One word divides literary circles

MARK Twain’s classic novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been filtered through the political correctness sieve to remove any racial slurs, prompting debate among Wagga’s literary elite.US company NewSouth Books owns the rights to the novel and has removed all 219 uses of the word “nigger” and replaced it with “slave”.The move has seen Wagga writers and bookshop owners enter the polarising debate.“I think you should keep it as it is,” says BT Used Books owner Tony Curtis, who contends the original text should be preserved.“You don’t print it today, but you don’t go and change everything ever printed in the past,” he said.Mr Curtis has been joined by president of Wagga Wagga Writers Writers, David Gilby, who said censorship will be influenced by personal opinion.“Second-guessing what people might be insulted by is foolish and inevitably doomed,” he said.“It indicates an anxiety about identity ... and I also think it’s a particularly American anxiety.”Another Wagga bookshop owner was cautious on the issue and wished to remain anonymous due to the emotions the topic can evoke.“I don’t want to let my personal feelings influence what we buy for the shop ... but I’m not going to promote (hateful literature),” he said.Adventures of Huckleberry Finn joins a long list of classic literature cleaned up for today’s readers, including many Enid Blyton novels.New Noddy stories have done away with “gollywogs” while Dame Slap from the Faraway Tree series has been renamed Dame Snap.