Infinitely Retarded: Alan Gribben Pulls an Aunt Polly on Huck Finn, and Laughs About It

I'm crying, really, I am.

Well in case you didn't know already, there's a douche bag who goes by the name of Alan Griben, and he, along with the help of New South Books in Alabama are working together to revise Mr. Mark Twain's novel Advenutres of Huckleberry Finn, into a piece of politically correct fuff that tries not to reveal the ugliness of the word 'nigger' through narrative; instead it tries to eradicate the word altogether, in an attempt to make the book more readable and less offensive. Furthermore, Injun Joe has been changed to Indian Joe, and 'half-breed' has been changed to 'half blood.'

Now I happen to have gotten an advanced copy, and I must say these fellows have gone perhaps a tad overboard with their revisions. Now, a realistic novel on the times with its ignorance and ugliness seen through the eyes of an innocent child (Huck Finn) is now nothing more than a politically correct piece that adheres to the original story loosely, if at all, and completely misses the boat, and the point.

Observe:

CHAPTER EIGHT

So there we was, drifting down the Los Angeles River on our plastic raft, just me and Mexican American Eduardo. It was easy drifting there, we was already accustomed to watching the river for snags and broken glass, and there warnt nobody around to really bother us. Nobody that warnt already dead. It was easy to steer around them floating drowned in the river. There were many of them, and were so commonplace that after awhile seeing them didn't harm me none.

It was easy drifting like I said, even though Mexican American Eduardo had told my Anglo-Saxon ears last night that he warnt no American and he had runned away. I asked him if he was still a Mexican and he said yes, but he warnt no American, he was something different. Some kind of aleeyun. He said they wanted him cause he took the jobs of Anglo-Saxon Americans and that that warnt right. I didn't know much about it, but I never sawed him take no jobs from nobody I knowed. Not Aunt Polly, not nobody. They warnt partial to real work. Still we sat talking a bit and Mexican American Eduardo was a pretty good guy for an illegal alleyun. Best I met anway. After a piece I got to feeling hot so I slipped off the raft and out into the water. It was shallow and smelled all kinds of awful, but it was nice. It was nice but too shallow in some parts where it hardly came up to the ankle. Well we went on like that for hours, talking a bit and taking dips, living cool and free and easy. It was the way I liked livin'. It was nothing like the stiff clothes and even stiffer rules of life with Aunt Polly. The warnt any clothes to change into, just the same rags and happiness and the day before. And rules? Why there warnt no rules.

By and by it started to get dark. We steered the raft to the left side of the river under a bridge. Cars drove noisily overhead and we pulled the raft up out of the water and took shelter under the bridge. Eduardo got the pan and the tin can, and matches and all the things we need to start a good fire. I fetched a meal and catched a rat down the river apiece. But it warnt animal cruelty. The animal was already dying, and in a way I was putting it out of its misery, because I knowed it was a sin to kill any animal, and know that no one should ever do it ever. . . ever. It was the sort of thing intellyctuals would say, and Pap hated intellyctuals, and if Pap hated em, there must be something to em. So like I said, I killed that there rat humanely and was mighty sorry after I killed him, but I knew I was doing him a favor and ending his pain. And I got a good rat too. It still got its tail and everything. Eduardo got his knife and cleaned it and fried it and we ate it.

By then we was pretty well stuffed and the sky grew dark and up over yonder the lights of the city started twinkling. After the meal we were both powerfully lazy and comfortable, so we just layed there and let the raft do all the work. I couldn't sleep, only think and smoke. I thought of Pap and how I runned out on him. How I made it look like I was kidnapped and how Tom Sawyer would be proud for how well I done it all. It was a real adventure and I done it just like in all the books, like Tom Sawyer said it was supposed to be done. I left no tracks, other than those I wanted to be found, and after they couldn't find the kidnapper I knowed they'd come looking down on the river. Lots of lost kids ended up in the river. Most of em drowned.

I had many days head start.

