[Twoller]

The beeb has something to say about this assault on American English literature.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12126700

From that link:

....

"The book is an anti-racist book and to change the language changes the power of the book," said Cindy Lovell, executive director of The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri.

"He wrote to make us squirm and to poke us with a sharp stick. That was the purpose," she told Reuters news agency.

The novel has often been criticised for its language and characterisations and it is reported to be the fourth most banned book in US schools.

The "N-word" appears 219 times in the story.

....

"Trying to erase the word from our culture is profoundly, profoundly wrong," said Randall Kennedy, a Harvard Law School professor.

Dr Sarah Churchwell, a lecturer on American literature, told the BBC that it made a mockery of the story.

"It's about a boy growing up a racist in a racist society who learns to reject that racism, and it makes no sense if the book isn't racist," she told BBC World Service's Newshour programme. "You can't make the history of racism in America go away."

....

Twain himself was very particular about his words.

Mark Twain did not take kindly to editing He is quoted as saying that "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter".

And when a printer made punctuation changes to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain wrote later that he had "given orders for the typesetter to be shot without giving him time to pray".

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