by Publius
“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter,” Mark Twain wrote in 1888, “it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” That was three years after Twain first published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the United States, and more than two decades after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. By that time, the battle whether slavery itself is right or wrong was over.
Twain’s novel still poked a beehive (and still does), however, precisely because it addresses much deeper and more persistent issues about how language and culture shape thought and, ultimately, institutions and behaviors. The central narrative of Huckleberry Finn involves how direct personal experience changes Huck’s own thoughts and feelings about race, and about the common humanity of others.
A regular contributor to the Legal News recently urged readers to experience Huckleberry Finn in its unexpurgated original form, and to do so “with a jeweler’s eye.” He is in good company, including me.
When Auburn University - Montgomery professor Dr. Alan Gribben, and NewSouth Books, published a Bowdlerized edition of Huckleberry Finn, they ignited a firestorm of controversy across the political spectrum – liberals, conservatives, and moderates. That reaction was not entirely without precedent. Thomas Bowdler touched off similar push-back two centuries ago, when he attempted to adapt William Shakespeare’s plays to the artifice of the delicate sensibilities then socially expected of certain readers. Somewhat less controversial has been a recent edition of Huckleberry Finn by Richard Grayson, that substitutes “hipster” for the most problematic word in the original novel, rather than Gribben’s term “slave.”
Most liberals, of course, already were primed and ready to pounce on Gribben (and many did so somewhat unfairly, as Gribben himself has pointed out recently, in the journal Independent Publisher). Opinion leaders such as, but hardly limited to, The Nation’s Peter Rothberg, already had been fighting alongside the American Library Association for years, for inclusion of the unexpurgated Huckleberry Finn in educational curricula. I happen to share the ALA’s view of Twain’s original novel as a particularly excellent vehicle not only to engage the reader, but also to raise key discussion topics – like how words matter, and the importance of fully including a variety of viewpoints in the educational conversation.
Which is why the contributing writer’s central narrative – one in which so-called “politically correct” liberals are imagined to play the role of villain – is so curious and puzzling. Let’s be honest: “Political correctness” – in the sense of rigid enforcement of a preconceived orthodoxy – does exist on college campuses in the United States, not to mention a great many private secondary schools and charter academies. But it is important when exercising hyper-vigilance against imaginary liberal bogeymen not to disregard the real deal on the right. Just ask former Calvin College professor Dr. John Schneider, or his colleague Dr. Daniel Harlow.
Editor’s note: This refers to the recent situation where Dr. Schneider took early retirement to avoid Calvin College facing “harm and distraction” over an article he wrote questioning the historical accuracy of the Adam and Eve story in the Bible.
It is no mystery to anyone that a vast industry of educational institutions emphasizes to prospective students (or, often, to parents), the core selling-point that certain orthodoxies – not always just religious, but also often economic or political – actively will be reinforced on a routine basis, and never really subjected to meaningful or serious challenge and scrutiny. In my hometown, one secondary school, rather than emphasizing any mission to prepare students to cut the umbilical and think independently for themselves, instead solicits tuition with the slogan, “Our students believe.” Purchasers of tuition at Bob Jones University, Hillsdale College, Regent University, or Ave Maria School of Law likewise seek to indulge their own deeply-felt tropisms toward “fair and balanced” educational services – in the Orwellian, Fox News, sense of balance. Numerous such institutions abound.
The Monica Goodling controversy at the Department of Justice, which resulted in disciplinary action against her by the Virginia State Bar this May, demonstrates palpably how far-right political correctness not only can and does produce negative consequences far beyond the ivory tower of education, but directly results in substantial, concrete harm to the public interest – even going so far as to undermine the even-handed and competent enforcement of the laws themselves. Leslie Hagen, one of many victims of Goodling’s over-zealous, ideological and partisan personnel practices, started her career with the Justice Department here in West Michigan.
In contrast to the reality-based narrative that right-wing political correctness is a genuine and serious problem that directly effects principled individuals’ careers and the public interest, there’s no evidence at all that Gribben was politically motivated in any manner whatsoever. There’s no reason to believe he was part of any conspiracy, or that he had any agenda other than to increase readership and discussion of Mark Twain’s novels (which even the Legal News’s contributor seems to concede is a good thing). No, the Gribben controversy is not and never has been about some imaginary secretive cabal of liberal educators Hell-bent on poisoning students’ minds by rewriting Mark Twain. That narrative is a hoax.
I would argue that “political correctness,” either liberal or conservative, is completely beside the point, when it comes to Gribben’s editions of Twain, and that a different narrative is much more informative and worthy of consideration.
