Huck’s Causing Trouble Again
by tristero
This is ridiculous Puritanism:
No parent who is raising a black teenager and trying to get him to read serious fiction for his high school English class would ever argue that “Huckleberry Finn” is not a greatly problematic work. But the remedy is not to replace “ni**er” with alternative terms like “slave” (the latter word is already in the novel and has a different meaning from “ni**er,” so that substitution just mucks up the prose — its meaning, its voice, its verisimilitude). The remedy is to refuse to teach this novel in high school and to wait until college — or even graduate school — where it can be put in proper context.
The only way that banning Huck Finn from high school could be helpful is if by doing so, the book is made more appealing to the kinds of teenagers who get off on doing something that’s forbidden by the We-Know-We-Know-What’s-Good-For-You crowd. But let’s face it: that probably won’t work, any more than banning, say, The Magic Flute, would get more kids to listen to it.
Then she drives the point home, literally:
“Huckleberry Finn” is not an appropriate introduction to serious literature, and anyone who cannot see that has never tried putting an audio version of it on during a long car trip while an African-American teenager sits beside her and slowly, slowly slips on his noise-canceling earphones in order to listen to hip-hop.
As if the only reason said teen might have for slipping on those “noise-canceling” earphones is to escape the uncomfortable nature of Twain’s novel. More likely that kid was bored out of his mind listening to a stupid book and would have done the same even if it were this book instead. Don’t get me wrong: it could be that Huckleberry Finn is not an appropriate introduction to serious literature, in which case it most certainly shouldn’t be taught. But that would be because it is, in fact, a crummy novel. However, very few people knowledgeable about American and English literature, even Lorrie Moore, would argue that – they might not like it, they might believe that there are better American novels (certainly I think so, for example, this one), but few people think it is not an important literary work.
Then, Moore inadvertently gets to the heart of the problem, and gets it entirely backwards:
No novel with the word “kike” or “bitch” spelled out 200 times could or should be separated — for purposes of irony or pedagogy — from the attitudes that produced those words. It’s also impossible that such a novel would be taught in a high school classroom.
That, as Ms. Moore should realize, is a serious problem. If they’re great books, novels that use the word “kike” or “bitch” spelled out 200 times should be taught in high school! I can’t think of a single reason not to and a lot of reasons to do so.
A great book is a pain in the ass more often than not. It’s not impossible, of course, but it is extremely hard to find a truly great book that doesn’t offend an awful lot of people, either because the subject matter is creepy = say, a botched bombing by a secret agent and purveyor of cheap pornography – or the book is hard to read or it contains certain passages that even presumed sophisticates like the judges for the Pulitzer Prize deem “obscene.”
To the extent that learning how to read great books has an ulterior moral purpose – and “moral purpose” is the worst of all reasons to read great books – it surely is to learn how to grapple with ideas, situations, characters, forms, and language which challenge you to think for yourself and form your own conclusions. It is to confront the disturbing, the unknown, the confounding, and the unpleasant and by doing so, recognize these are as much a part of living as the things that comfort us. The list of great books that are not, in some way, quite disturbing, is very, very short. To make the absence of language that is racist, bigoted or sexist an important criterion for “teen-appropriate” great literature is the height of silliness. The essential criterion for great literature is very simple: the novel must be astounding.
Huckleberry Finn certainly is astounding. But look, I don’t think it’s terribly important whether that particular book gets taught to high school kids. So this part of Moore’s op-ed is spot-on. Unfortunately, it is the only part that is:
One reader’s sensitivity always sets off someone else’s defensiveness. But what would be helpful are school administrators who will break with tradition and bring more flexibility, imagination and social purpose to our high school curriculums.
Indeed. Kids should read more. But substituting crummy books that don’t offend for those awesome books that do solves very little, including that obsession of all right-thinking American parents: the building of a kid’s self-esteem. And watered-down, inoffensive books hardly attracts passionate readers. They simply can’t deliver the goods the way the truly nifty stuff can.
If not Twain, why not Nabokov? Or, even though it’s in translation, Kafka? Or Woolf?And so on – you folks, I’m sure, can easily supply a bunch of wonderful examples, including living novelists…
The point is this: kids should be reading more, and also reading more great literature. Let’s not obsess about language and offensiveness. But yes, let’s redouble our efforts, and use our imaginations and our passionate interests to vastly expand the number of truly great books we teach our kids. We need more disturbing, challenging books like “Huckleberry Finn” to introduce high school kids to, not less.