A novelist arguing for the exclusion of Huck Finn from high school reading lists:
My published comment:
On this logic, I suppose we should not read The Merchant of Venice or Oliver Twist (to avoid offending sensitive Jewish children) and should also exclude The Scarlet Letter and Madame Bovary (female sensitivity) and exclude Dead Souls (sensitive entrpreneurs and speculators). And why shouldn't we find cause to exclude even that sainted novel, To Kill a Mockingbird? First, it is thoroughly mediocre literature. Second, extremely tedious. Third, with respect to our theme of social offense, Ms. Lee renders up quite a few insulting caricatures which some might identify as directed at them and lacking in accuracy. With a little interpretive creativity offense can be found in any work of literature.
If Huckleberry Finn is to be removed from the high school curriculum, it ought not to be done so for the purpose of protecting the students from any view of a world before political correctness. And it ought to be replaced by a work of equal or greater aesthetic and intellectual power--not Mockingbird, not True Diary--try Emerson, Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Melville, James, Faulkner, Stevens, Frost.
No comments:
Post a Comment