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Re: Fwd: Re: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
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Jansey,
Your anecdote is similar to many and many a situation I've experienced in
Detroit. In situations that were sometimes touching, sometimes edgy,
sometimes friendly. And, let me add, when I was a kid Injun Joe was
terrifying to me, but partly because of an old movie, made in the 1930s, of
Tom Sawyer, which was really pretty good, but included a fearful scene in
which Joe met his end, not by mere starvation, taking place "off stage" as
it did in the book, but by plunging down an abyss somewhere in the cave. I
saw this on TV maybe forty years ago but it left a vivid memory that I can
easily bring to mind today.
Andrew
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 7:54 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
> Dear List,
>
> Recently a ten year-old "street-boy" ( "menino de rua" ) asked me if he
> could look after my " little brown car".
> I corrected him: "But my car isn´t brown, it is black" and he stared
> wide-eyed at me: " But you shouldn´t say that!".
> He could easily have scratched or kicked my "black car", but he might
still
> refer to it as "brown colored", as he himself was, just like any
grandchild
> of mine.
> In Brazil terms of endearment such as "minha nega" or " meu nego" are
still
> in use but I suppose they shall soon be abolished by the imposition of
> artificial politically-correct verbal standards that only apply to
externals
> while what Freud called " the narcisism of small differences" remains as
> active as ever in the dispute for power anywhere in the world.
> I didn´t read Huckleberry Finn and I loved Tom Sawyer that I read while
> still a young girl easily frightened by a very bad "Injun Joe" ( was he
> called like that?)
> Jansy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 12:05 AM
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
>
>
> > I still doubt whether VN voiced an opinion on Huckleberry Finn and think
> > we should not presume that he disapproved of it until we have evidence.
> > Vera's disapproval of Tom Sawyer is hardly VN's of HF.
> >
> > As for the artistic and moral merits of Huckleberry Finn itself, we can
> > judge and value for ourselves regardless of whatever VN's attitude may
> > have been.
> >
> > I would suggest, like many, that the first two thirds are a comic and
> > moral masterpiece and the last third an ethical and artistic disaster. I
> > came to this conclusion on my own, but was very interested to see Wayne
> > C. Booth's The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (1989) coming to
> > rather similar conclusions, against Booth's own expectations. Booth
> > dedicates his whole book to a black colleague who in the 1960s had
> > objected to HF, saying he would not be able to teach it because of its
> > racism. Booth, who is one of literary criticism's great pluralists,
> > thought this an absurd response at the time, when his reaction was akin
> > to Thomas Szasz's. But in the course of writing The Company We Keep he
> > realized that in fact the book does have two contradictory attitudes to
> > Jim, in its earlier and later movements: the first positive and
> > sensitive, despite Huck's supposition that he is deeply wrong in wanting
> > to help a "nigger" to freedom, the second crassly and insensitively
> > treating Jim as simply the appropriate object of demeaning "darkie"
> > jokes. I would love HF to have been only the first two thirds of the
> > novel: then it would be a triumph. Alas, it is flawed and, while
> > unequivocally anti-slavery, quite stolidly racist.
> >
> > Brian Boyd
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
> > Behalf Of Donald B. Johnson
> > Sent: Wednesday, 9 March 2005 11:57 a.m.
> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> > Subject: Fwd: Re: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Forwarded message from STADLEN@aol.com -----
> > Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 15:45:32 EST
> > From: STADLEN@aol.com
> > Reply-To: STADLEN@aol.com
> > Subject: Re: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
> > To:
> >
> > In a message dated 08/03/2005 20:27:16 GMT Standard Time,
> > chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu (i.e. Andrew Brown) writes:
> >
> > > Huck Finn may well be a difficult book for non-American readers to
> > > cope with
> > >
> >
> > "Huckleberry Finn" is surely a morally complex work. It seems fatuously
> > anachronistic to object to it because it accurately reproduces the word
> > "nigger".
> > Also, there is surely an ironic distancing between author and narrator
> > in relation to many of the less than socially approved activities of the
> > latter and his friend Tom Sawyer. But my friend Thomas Szasz has told me
> > how moved he was as a boy reading the book in Budapest in Hungarian
> > translation, and again as a man in the United States in English, by its
> > showing how an "ignorant child"
> > can see through the evil of slavery when none of the adults around him
> > can.
> >
> > The occasion when Huck Finn risks, as he supposes, going to hell for not
> > turning his friend, the escaped slave Jim, in to the authorities is one
> > of the great existential moments in literature.
> >
> > If the Nabokovs disapproved of the book for DN, it would seem that they
> > were underestimating his sensibility.