Before long I was tired, and before I knowed it I was asleep. When I waked up I didn't know where I was. I reckon I must have been asleep for a piece. It was awful dark and quiet. The raft drafted along and I could hear nothing but Eduardo snoring. I couldn't see much. There seemed to be no town nearby, there were no lights that could be seen. Then after a piece I saw smoke. And then the lights of a new town. The town grew nearer and nearer and the cemented banks began sloping up toward chain link fences, some fifteen feet high in places. The town came by and there were lights and factories. Then McDonalds' and Taco Bell's. Before I knowed it lights came through the fences and out onto the river. Big beams of light. I roused up and looked along the parts of the fences and along the bridge. There were cars, some parked and some roaming up and down the streets. There were people there and police looking down into the river.

I knowed what was up. We was in the Glendale Narrows part of the river. I knowed cause it was the only part of the river without a cement bottom. A tree growed up through the ground in the shallow river. The water ran past rocks and brush and I found us a way there in the brush and out of sight. "HUCK?" I was scared, but I didn't wake Eduardo, afeared that he'd holler and give us up so I stayed shut. They looked along the river apiece, and before long one of the lights came right to where we were amongst the brush! It stayed there and I thought to muffle Eduardo's snoring. My heart nearly beated out of my chest and wouldn't stop. I held my breath knowing they couldn't possibly hear, but still I reckoned it best to keep mum.

"HUCK?" They was talking out of contraption that made their voices louder than usual.

I didn't want to go back, and I was beginning to like Eduardo, even though I knowed it was wrong. I couldn't help it.

"HUCK?"

By and by they moved on back up the river, and I stayed still long after I could hardly stand it. After a piece I shoved off, and Eduardo woked from his snooze, mighty comfortable. He smiled at me before long and we got to talking.

"Why they calling you alleyun, Eduardo?"

"I don't quite know Huck." Eduardo said. "Neenyo, its because I'm not like them, like an alleyun. As far as I can tell."

"Different how?" I asked. "You like food don't you?"

"Yes."

"You scream when pricked, just like everyone else right?

"Yes, Huck."

"Well then I just don't see no logic in it." I didn't.

If it warnt proper to like alleyuns than so be it. If it meant going to the other place, than fine, it aint no mind to me. I knowed it was a place for me and Tom. Aunt Polly said so, on account of us being such bad boys, and I aint too particular about no place where folks like Aunt Polly was accepted. So it was the other place for me, and I was quite partial to that. I would like Eduardo, even though I knowed it wrong. . .

This current 'revision' not only destroys art, but also fundamentally mistakes is bastardization of Huck Finn as anything other than that; pure sickening bastardization. Firstly, I am in no way condoning the word, but in the case of Huck Finn, far too many people have focused on the word itself and not WHY it was used. For one, it was the time after all in which it was written, and one cannot claim that Mark Twain is a racist. This book in no way promotes racism, in fact it questions and reveals it ugliness. Tis why, my dear lads, the story is written from Huck's point of view. Huck lives in a time of racial tension and ignorance, and Huck sees and hears it all and question it, as his innocence and youthful purity finds faults and utter bullshit in it all.

Even Aunt Polly, who's said to be respectable and takes Huck in to be 'civilized' constantly berates him with her own prejudices and beliefs, cementing the theme that perhaps all these grown ups know "nothing about nothing."

I mean Huck Finn spends all his time on a raft with a run away slave named Jim. He knows its wrong to help him, society says so, but he does anyway. Initially its just to get away from Aunt Polly and the structured life she represents, but along the way Huck begins to love Jim, and condemns himself willing to Hell for saving him, of course because in the eyes of society saving a run away slave and breaking him out of captivity is growns for eternal fire and brimstone.

Mark Twain even writes Jim to be a good man, a loving man. He doesn't degrade him no break him down. He reveals the true beauty of the man, that which exists beneath the color of his skin and in doing so, reveals the utter bullshit of racism. Its a story of freedom, and how everyone deserves it. How is this racist? But then again I suppose you cock suckers never even read the book.

Even Twain states: "a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience." He describes the book as "a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat."

To change the word, to eliminate these negative connotations is to destroy that element in the story, and to ignore all the hatred, bloodshed, and ignorance that made the word so negative in the first place. One may as well paint censor bars over the genitals of angels in the Sistine Chapel, or fashion a pair of Levis over the statue of David because certain parts were offensive to onlookers. When you dabble in art, and mix and match, I get inklings that you're a fucking Nazi, for no one has the right to change art, more or less and man's own fucking words.

And it is for this reason alone that iR declares the revision of Huck Finn to be shamelessly retarded.