Wow...  I hit a goldmine of conversation here.

I just wanted to follow up on my initial message in which I suggested that
Twain's Huck Finn is 1. to some extent irrelevant to today's racial problem
(and that the irrelevance matters) and 2. that it is itself problematic
racially with a little more explanation.

I don't think that Huck Finn should be abandoned, but I believe that
better books could be chosen for impressionable young people and that
reading lists could be selected in a more sensitive manner.  Above all,
though my objection to the "n-word" is still part of my problem, I have
a much greater problem with the novel's ethical picture.  I don't think
it is a problem of maturity to have a negative response to sensitive
concepts; for example, despite my "mature" response to violence in movies,
I am still very sensitive to it, dislike it, and avoid it as much as
possible- especially films which imply gratuitous bloodshed.  I don't
try to "ignore" the existence of violence-  but I feel sometimes that
I see enough that is repulsive in "reality."

I am heavily influenced here by Wayne C. Booth's recent book The Company
We Keep, and a chapter at the end which goes into a detailed analysis of
Huck Finn.  I mostly borrow from him to justify my point (2) above.

1.  Leslie Kinton wanted to know what social relevance has to do with
teaching literature, etc.  Why not teach literature as literature?
Flannery O'Connor would have been of the same mind-  she believed that
it was just too bad if a book was not to the tastes of some student-
that those tastes were being formed.

I buy into Booth's argument that the images presented in a narrative work
have an ethical (that is to say, they affect our ethos, our character)
effect on an observer, even a critical observer.  If I am not being careful,
I may be tricked by a novel into sympathizing with monsters, or laughing
with fools- and the novel may invite this sort of action.  Take, for
instance,
the heavily misogynistic images present in, say, Swift's writings from time
to time.  I am expected by the text to agree with Swift, when in his echo
poem he advises the narrator to beat the unruly mistress.  That is an easily
identified problem.  Less simple are representations of character which we
have been programmed to expect, and *wish to be true*, but which simply
do not hold up.

In Jim, we have a noble, "good savage," Christian, white-worshipping,
satisfied-as-slave-until-being-sold-up-the-river, father-figure sort of
black man-  a Bill Cosby of the 1800's, as it were.  Is this image relevant
to the black person then or today-  the sort of person a black wo/man wants
to
become, or is, or the sort of person whites should expect in an African
American?  I think not.  There is a certain truth to the problem of "Uncle
Tom-ism," even in its supposed role as a racial instruction.

Recently, a program by a very disgruntled black
director was presented on PBS called "Color Adjustment."  It went through
the periods of African American involvement in TV programming, from Amos n'
Andy up until the Bill Cosby.  It was quite clear from this more African
American perspective that most popular shows have either pandered to the
white stereotypes of black America, or the wet dreams of a liberal culture
which wished for blacks to assimilate in ways they generally have not
been able or desired to do.  These shows create bad expectations and
unrealistic portrayals of black America in the American consciousness-
a problem of social relevance, indeed.

I believe that Twain's novel, just for its less comic portrayal of Jim
(we'll get to the comic one in part 2) has this problem of social relevance.
While it indeed has many "redeeming" features, I will never be able to
regard the work as other than flawed-  my view of the African-American
man will simply never allow such an surreal ebony saint as Jim to have
any dignity.

2.  Tom Flaherty found it hard to imagine that any youngster in America
could fail to understand and empathize with Huck and Jim.  Well, perhaps
most white Southern youngsters-  I imagine his experience or his "image"
of African Americans is shaped by the same shameful films I mention in
part one, and by things like Twains intermittent painting of "Saint Jim."
A real African American person would probably feel, on the other hand,
that Jim is at best an unrealistic white-plaster icon, at worst a clowning
buffoon, a simpering slave (in the worst metaphysical sense) of his white
masters.  Jim is a handy plot device to provide the moral foil Twain wants
for Finn.  Though Twain parodies the "Sunday-school books" we find so often
in his short stories, it is sad to find him unconsciously influenced into
the same methodology-  the idealized, noble slave as an icon of reality,
just like the good little boys of the Sunday School pamphlets.

I would think it interesting to find whether those so strongly supportive
of Finn as a racially commendable volume are uniformly white or not.  For
the record, I'm pretty darn phenotypically Caucasian.  I think it matters
in identifying possible blind spots.

Anyway, towards the end of the book, Twain finally has dispensed his moral
syrup.  He is tired of the lesson and wants to clown around again-  so,
what happens to the "noble" Jim?  Back to a clown-  back to the other
image Twain's readers, and to some extent the readers of our time, wish
to be true.  The prince and the clown-  so where are the real African
Americans?

Twain's book is well-written, and commendable in its authorial intent at
many places to challenge the obvious racism which Twain clearly eschews.
However, in the place of this I find a racism of character which Twain
may well not have noticed, and which we have not sufficiently escaped in
modern times to notice very often ourselves.  It is this seduction of
Twain's that makes the book's social stance a relevant consideration in
its presentation to the young, especially given the humorous, enjoyable
character of the book.  No matter what theoretical justification anyone
gives it, the actual reading experience of the novel (especially among
the young) invites a caricature of black character and a fairy-tale
presentation of black-white relations which distorts to egregious extent
real African American concerns of Twain's time as much as those of our
contemporary society.

It is for this reason I argue for abandonment of Finn as required reading
among the young, and the adoption of good literature with a better
representation of racist problems and black culture-  preferably *by*
an African American- if that sort of issue is to be addressed in a
literature class.  Narrative affects people, and to engage fiction is
not a value-neutral act.  It is dangerous to assume that literature
should be taught for its own sake, without value judgments- as it
never is, incidentally (otherwise why not teach Neo-Nazi literature?)

Again, I am not advocating any true censorship-  the utter destruction or
restriction of a work- but rather value-attentive reconsideration of
Finn, in this case, in the high school (and perhaps even undergraduate)
literary canon.  It is certainly an unsafe book for impressionable
small children, as delightful (and because of its delight) as many of
its passages are.

Well, that's long enough.  Hope I kept a few of you with me.  Thanks.

Daven