Effort to sanitize Twain is pure insanity; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/7/11

Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Effort to sanitize Twain is pure insanity:

"Twain once described "Huckleberry Finn" as "a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat."

It holds a mirror to our times just as it did Twain's. Like the novel's original audience, we're a society that has subconsciously internalized racist assumptions and values, whether we acknowledge it or not.

"Huckleberry Finn" is a book about a racist who tried to grow up in the American wilderness. The best many of us can ever hope to be is as good as Huck. What's the point of trying to blunt such a two-edged sword?"