> >
> > Anthony Stadlen
> >
> > ----- End forwarded message -----
> >
> > ----- End forwarded message -----
> >
> >
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
Your anecdote is similar to many and many a situation I've experienced in
Detroit. In situations that were sometimes touching, sometimes edgy,
sometimes friendly. And, let me add, when I was a kid Injun Joe was
terrifying to me, but partly because of an old movie, made in the 1930s, of
Tom Sawyer, which was really pretty good, but included a fearful scene in
which Joe met his end, not by mere starvation, taking place "off stage" as
it did in the book, but by plunging down an abyss somewhere in the cave. I
saw this on TV maybe forty years ago but it left a vivid memory that I can
easily bring to mind today.
Andrew
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 7:54 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
> Dear List,
>
> Recently a ten year-old "street-boy" ( "menino de rua" ) asked me if he
> could look after my " little brown car".
> I corrected him: "But my car isn´t brown, it is black" and he stared
> wide-eyed at me: " But you shouldn´t say that!".
> He could easily have scratched or kicked my "black car", but he might
still
> refer to it as "brown colored", as he himself was, just like any
grandchild
> of mine.
> In Brazil terms of endearment such as "minha nega" or " meu nego" are
still
> in use but I suppose they shall soon be abolished by the imposition of
> artificial politically-correct verbal standards that only apply to
externals
> while what Freud called " the narcisism of small differences" remains as
> active as ever in the dispute for power anywhere in the world.
> I didn´t read Huckleberry Finn and I loved Tom Sawyer that I read while
> still a young girl easily frightened by a very bad "Injun Joe" ( was he
> called like that?)
> Jansy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 12:05 AM
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
>
>
> > I still doubt whether VN voiced an opinion on Huckleberry Finn and think
> > we should not presume that he disapproved of it until we have evidence.
> > Vera's disapproval of Tom Sawyer is hardly VN's of HF.
> >
> > As for the artistic and moral merits of Huckleberry Finn itself, we can
> > judge and value for ourselves regardless of whatever VN's attitude may
> > have been.
> >
> > I would suggest, like many, that the first two thirds are a comic and
> > moral masterpiece and the last third an ethical and artistic disaster. I
> > came to this conclusion on my own, but was very interested to see Wayne
> > C. Booth's The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (1989) coming to
> > rather similar conclusions, against Booth's own expectations. Booth
> > dedicates his whole book to a black colleague who in the 1960s had
> > objected to HF, saying he would not be able to teach it because of its
> > racism. Booth, who is one of literary criticism's great pluralists,
> > thought this an absurd response at the time, when his reaction was akin
> > to Thomas Szasz's. But in the course of writing The Company We Keep he
> > realized that in fact the book does have two contradictory attitudes to
> > Jim, in its earlier and later movements: the first positive and
> > sensitive, despite Huck's supposition that he is deeply wrong in wanting
> > to help a "nigger" to freedom, the second crassly and insensitively
> > treating Jim as simply the appropriate object of demeaning "darkie"
> > jokes. I would love HF to have been only the first two thirds of the
> > novel: then it would be a triumph. Alas, it is flawed and, while
> > unequivocally anti-slavery, quite stolidly racist.
> >
> > Brian Boyd
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
> > Behalf Of Donald B. Johnson
> > Sent: Wednesday, 9 March 2005 11:57 a.m.
> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> > Subject: Fwd: Re: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Forwarded message from STADLEN@aol.com -----
> > Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 15:45:32 EST
> > From: STADLEN@aol.com
> > Reply-To: STADLEN@aol.com
> > Subject: Re: VN on Huckleberry Finn?
> > To:
> >
> > In a message dated 08/03/2005 20:27:16 GMT Standard Time,
> > chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu (i.e. Andrew Brown) writes:
> >
> > > Huck Finn may well be a difficult book for non-American readers to
> > > cope with
> > >
> >
> > "Huckleberry Finn" is surely a morally complex work. It seems fatuously
> > anachronistic to object to it because it accurately reproduces the word
> > "nigger".
> > Also, there is surely an ironic distancing between author and narrator
> > in relation to many of the less than socially approved activities of the
> > latter and his friend Tom Sawyer. But my friend Thomas Szasz has told me
> > how moved he was as a boy reading the book in Budapest in Hungarian
> > translation, and again as a man in the United States in English, by its
> > showing how an "ignorant child"
> > can see through the evil of slavery when none of the adults around him
> > can.
> >
> > The occasion when Huck Finn risks, as he supposes, going to hell for not
> > turning his friend, the escaped slave Jim, in to the authorities is one
> > of the great existential moments in literature.
> >
> > If the Nabokovs disapproved of the book for DN, it would seem that they
> > were underestimating his sensibility.
> >
> > Anthony Stadlen
> >
> > ----- End forwarded message -----
> >
> > ----- End forwarded message -----
> >
> >
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----