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This has gone too far..Now i am offended..

H

HouseHobbit

Charter Member
When we edit out what has been until lately a Great Book (according to some)
What is next??

Oh My, the holocaust needs to be editted because some take offence?
This really reminds me of the Nazies and Soviets, or Chinese when this happens..

They can stick their Political Correctness up their $%#
I am1/4 "injun" My granfather is a full blood cherokee

And the "N" word we are not allowed to say now without be charged with a crime now in some places..
I hear from my Black Friends and young Boys around dayton without anyone batting a eye..
Not that I condone this..But COME ON..
But it can't be printed without offending.
It has gone too far..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12126700
 
well till the polititions grow a pair then get used to it .. or remove em :sniper::toilet:
 
Books are edited every time they are translated or re-published. They always have been. I wonder what they substitute for the N word in the Thai edition of Huck Finn for example? And of course the Bible has been edited several thousand times since the first texts appeared but no-one seems to mind. I'm all for keeping the original text but fashions and faiths change according to the politics of the day. As long as the original texts are still available somewhere and thanks to the internet they always will be now then I'm happy to look at the publication and edition date and name first before deciding whether or not to read it. The problem comes of course when one text is pronounced as the definitive version, especially when it is taught as such when it clearly is not.
 
My copy of this wonderful book was printed in 1912..soon to join the 100 Year Old Club in my library...well before the PC movement was shoved down our throats. It is as Mark Twain wrote it to be. Complete with Injuns...one of which I am..or at least half of me is.

Ah, the smell of this book...almost as good as the smell of a very fine cigar or well tanned leather. I get odd looks from people when I mention the smell of old books. The oldest book in my library was printed in 1806....205 years old now....that book has a sweet, earthy scent that is just out of this world. I don't know when in my life I found the pleasure of handling, reading and smelling old books, but it has stuck with me. Maybe it's the arsenic gassing out of the old paper, or the lead in the old inks...but the smell of a nice old book...not the ones you find in your grandmother's basement that have gotten wet and moldy, but the ones that are dry, clean and well preserved....just soothes me somehow.

One book in my collection, an original 1st edition copy of the Guadalcanal Diaries from 1943, has a smell that I cherish. At some point in its life, that book had gotten soaked with some sort of oil or fuel. It smells of war and machinery and men and guns.

OBIO
 
I shall not endeavor here, it could rank on political and religious ramifications. My thoughts are very un-PC, all the time. And in the real world, I call a spade a spade, no matter what his race, religion, or politic.

Caz
 
OBIO said:
My copy of this wonderful book was printed in 1912..soon to join the 100 Year Old Club in my library...well before the PC movement was shoved down our throats. It is as Mark Twain wrote it to be.
OBIO
Click to expand...

Book burners existed in 1912, way before the 'PC movement'. They just had a different name.

Every author has an editor, every book has been edited unless it was self published. Twain certainly had an editor who made some fundamental changes. None of it is just as Twain alone 'wrote it to be'.
 
Aviator32 said:
Book burners existed in 1912, way before the 'PC movement'. They just had a different name.
Click to expand...

I've been saying this all along, but I keep meeting people who insist there was no PC before 1989. I want to know when and where the golden age of complete freedom was, so I can climb in my TARDIS and go live there.

JAMES
 
Farenheit 451... Is a book worth a read, and the way I think things are heading. Is amazing how far ahead of its time that book was. Book editing irks me as well, but there really isn't a lot we can do about it unless we get enough of us together. As has been stated books are usually edited all the time, and I imagine a lot of the books now look vastly different than they were originally intended many years ago.
 
The book is satirical...
If editing out nigger, injun and other emotionally charged words, removes some of the satirical bite, then the edit has failed.

You need the wisdom of Job to be an Editor.
 
There seem to be two thoughts in this thread. Some of the comments are about changing language to avoid offense. Others are about updating language so people can still read it.

The former is what happened in this edition. The latter is how we can read Beowulf today.

None of this is editing as a technical term of which there are different types (e.g., copy edit vs. content edit). This I learned from my wife who does some for a living.
 
Here's a third thought for the thread.

Most "kids" who have to read this book in high school are forced to. They don't do it by their free will. I certainly didn't. They are making the edits almost exclusively for the classrooms, but no one in the classrooms really seem to care. I know, I was there just a handful of years ago. It is just another book that high schoolers have to read and write a paper about. IMHO, they are blowing this whole thing out of proportion. It seems to be the adults that don't even read the book that are arguing about it the most.

Someones trying to say that its hard for African American "kids" (or any ethnicity for that matter) to read, or heaven forbid, listen those few words? Listen to the music playing on their ipawds! Nuff said.
 
Uncomfortable!

The whole point of the book's strong language was authenticity - and putting a spotlight on racism in times of slavery. The language was meant to be offensive. Mr. Twain meant to make people uncomfortable. But we get to placid these days; many people prefer to be fat, dumb and happy. So we whitewash the offensiveness to save us the trouble of doing something about it ...

Sascha
 
Kiwikat said:
Here's a third thought for the thread.

