To commemorate Banned Books Week 2011, the present board of the Charlton (MA) Public Library voted to override an earlier board and shelve a particular version of Eve’s Diary by Mark Twain. The seductive line drawings were apparently too much for one library board member to cope with back in 1906. As usual, Twain gets the last laugh.
But the censors are still out in force: since 1982, some 11,000 books have been challenged.
“But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn’t anger me.”
— Samuel L. Clemens, letter to Mrs. F. G. Whitmore, February 7, 1907
You’ve seen the story by now: a book publisher is bringing out a sanitized version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nigger Jim will be Slave Jim; Injun Joe will be Indian Joe. I’ll be surprised if they’ve left Huck’s (and Twain’s) greatest line alone rather than change it to, “All right, then, I’ll go to heck.”