Showing posts tagged mark twain

Illustrating Huck

Images from the original ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain.

Thank you to Aja for sharing this with the class via our presentations. Though we’ve read two other books since Huck Finn, what we learned from Twain should still be fresh in our minds for our final. This is a great video illustrating the debate over the “N-word” within the novel.

In Mark Twain’s house, there is a Lego Twain. via badluckcrow: View high resolution

In Mark Twain’s house, there is a Lego Twain. via badluckcrow:

(Source: darkarfs)

(Reblogged from tatteredcover)

Mark Twain tonight w/ Hal Holbrook — This is clip 1 of 10. Thanks for sharing, Matt.

"Huck Finn-- a masterpiece or an insult?"

This is an article from 2003 about racism and Huck Finn. The people whom is article is about argue that the use of the “n-word” in Twain’s classic make it inappropriate for a high school classroom. Since many of us came to the conclusion that the book should be left as is and also in the curriculum during our first conversation in class, I am curious how we might react to this article. Do we think that the individuals that are featured in this article have a point? What of the other side of this debate, that no matter what, the word is offensive?

"Hipster Huck Finn" Solves Censorship Debate

Quoted from the article, which is about the Huckleberry Finn: Hipster Edition, which can be found in .pdf version here.

​Richard Grayson, a Brooklyn writer and editor, has gone above and beyond angry or satirical tweets in response to Publishers Weekly’s announcement that they would release version of Huckleberry Finn(and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) without the word “nigger.” He’s released a whole new version of the book, entitled The Hipster Huckleberry Finn, which replaces every instance of the offending word with “hipster.” Seriously.

from Mark Twain’s essay “English as She is Taught”

The writing below is copied from a book of Twain’s non-fiction essays, specifically an amusing one titled “English as she is taught”, which illuminates the mistakes of young children as they learn. I especially find this funny because there are websites today devoted to these sort of things, where teachers post “funny” answers given to them by students. For example, “Biography: Walt Whitman”<— this one is the best.

But I digress. Here is Mark Twain, with the help of some young students:

Under the head of ‘Grammar’ the little scholars furnish the following information:

  • Gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex.
  • A verb is something to eat.
  • Adverbs should always be used as adjectives and adjectives as adverbs.
  • Every sentence and the name of God must begin with a caterpillar.

(…and finally)

  • When they are going to say some prose or poetry before they say the prose or poetry they must put a semi-colon just after the introduction of the prose or poetry.

The Concord Library Files: The Banning of Huck Finn in 1885

NYTimes: Does one word change Huckleberry Finn?

This NY times article from January takes the opinions of a variety of scholars and lines them up to discuss the controversy that Alan Gribben’s version of Huck Finn started earlier this year.

NPR: Publishter Edits Twain Classics To Remove Slurs

This was news at the end of last/beginning of this year. A publishing house edited Twain’s fiction to remove its racial epithets, and controversy ensued. This NPR interview with the editor of the volume that started the controversy is insightful and worth a listen.