"I suffered through Huckleberry Finn in high school, with the white kids going out of their way..."

"... to say 'Nigger Jim' and the teacher’s tortured explanation that Twain’s 'nigger' didn’t really mean nigger, or meant it ironically, or historically, or symbolically. Whatever. I could live my whole life fine if I never read that book again. If some teachers have the audacity to believe that Mark Twain’s work is still meaningful, even absent the words 'nigger' and 'injun,' more power to them. If other teachers think keeping those epitaphs in is worth the pain they will cause students of color, I understand that too. This isn’t about censorship, it’s about choice. Either choice will have unfortunate consequences."

From the law professor's contribution to the series of essays in the NYT on an edition of "Huckleberry Finn" without the n-word. There are 11 essays total. (The lawprof is Paul Butler of George Washington University.)

I must say that I think there should be an edition with the offensive words removed. It's not as though the uncensored versions disappear as a result of its existence. If you think seeing those words is crucial to understanding the book, that's fine, but not everyone does, and there's also the opinion that it's detrimental, as Professor Butler explains very well. I think high school and middle school students are inclined to dislike anything you impose on them. They might be more interested in Mark Twain if they knew the teachers were pushing the censored version and an uncensored version is accessible — like porn — through the internet. Here, kids, you can get right to it, the instant you want.

UPDATE: "keeping those epitaphs in..." Hey, NYT! Can we get a word editor?!

UPDATE 2: The NYT heard my plea and corrected "epitaphs" to "epithets."

95.83% of NPR website readers think it's wrong to publish an edition of "Huckleberry Finn" with the n-word removed.

Of NPR readers.

"Mark Twain had a very tender heart."

"He liked to say nasty things – he's really good at it – but he didn't like the idea of being there when the person heard them, and was hurt by them!"

An interesting definition of a tender heart!

***

Please use this link if you want to buy Mark Twain's autobiography.

Shed a tear for the clown trapped in the place of no mirth.

The NYT does.

Cobwebbed by senseless rituals, speeches which no one listens to and rules that make it all but impossible to act on the will of the people, the Senate cries for more ridicule, decorum breaches and old-fashioned wit.

To get through that sentence you need to believe: 1. If only the Senate didn't require 60 votes for cloture, the bills that would pass would be what the people want, and 2. When the legislative process is dysfunctional, what you want is hilarity. Now, the column is about the Sad Clown of the Senate Al Franken, so we come to that sentence bearing another burden of credulity: that Al Franken is a rich source of wit and ridicule. As for decorum breaches... this is a different sort of mental obstacle for me. Under what circumstance is it good for an individual member of a legislative body to make himself an exception to the rules of decorum? Who does he think he is? He's not the star of a movie satirizing government. He's one of a group of equals who have taken on the public service of making laws.

... Little has changed since Mark Twain offered this assessment: “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

If Al Franken is such a wit, why are you quoting Mark Twain? Answer, via Mark Twain: Al Franken is an idiot.

Hmmm... would it breach decorum for me to say that Al Franken is a big, fat idiot?

... Absent any structural change, what the Senate badly needs is a jolt of humor, a clown to shame fellow members of the circus. More ridicule, more mirth under the spotlight to fight a mildewed sense of entitlement, could have the ironic effect of forcing senators to act like adults.

A clown to shame.... oh, yeah! You know the rich comic tradition of The Shaming Clown.

"Rand Paul can't play 'Tom Sawyer' on the campaign trail? Rush says no!"

There's a headline I completely misinterpreted. I imagined Rush Limbaugh had made some argument that Rand Paul can't behave like the Mark Twain character. Was Paul attempting to pass himself off as a good-hearted, mischievous boy? But no, "Rush" is the rock band Rush, and "Tom Sawyer" is one of their songs. Paul had been blasting the song at rallies and the band — which is Canadian, by the way — has objected, citing copyright law. The song, despite copyright law, is embedded at the link. Here are the lyrics. Sample:

Today's Tom Sawyer
He gets high on you
And the space he invades
He gets by on you

No his mind is not for rent
To any god or government
Always hopeful, yet discontent
He knows changes aren't permanent
But change is

Hmmph. Silly song. God rents? God owns.

What did Mark Twain write...

... that he insisted we wait 100 years after his death to read?

J.D. Salinger has died.

Link.

ADDED: "He was 91"... so a long detailed obituary was ready to go. You can read it at that link. Who here was not entranced by "Catcher in the Rye" at some point in their lives?

“Catcher” was published in 1951, and its very first sentence, distantly echoing Mark Twain, struck a brash new note in American literature: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”...

With its cynical, slangy vernacular voice (Holden’s two favorite expressions are “phony” and “goddam”), its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve in cold war America and quickly attained cult status, especially among the young. Reading “Catcher” used to be an essential rite of passage, almost as important as getting your learner’s permit.

And yes, yes, there are all those murderers who have that book in their back pocket. So don't get too entranced by it. Move on, read other things. But don't be a goddam phony.

MORE: A big question is, now that he's dead: Are there unpublished manuscripts that we'll get to see? Will we learn more about his retreat from the world?

In 1953 Mr. Salinger, who had been living on East 57th Street in Manhattan, fled the literary world altogether and moved to a 90-acre compound on a wooded hillside in Cornish, N.H. He seemed to be fulfilling Holden’s desire to build himself “a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life,” away from “any goddam stupid conversation with anybody.”

Or do we you really want to hear about it anymore, now that all these years have passed,  years of a hermit life almost as long as my whole life? (And I'm pretty old.)

Well, there will be no more goddam stupid conversation with anybody anymore for him, but I've got to say I hope he held up some kind of one-sided end of a conversation with us for the past quarter century and we'll get some more readings.

But was he writing? The question obsessed Salingerologists, and in the absence of any real evidence, theories multiplied. He hadn’t written a word for years. Or like the character in Stephen King’s novel “The Shining,” he wrote the same sentence over and over again. Or like Gogol at the end of his life, he wrote prolifically but then burned it all up. Ms. Maynard said she believed there were at least two novels locked away in a safe, although she had never seen them. Quote TK from Salinger’s agent about surviving manuscripts, if any, and plans for them.

Ha ha. That last sentence is now edited out of the NYT obit at the link. Come on, TK!

Mr. Salinger was controlling and sexually manipulative, [Joyce] Maynard wrote, and a health nut obsessed with homeopathic medicine and with his diet (frozen peas for breakfast, undercooked lamb burger for diner). [Margaret] Salinger said that her father was pathologically self-centered and abusive toward her mother, and to the homeopathy and food fads she added a long list of other exotic enthusiasms: Zen Buddhism, Vedanta Hinduism, Christian Science, Scientology and acupuncture. Mr. Salinger drank his own urine, she wrote, and sat for hours in an orgone box.

Ugh! Maybe I don't want to read anything more.