Dear Huck Finn

Erasing the word 'nigger' from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn erase the dynamic that makes the book so memorable...

via Publisher's Weekly:

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic by most any measure—T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of "all modern American literature." Yet, for decades, it has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation's most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: "nigger."

Twain himself defined a "classic" as "a book which people praise and don't read." Rather than see Twain's most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the "n" word (as well as the "in" word, "Injun") by replacing it with the word "slave".

The term 'to whitewash', as defined by Dictionary.com, means:

•  to whiten with whitewash.
  OR
• to cover up or gloss over the faults or errors of; absolve from blame.

That second meaning is sacrosanct (look that up while you're at it) with trying to censor, make invisible or control the viewing of something. Whitewashing something literally means that whatever you had before is covered by plain white... Whatever was under it, no matter how ugly (or beautiful; depends on the beholder) is gone. Whitewashing is why the media butchers facts, why politicians are all liars and why by 2020 the Iraq War might not be in history books anymore. Whitewashing is what is happening to you, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, when the publishers of one of your new editions take the word 'nigger' out of your pages in lieu of 'slave'.

The word 'nigger' is synonymous with Southern culture from the early 1800s onward. It was as American as apple pie and baseball even past the Civil Rights Movement era. Though the negative stigma attached to its use has lessened the ease of its use, no doubt there are some people who still say 'nigger' as a term of hate towards Black people. That said, 'nigger', while hateful, is a part of Southern history, which is encapsulated in you, Huck Finn. Why are they trying to take some of your thunder away?

I'll tell you why: It's because people are uncomfortable with the ugly, hateful, detestable history of our country, and would rather whitewash over it with rosy rhetoric than paint the picture as it really was. It's because most people can't stomach the way 'nigger' was casually used in the South as not just a hateful word, but a general term for Black people. It's because people would rather gloss over the way things really were, to portray things the way they want them to be.

Somewhere in Anytown, Middle America, there is a 6th grade literature class going through a tour of classic American books, of which you are a part, Huck Finn. They're going to open your pages and take in the story, but instead of getting the truth - the real, gritty truth - they'll get the sugarcoated abridged version. They'll get the version in which Huck and Nigger Jim are equals in society's eyes, not the one where Huck first sees Jim as a 'nigger' before all else. Do people really want that? Do they want you to lose your effect. One of the reasons you were such a profound book is because of the candid portrayal of the racial attitudes that pervaded the U.S. at that time. Why would they want to rob you of that privilege? Why would they want to dilute you for the sake of safety? By taking 'nigger' out of your pages, the only bad vibe going away is the awkward moment when a white student has to say it around mixed racial company (I would've been able to live without that in my classroom). Censoring you, in essence is erasing the racist ideology that this country was built on, giving an imperfect and incomplete perspective on it. You, as a classic piece of literature, deserve more than that...

Dear E-Books

Both are good reads. Only one has a place in my backpack...

via The New York Times:

With a growing number of people turning to Kindles and other electronic readers, and with the Apple iPad arriving on Saturday, it is not always possible to see what others are reading or to project your own literary tastes. You can’t tell a book by its cover if it doesn’t have one.

“There’s something about having a beautiful book that looks intellectually weighty and yummy,” said Ms. Wiles, who recalled that when she was rereading “Anna Karenina” recently, she liked that people could see the cover on the subway. “You feel kind of proud to be reading it.” With a Kindle or Nook, she said, “people would never know.”

Okay, one of my taglines for Dear Whoever is that 'reading is fundamental'. I love to read. Whether it be newspapers, magazines, blogs, nutritional labels or what have you. In the past 2 years, though, reading has taken up residence in a new venue. You, e-books, are what the iPod did to CD's. You're slowly changing us from a society of page turners, to button pushers. While people still are reading, the modus in which we read is now swiftly changing. Because of you, there isn't a use for the delineation between paperbacks and hardcovers. It's the Kindle versus whatever other e-readers there are. Because of you, there won't be any such thing as a book weathering generations or being handed down through those said generations. We can just as easily point and click that same book to whomever we want, and save it on our hard drives. Because of you, the time-honored traditions of bookmarks, pages folded over, and writing little notes in the margins will wither. No longer will there be people like myself perusing book stores for hours looking at interesting covers to see which book they want. In fact, if you continue at this pace, I'd be surprised if there even are bookstores anymore in 20 years.

E-books, it's not that I'm against the whims of technology overtaking the physical presence of ideas laid out on paper. It's just that after one of you gets purchased, hundreds of books are essentially deemed obsolete. Maybe your use will cut down on deforestation and other side-effects of book production. Even so, is that worth trading in a technology that revolutionized religion, science, philosophy and pretty much every other facet of humanity? The printing press might very well be the most important invention of the past millenium (#shoutout to Johan Gutenberg; bet he's rolling in his grave). It took Europe about 200 years to fully embrace it. It took you about 6 months to seriously catch on. Is that indicative of the change in society or just technology at work?? Whatever the case, e-books, I probably won't be buying any of you any time soon. Though I gladly rock MP3s and DVDs, I think I'll wear my papercuts with pride as I lug a backpack full of books around. You might be convenient, but convenience shouldn't always override principle, especially when you have to pay $260 plus each book to enjoy it...

Dear JD Salinger

It's a rarity that one book can define the mindset of an entire progeny (look it up), and even more rare that the author lives to see the generation touched by his work. Mr. Salinger, 'Catcher in the Rye' is one of my favorite books, not only because of the main character, Holden Caulfied, but because of the vivid explication of the society that he lived in. The vapid, underwhelming world around the high school dropout only served to harden Holden even more. Not to say that I'm the spitting image of Caulfield, but as a person of the same age, I notice the one similarity in our mindsets: cynicism. Mr. Salinger, your book solidified that it is quite okay to be disillusioned with the way everything is going so long as your values and ideologies are kept pure. Also, the work showed how precious youth is, in that innocence lost too quickly is worse than not having innocence in the first place. This is more of my own personal obituary than a letter, JD. And I suppose that because your protagonist was okay with delving into the personal in different forums, such a post is warranted. JD, your memory will not be in vain. There's a whole new generation of Holdens, ready to catch the children in the rye if they venture too near to the cliff. Hopefully you're guarding us as well...

RIP Jerome David Salinger