Most "kids" who have to read this book in high school are forced to. They don't do it by their free will. I certainly didn't. They are making the edits almost exclusively for the classrooms, but no one in the classrooms really seem to care. I know, I was there just a handful of years ago. It is just another book that high schoolers have to read and write a paper about. IMHO, they are blowing this whole thing out of proportion. It seems to be the adults that don't even read the book that are arguing about it the most.

Someones trying to say that its hard for African American "kids" (or any ethnicity for that matter) to read, or heaven forbid, listen those few words? Listen to the music playing on their ipawds! Nuff said.
Click to expand...

Yoa are so right, but bigots rule this world. <--- My opinion.

Sascha
 
Wing_Z is correct. Clemens use that word on purpose to convey something to his readers. Editing out the word due to fear of offending any individual or group affects the intent.

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with Clements or his work understands what he's trying to say, and said often in many of his works (he was pretty much a man before his time).

Since this book is mainly read as a school assignment, then it should be read as the author intended. I would say the same for any book of this import.

This is not a case of translation or interpretation, which clearly is a different concept and process.
 
The whole affair comes down to decisions in many schools by parents and teachers, to ban the books from the curriculum due to the offending words. Professor Gribben edited the books to enable them to remain in school libraries and accessible.
 
Wing_Z said:
You need the wisdom of Job to be an Editor.
Click to expand...

You've got to be hired to be an editor. I have friends with whom I went to grad school who are now managing editiors, and/or professional critics, and they have very different sensibilities person to person. In my experience, satire simply eludes a lot of people. I, for instance, was very influenced coming up by Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary. Now, this book operates on latent vs. manifest meaning in language well before Sigmund Freud, but a good many of my compatriots (not claiming a scientific sample here) see "Devil" in the title and assume it's Satanism. NOT KIDDING here, people!!! What follows is simply my opinion, but I truly believe entirely apart from any political leanings, human beings have a censorial impulse; that most people in their heart of hearts would like to censor someone or something; and sincerely believe the world would be a better place if select people would just shut up. Fortunately, enough people, let's call them "consequence-oriented," realize that a little censorship goes a long way, and that once the censorial pretense has been made, it only takes a small change in the weather, for it to be their turn to be silenced... Others, still, hold on to the belief that whether through their piety, foresightedness, or simply who they are, they'll be able to walk between the raindrops.

Incidentally, Mark Twain was criticized during his own lifetime for his use of colloquial language and dialect. Educated people were supposed to use "proper" (and to modern ears, florid) English, and to do otherwise set a bad example for children. Anyone whose seen Deadwood on HBO and watched to characters switch from vulgar "mining camp" language to ultra-formal iambic pentameter knows what I'm talking about. Twain was also instrumental in getting U.S. Grant's memoirs published. If you haven't already, I suggest that most SOH members would find them engaging reading. Grant wrote in a very clear and concise prose style that I suspect was learned at West Point. He also wrote while dying of throat cancer, desperately trying to live long enough to finis so his wife would live confortably after his family's fortunes were lost in one of many finincial swindles going on at the time. Sounds like something that could have happened yesterday.

Please stay well everyone. I still maintain this is the most consistently polite and well-mannered forum I've ever been part of.

JAMES
 
When the current cheezy version of Jules Vern's Mysterious Island came out on the SyFy a little while back, it made me go looking for info.

As a kid it was one of the first really thick, really hard to understand books that I ran across, but became a favorite.

When poking around for info I was surprised to read that there were different versions. One version being altered to remove things that were considered unacceptable to the English. A little PC book editing going on back in the late 1800's. :)

FAC
 
It seems we are talking about the difference between EDITING and CENSORING. To my mind, editing for, say, length and/or structure is not a bad thing as long as the work's original author is consulted and grants his/her permission. Censorship, on the other hand, is the unilateral decision of a person or persons that the content of said work is not, for some reason, acceptable and should be unavailable. Editing can be a good thing. I shudder to think how many really good books would have been totally unreadable without a good editor. Censor ship just sucks! If you don’t like whatever it is you are reading, PUT THE DAMNED BOOK DOWN! Change the channel! Leave the room! Wear a sleep mask and ear plugs! Get over it! Just don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t read/listen to/watch/say/THINK. That’s my two bits worth. LA
 
Sascha66 said:
The whole point of the book's strong language was authenticity - and putting a spotlight on racism in times of slavery. The language was meant to be offensive. Mr. Twain meant to make people uncomfortable. But we get to placid these days; many people prefer to be fat, dumb and happy. So we whitewash the offensiveness to save us the trouble of doing something about it ...

Sascha
Click to expand...

It was not a time of slavery, slavery ended by the time of Twain's writtings of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Big Jim was a hero, Twain was not a prejudiced man. But it was the time people, even during WW I, the famous Canadian ace Billy Bishop had a black Labrador dog named "Nigger". Times change, worlds change, but that does not mean we should alter the words of classics. If anything, we need to keep them in to remind us of what we were and how we should never return to being so again.

Caz
 
I keep reading that that word was actually suggested by Twain's editor :mixedsmi:
 
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