess over Twain’s paginated scribbles over those of Peter Tewes or Isabella Williams (random names I will guess existed somewhere as Twain’s—I mean, Clemens’s—contemporaries)?  If we are concerned about honoring the author’s words out of respect to the author, the same question applies, but also an added concern: to what degree are the words of an author a respectful representation of him?  I, for one, am very concerned about the preservation of my Twitter/X archive, but I suspect no one will work obsessively to do so in respect to my wishes (and one or two CEOs may redesign an algorithm to obliterate it, anyway).  No, it is not any history that we want preserved but particular histories which we have identified as sacred, as American classics.

In other words, there is absolutely nothing about the claim of “original” or “historical” that alone merits preservation. What we insist upon preserving are particular works of art that we have deemed valuable after the original conception.  Nothing in art is therefore valuable in its conception but in the social prejudices which later value or dismiss it. This is not a trap but a reality of our work with texts; we might as well fess up to it: this has never been about the work, but always about our issues with it. 

 

Targeting the Canon

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Huck Finn has been deemed one of the “Great American Novels,” alongside works like Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye, and Infinite Jest.  It is a mark of the American literary canon, or center of cultural identity.  To touch Twain is to alter our conceptions of who we are.  In this sense, literature is “sacred” to culture, and the hate mail that Gribben and Spielberg and Disney receive is predictable.

It is a short challenge to see how the definition of an American canon or cultural center is problematic. Just as the defenders of a trade-center-turned-blast-zone worked to honor its symbolism with the Freedom Tower but ignore the far more original burial grounds and holy places of the Manhattan Indians, just as the raising of a Confederate flag simultaneously stirs emotions of pride and repulsion for its Dixie ‘heritage’ and slave history, and just as the Taliban destroy the more ancient statuary of Buddhism in the name of preserving the original edicts of Islam, defining the cultural identity of our country is a political or ideological undertaking.  The Great American Novel and the literary canon are selected predominantly by their teaching (more, perhaps, than by an innate “greatness”).  In other words, the teachability of the work (as defined historically by a largely white male professorship according to literary valuations like “social critique” and “dialect,” “unity” and “theme”) made it worth preserving. (Enter all the Canon debates.)

Do we teach a work because it is art? Or do we call it art because we teach it? 

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A Bevy of Paradoxes

To be sure, the crafting of Huck Finn by Twain is meticulous and respectable, worthy of analysis for its nuance. Its historical durability attests to this, as well. But what if it no longer speaks to our American identity? Should we continue to teach it? Should it remain part of the Canon?  Should we worry if its racial epithets are preserved or removed?  And here’s Gribben’s first paradox: He wishes to revise the classic in order to continue its teachability as a classic.

This leaves us with the question of whether the meanings in Huck Finn are, indeed, worthy of being called art in the 21st century. Many around the controversy have argued that learning about our cultural growth and development is historically vital and that the removal of racism (even when, for instance, reading our Constitution aloud in Congress) “whitewashes” our history’s thinking and errors, advancing a pristine mythology of pure Founding Fathers and flawless philosophers. I agree that this is a danger. In one sense, reading works life Huck offers us the very discussion that Gribben seeks to avoid (in favor of his own choices of teachable themes). 

More, a 21st century American culture by Gribben’s own admission is “obsessing” over a single word; this obsession is part of our current identity, the kind of thing which defines a canon.  In this case, then, at least part of the reason that Huck Finn remains a classic is because use of the word “nigger” is more-than-cautionary, because it warrants levels of discussion of its use in the narrative and the current dynamics of that use today.  Gribben’s second paradox is this:  In attempting to preserve its classic nature, he seeks to remove a word which works to continue its status as classic. 

The revisionist approach by Gribben risks destroying this discussion; that he revised it, though, renews a different one.
I admit to teaching the novel myself decades ago.  Teaching in Oak Park High School at the time with students predominantly minorities and mostly African American, Twain’s dialect and racism obviously came up, but so did several other issues, most often Twain’s outlook on our moral education and the failings of “sivilization.”  In the end, my students revised the ending of this classic, claiming (rightly, I think) not that the novel was merely racist or that they were offended by Twain, but that the overly-Romantic ending was a disappointment . . . artistically flawed.  They were upset, not that Jim was a “nigger” or a slave but that he was removed from the narrative action in favor of the childish Tom Sawyer. 

