Mark Twain has been in the news recently. I figure it’s always a good day when Mark Twain is in the news. First it was for his recently (maybe not so recently now) released autobiography – volume one thereof. It’s a brick of a book; anything where the footnotes at the end equal in page numbers the pages of text is a bit of a daunting read, probably. I did notice that Amazon listed it as the third biggest seller around Christmas time. Makes you wonder how many households have already turned it into doorstops by now, doesn’t it?
He was also in the news more recently for another publishing phenomenon. Some well intentioned academic type has reworked old Huck and, apparently, improved it. Why else would you change an author’s words, unless to improve what he, or she, wrote the first time? That’s called editing. As you probably know, the word “nigger,” which occurs over two hundred times, has been changed to the more palatable, more acceptable “slave.” Never mind that’s not what Twain wrote. This w.i.a.t. has not edited Twain; he, or she, (I can’t be bothered to check) has bowdlerized Twain.
Thomas Bowdler was a fellow of the early 19th century who published The Family Shakespeare, Shakespeare with “the naughty bits” taken out. He wanted to offer, he said, an edition of Shakespeare more appropriate for women and children. Now, imagine what would happen if we were to offer in our classes two editions of books, one for the boys and one for the girls. Next year I’m doing Chaucer; guys get the real Miller’s Tale. Shoot – the whole General Prologue. Women – you get this other one more in line with your feminine tastes and sensibilities. I’m also doing American Lit. again; guys will be reading Winesburg, Ohio. Gals – you’ll have to do some outside reading because there are a couple of stories there that aren’t appropriate and that you won’t be reading. Part of me would like to try that next year just to see what would happen. As a wise sage from the history department once said, it would be like someone kicked the lid off of hell. And appropriately so.
I don’t choose books to be offensive. I don’t choose books to make people feel bad. But women in Winesburg clearly take it on the proverbial chin; the book offers a world view that is not ours. Never mind that Sherwood Anderson is as appalled as you might be by that world view. He is simply recording honestly. Same with Chaucer, whose world view too is radically different from ours.
We’re becoming 19th century puritanical, Victorian England. We laugh at those folks, we scoff at them, but we’re them. Soon we’ll be covering the legs of pianos, ordering chicken bosom sandwiches and wheeling Tess through a mud puddle in a wheelbarrow because “good girls” don’t allow themselves to be carried by single men. Words have power; we know that. That’s why words matter. Literature can make us feel uncomfortable; we know that too. But that can be a good thing. Let’s not hide our heads in the literary sand.
