Anti-Climacus

I've read a few critiques of the new edition of Huck Finn that removes all of the racially-insensitive language. Most pieces I've seen focus on the politics of the move; not surprisingly, everyone blames everyone else. But to be honest, I am too young to have been involved in the culture war battles of the 90s and I have little interest in perpetuating them, even if only to support the people on my 'side.'*

So this strike about the right tone for me:

Authors’ original texts should be sacrosanct intellectual property, whether a book is a classic or not. Tampering with a writer’s words underscores both editors’ extraordinary hubris and a cavalier attitude embraced by more and more people in this day of mash-ups, sampling and digital books — the attitude that all texts are fungible, that readers are entitled to alter as they please, that the very idea of authorship is old-fashioned.

Leaving Huck Finn as it is should be first treated as a problem of art and the nature of writing. On that level, we can find sufficient reason not to alter it. There's no need to involve politics at all.


*Let it suffice for these purposes to say that if you want civil discourse on campuses or in politics, speech codes will be counterproductive (not least because they lead to much complaining about speech codes). Further, I think the great books or a traditional liberal arts education need no particular defense, but I also think that most everyone who wants a liberal arts education can (and does) receive one. I have been privy here to some interesting conversations with people who believe that the utility of the humanities is undersold and the utility of the sciences oversold, but I take that to be a slightly different argument.