I stopped teaching Huck and Scout in favor of other novels of racial identity.  Huck is long, has various picaresque excursions which I believe are sometimes more absurd adventure over social commentary, and it has an ending which I believe flawed for the kinds of curriculum I taught in the classroom.  But this does not mean I uncritically disapprove of its original text in the classroom (I just disapprove of its being taught uncritically).  In fact, my students’ interpretation of Huck’s and Jim’s relationship had been fairly direct and justified:  Jim isn’t a slave or “nigger” but a father-figure and source of wisdom for the young Huck as they drift down their mythological river.  Twain’s squiggles rarely point actual readers towards racism but towards anti-racism (which was the reason for an early ban on the work: a racially-charged country could not imagine a true human relationship evolving between a black man and a white boy).  Twain himself writes in his letters that “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning;” in other words, the author knew exactly what he was up to, creating a fascinating tension between the rich friendship he develops and the racist dialect of the times.  The revisionist approach by Gribben risks destroying this discussion; that he revised it, though, renews a different one.

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Resistance is Futile, Change Inevitable

None of the foregoing, then, suggests that I am polemically against the revised text. There is consequence, cost, to arbitrarily changing our history’s rhetoric for our own political purposes as Gribben attempts. (How many revisions of other IP have become unimaginatively and unbearably common for less vital reasons?) The status quo is hardly innocent: defending art on the basis of its origins, intent, or purity of meaning is fallacious, because none of these exist. Defenders of Huck Finn who cite such arguments carry little weight with me—they mythologize a history which has always been revision and retracing, revision and retracing. There is nothing sacred to defend (or to label as sacred). In this sense, revision isn’t just unavoidable; at its best, it’s critically necessary and revitalizing. And just as there is no single original which we may summon, so too is there no stable future where this will all be resolved absolutely: all is revision.

Not coincidentally, I have recently begun reading the poetry of Robin Acoste Lewis, in particular her collection Voyage of the Sable Venus (2015), which in one section reverses the sanitized political correctness of museum art markers. She writes:

In order to replace the historical erasure of slavery (however well intended), I re-erased the postmodern African-American, then changed those titles back. That is, I re-corrected the corrected horror in order to allow that original horror to stand. My intent was to explore and record not only the history of human thought, but also how normative and complicit artists, curators, and art institutions have been in participating in–if not creating–this history (35).

Significantly, she is not reversing the PC changes with any cry of sacrosanct “history” or “originality.” One is hard-pressed to discover the sacred in horror. 

I favor Gribben’s new text, then, all 7500 copies of its original print run (but apparently no later editions), the same way I favor the 1955 film which omits Jim and the 1948 Leslie Fiedler essay, “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey” (pirated copies abound online) which reads the novel’s man-boy relationship as homo-erotic. I love the graphic novel version, the children’s versions, and the likely forthcoming mash-up Huck Finn and The Zombies. “Death of a classic” is a hard accusation to make when earlier texts cannot easily be expunged and new texts emerge from that classic through fan fiction.  What’s true of this most recent revision is that it does what all do:  continue the discussion. I never expected to revisit Huck Finn in my professional career, but this long post (and the hundreds of others generated by Gribben’s work over the past decade) is evidence that Huck Finn is a classic worthy of 21st century discussion because we’re still doing it.  

And so we reach the final paradox: By altering Huck Finn in his effort to save parts of it for teaching, Gribben has added value to the original.  If I ever lead a discussion of the novel again, it certainly won’t be purely about Twain’s ideas, but that never matters in art. Jim is a drifting icon who reflects our cultural currents. His transformations on our literary raft are too important—and too much fun—to ignore.

 

 

Want more on this topic?

If you are interested in more on the topic of originality and “original texts,” check out this episode of The Waywords Podcast:

 

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