Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Re “Publisher Tinkers With Twain” (news article, Jan. 5):

To replace the 219 iterations of an offensive “racial appellative” may reduce the distress level of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” but it doesn’t go far enough. Readers will still find instances of murder, theft, chattel slavery, fraud, child abuse, drunkenness and other violations of civil norms.

For further reading in this area, Mark Twain recommended “an unexpurgated Bible.”

Justin Kaplan
Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 5, 2011

The writer is the author of “Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain,” awarded the Pulitzer Prize in biography.

To the Editor:

Efforts to “correct” the use of the word “nigger” in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” have a long and sorry history. For more than a century, tone-deaf publishers have been replacing it with “Negro,” “black,” “colored” and even “folk.”

“Slave” is perhaps the worst alternative, since by no stretch of the imagination are the two words synonyms. Indeed, one of the finest plot twists of the book has Jim learning that for most of his adventures with Huck he was in fact legally free.

Jonathan Gill
Amsterdam, Jan. 5, 2011

The writer is a humanities professor at Amsterdam University College.