Lightning and the lightning bug.

 

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
- Mark Twain, Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888; ref. twainquotes.com. 

Twain is no longer here to speak for himself, except through his work; as he's provided words for me to use, I'll try to say something on his behalf (amazing effrontery, but one can only try...)

We just passed the twenty-fifth observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. January 2011 also saw a great deal of media coverage over a sanitized version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from NewSouth Books, which substitutes the word "slave" for the "N-word." We have a black President. "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet..."

As a narrator who has recorded two of Twain's works so far, I agree with the legion of literary critics who've praised his "ear," that is, his scrupulous attention to rendering text, especially dialogue. He gets his jokes right, his timing right, and also his moving emotional passages. This was no hothouse flower of a literary gentleman, but the most popular lecturer of his day, the forerunner of our stand-up comics. He knew audience response first hand, and considered posterity, delaying publication of his unabridged Autobiography until 100 years after his death. Through most of his career, Twain revised and rewrote diligently, and was very far from letting a key word slip in through negligence. (That Autobiography is different, as it was virtually a stream-of-consciousness meandering monologue dictated to a secretary, late in life, not the careful composition of earlier work. By then, Twain perhaps was overly impressed with his own genius.)

 

Any book that's actually read is more than the author's contribution; the reader's response is the rest of the phenomenon, and to the extent that a story remains memorable and popular, it influences its culture. Consider the cultural competition: by now, the silent film "Birth of a Nation" is in itself a dead letter, but as the greatest hit of the silent movie era, expressed very directly the view that Reconstruction was a terrible error, "miscegenation" a fate worse than death, and black people a lower form of life. Still vibrant, and more insidious in its racism, "Gone With the Wind," romanticized the plantation system, and showed black people as subservient (more or less capable, but always dependent) while turning a blind eye to the lash, the noose, and the "bright" slaves that showed the result of white men sexually exploiting black women. Then again, I don't think the "N-word" comes up in it very often.

 

So how does that word function now? In the mouth of a white person, it's awkward at best, a vile insult at worst, or a way for a racist to openly proclaim. Used between blacks, it can operate almost like a lodge recognition sign; we're part of the same group, candid, and unified. Attempts to stretch it are problematic. I recall the scene in the movie "Bulworth," when Halle Berry's character tries to use it to show how righteous Warren Beatty's unhinged senator character has become; or in Bob Fosse's "Lenny," when Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce does an extended ethnic recognition/insult routine, & says sotto voce to a black nightclub patron, "You were almost ready to punch me out, weren't you?" But the Lenny Bruce theory of weakening hate words by common use (as shown in that scene) doesn't work. There's still too much power in them.

 

Which brings me back to Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the "N-word." His use of that word throughout that novel demonstrated the pervasive, almost unquestioned and unquestionable racism of that time and place (Missouri, circa 1840). Questioning that racism is why the abolitionists were so reviled, North and South. Very few people then could have been unaware that slavery was a fact of life in the North (leaving aside the Northwest Territory) until the early nineteenth century. Slavery was integral to the economic growth of America as long as land was the predominant source of value. The Industrial Revolution started to change that. (For Twain's take on that, we could look at A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.) But history, at least as a story, is malleable, almost quicksilver, influenced not only by the victors of war, but the winners of peace. After the "election" of Rutherford B. Hayes as President, Reconstruction ended, white supremacy returned to the South, and segregationist southern legislators enjoyed disproportionate power in Congress through seniority, the "yellow dog" Democratic voting tradition, and white northern indifference to the plight of black people.

 

The corruption of the administration of Twain's friend U.S. Grant helped to undermine Reconstruction. This helped justify southern "Redemption," the racist terrorism and bullying that would go on for decades in America. It's still unusual to see the words "treason," or "traitors" applied by American historians to Confederates. Amazingly, some contemporary apologists claim Confederates were actually defending the Constitution by fighting for States' Rights.

 

To me, taking the "N-word" out of Huck Finn is lying about the history of America, & the pervasive racism that existed, persisted, & persists to this day, nationwide. "Black codes" & discrimination in the North followed the legal end of slavery there, and set the pattern for segregation & Jim Crow laws in the South. Additionally, post-Civil War vagrancy laws, chain gangs, & other prison labor extended de facto slavery for many southern blacks until the Civil Rights era, with the threat of lynching & race riots ever present (see "Slavery by Another Name," by Douglas A. Blackmon.) Only the Civil Rights movement, with Dr. King as its foremost leader, started to bring equal citizenship to black Americans.

 

Twain avoided combat in the American Civil War. How could he fight for the Union, against childhood friends who probably fought for the Confederacy? How could he fight to support a society's commitment to a system based on legalized kidnapping, murder, assault, extortion, rape, & racism, if he fought for the South? When he went West with his brother, it was to escape that war & find opportunity. Racism came with him, as he reacted to Native Americans with hatred and disgust. Confronting racism came as his imagination developed, finding in the shadows of the sunny boyhood drawn in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the great comic, dramatic & moral possibilities realized in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

 

The difference between lightning & the lightning bug? Power; like guns, strong language wounds or not, depending on where it's aimed. If lightning is aimed, who's aiming?