On the rewriting of Huckleberry Finn

 

Having been raised in the Los Angeles harbor and further educated in the Marine Corps, I grappled with several majors in college and perhaps mostly because of my grandmother ended up majoring in English.  She herself had gone deaf for a while as a girl but made up for her lack of education by reading.  She became an evangelist for reading and for one of my birthdays or perhaps Christmas she gave me the complete works of Mark Twain.  That set wouldn't be considered complete today, but I read the whole thing, parts of it more than once.  However, when the question arose, as it often did back then, about a major American novelist whose work could match the likes of Thomas Hardy, Henry James (who at heart was more British than American), or Joseph Conrad who was perhaps as much Polish in his writings as British.  But regardless of however much British James and Conrad were, they along with Hardy were the novelists I admired back then and didn't think the U.S. had produced anyone comparable, certainly not Mark Twain; although I read him with great attention -- but not in a long time.

I was surprised, and a bit appalled, that so few seem to have difficulty with what Percival Everett has done in his James.   I am prejudiced against the rewriting works of the past.   If this were done with a modern work, I suspect the previous writer or his estate would be suing the rewriter. 

Pretty much any classic can be rewritten to make it more politically and scientifically correct, but historians would urge such writers to leave the non-politically correct writings alone. You may not like Hitler's Mein Kampf, but it just isn't something someone interested in truth and accuracy would want to see rewritten. Someone might conclude that the revised version makes them happier and less offended, but historians will be offended unless they are interested in papers at some point that discuss the extremes writers who take up political causes are willing to go.

Back in the day when I thought I would continue on with my education, I thought I might examine the muckrakers. I read quite a few of them, even got a letter from someone related to the IWW, International Workers of the World. The left wing of today has no interest in rewriting the writings of Big Bill Haywood who spent his last days in Moscow, nor, in my opinion, should they.