Leslie,
        Of course one of the most interesting things about Huck is that
someone has always wanted to ban him from the curriculum. Some wanted
 - still want? - him out because he's a disobedient, ill-mannered,
tramp. Others want him out because the society he lives in has politically
incorrect features.  This just strengthens the case for keeping him in
the curriculum. Then we can teach the controversy and the text together.
I know of nobody who wants him out because his story is told in a clumsy
or ugly manner. So its Huck's opponents who stake out social/political
grounds for excluding him and I don't think those disputes can be won
solely with aesthetic arguments - even with so estimable an ally as
Northrop Frye on one's side. It's probably not true of Canadian school
board members, but in America few school board members have read Frye,
or would admit in public if they did.

Gus Sponberg
Valparaiso University