The more informative narrative, and one that is little-told, so far, is about the marketplace of ideas, about the public domain, and about copyright. Mark Twain, for all his virtues and his prodigious intellect, by 1906 also found himself disagreeing with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, other Founders, and most of the American public, about the public domain. In the Constitution, Congress enjoys the power to recognize the copyright monopoly “for limited times.” Copyright, at its core, is a bargain between the author and the public, mediated by the legislative branch of government. The author receives an economic benefit, in the form of the right to command royalties for a limited time, so as to encourage publication of new works of authorship. But after the term of the copyright expires, each work enters the public domain for the benefit of all humanity – “the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” as the Founders so artfully put it.
In 1790, the first Congress set the duration of the copyright monopoly at fourteen years, renewable once for an additional fourteen. By 1906, the duration already had been lengthened to forty-two years. Unlike some, such as former MPAA President Jack Valenti, Twain did not necessarily advocate perpetual copyright. But Twain also did not favor the timely and regular passage of his own works into the public domain. In 1906, he appeared before Congress to advocate forcefully for the further extension of copyright terms on already-published works – in other words, to renegotiate with Congress, to the detriment of the public and of future creators, the bargain that already had been struck, when Huckleberry Finn went to press in 1884.
At some point, extending the duration of the copyright monopoly inhibits, rather than promotes, creativity and the progress of science and useful arts. Congress exceeded that threshold shortly before Gerald Ford lost the1976 election, if not much sooner. Indeed, a fair and reasonable argument can be made that the first Congress got it just about right, in terms of duration, and that every subsequent extension has been counterproductive.
If the most extreme version of perpetual copyright ever were to become law, then how would we manage to distribute royalties to William Shakespeare’s living heirs, or to the heirs of those who first fixed the Book of Exodus in a tangible medium of expression? Would the collection of such royalties, and the prohibition against creating derivative works without the owners’ permission, promote or inhibit progress? The commonsense answers to these questions seem almost self-evident.
Precisely because Mark Twain did not get his way in Congress, and copyright terms, prior to the 1976 revision, remained limited to fifty-six years (thus, it is no accident that Huckleberry Finn experienced a resurgence of popularity in 1941), Legal News readers have no reason to fear that the Gribben edition of Huckleberry Finn, ever will supplant the original. The original is in the public domain.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is available, completely free of charge, and without any copyright restrictions, through Project Gutenberg, and from many other sources. I recently obtained a copy of Huckleberry Finn (with the upsetting words intact) merely by downloading an application called “classics” for my telephone and reading pad. For those who have not yet experienced ProjectGutenberg, < www.gutenberg.org >, please take the time to learn about the multitude of public domain works available through this service, completely without charge.
Demand for Gribben’s expurgated versions of Huckleberry Finn and of Tom Sawyer, appears to be quite limited. Only a few thousand units actually were printed. It is difficult to compete with free, and over the long run Gribben’s rewrite of Twain appears likely to become a niche or novelty item in the marketplace of ideas.
For instance, one still can purchase, from the right retailers, paperback printings of Bowdler’s The Family Shakespeare. Little reason exists to suppose that unexpurgated editions of Shakespeare’s works might ever go out of print, or be removed from library shelves, due to the mere availability of Bowdler’s version in the literary marketplace.
Whether Richard Grayson discovered the lightning bolt, or the lightning bug, in his “hipster” version of Huckleberry Finn, remains to be seen. For those who can manage without paper, a digital version of Grayson’s edition can be downloaded in PDF format from lulu.com, free of charge.
What this whole episode actually reveals is that everyone – including self-identified “conservatives” – can and should unite around the idea that the unexpurgated Huckleberry Finn belongs in schools nationwide. For schools that remain uneasy about presenting the original, perhaps the “hipster” version will suffice – but that’s a second-best approach, at best. The only virtue I see in Gribben’s edition is that it stimulated a vigorous public debate, that over the long run may result in a resurgence of interest in Huckleberry Finn, and other works of Twain. But that resurgence of interest alone is not reason enough to support Gribben or NewSouth by actually purchasing any printed copies of Gribben’s edition of Huckleberry Finn.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ought not to be dropped from school curricula, or shunned by readers, due to the mere presence of words that make many readers uncomfortable. As a writer for The Economist pointed out, the discomfort produced by the problem words is the very reason for continuing to include them. What oyster produces a pearl without the stimulus of a grain of sand?
So I’ll welcome the Legal News’s contributor to the circle of those who advocate that the original Twain is better than the expurgated version, and that Huckleberry Finn ought to be read far and wide, including by schoolchildren. That’s a view that liberals overwhelmingly have held for decades, and have been somewhat lonely advocating actively, prior to the Gribben controversy.
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