If Michiko Kakutani's column in today's New York Times is not the best read and most emailed piece in the paper, then not enough people are paying attention. Her take on the announcement that a new edition of Huckleberry Finn is being released with more than 200 uses of the 'n' word from the original text--yes, it is "nigger," and I will use it here just this once--being summarily changed to "slave" is exquisitely reasoned and beautifully supported with historical parallels. (There is the absurdity, for instance, of a British theater group changing the title of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 2002 to The Bellringer of Notre Dame for a new production of the play.) The editor of the new Huckleberry Finn edition, Alan Gribben, is a professor of English at Auburn University in Alabama. His explanation for changing the word in each usage--and thus bowdlerizing what we can all agree is one of the most consequential works of fiction in the American literary canon--is to make the book more appealing to high school and college teachers who might otherwise excise it from their curricula. It is, he argues, "a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol," and thus, with one simple stroke of a search-and-replace key, voila, Mark Twain is rendered suitable for modern eyes to read without fear of being unduly bruised by the sunlight. Instead of explaining to students that the reprehensible word has a history that goes back four hundred years, and that the slur as used in the novel was totally in character for the time and the place and the people being profiled, teachers using this sanitized text are now free to ignore unpleasantness altogether. Let's hope they will be few and far between. If leery instructors need a little help along these lines--it is called teaching, after all--they should take a look at The 'N' Word, (Houghton Mifflin, 2007) by Washington Post cultural columnist Jabari Asim. We don't accomplish a whole lot by denying the past. And we certainly don't introduce literature to young readers by grooming it to suit our delicate sensibilities. Kudos to Ms. Kakutani for making the point so eloquently. Meanwhile, Mr. Gribben's defense of the action (which also changes "injun" to "Indian")--and that of his publisher, NewSouth Books--can be read at this link.

From one alma mater to another (see yesterday's post about Drew U. and one of my previous posts about Syracuse to decode that phrase)...Syracuse University's Bird Library released this week a slide-show of neat documents and objects in its Special Collections Research Center.  A corresponding article previews a bold new video project, spouts impressive library stats, and offers a list of Bird's top five "Coolest Pieces": No. 1 -- The cameras and equipment of famed photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White. No. 2 -- Malcolm X's letter from Mecca to Alex Haley, co-author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. No. 3 -- Miklós Rózsa's Academy Award for his Ben-Hur musical score. No. 4 -- Edison cylinders in the Belfer Audio Archives, which include some of the earliest music recordings. No. 5 -- The papers and publications of Hugo Gernsback, the "father of science fiction."

As some of you may remember, William Scott, a Drew University student, was accused of stealing rare Methodist and presidential letters from the United Methodist Archives Center in March of last year. Yesterday, he pleaded guilty in a United States District Court, and sentencing will occur on April 15. 

Scott was working part-time in the archives, when he was tempted to bring some of the treasures back to his dorm room, and from there, sell them to book dealers here and abroad. My original post on this case expressed utter shock, because of the crime, of course, but also because Drew is my graduate alma mater, and I worked in the library and university archives there for several years. 

When I was on campus again last month, I did ask about the state of the case and was told that things were still in the works, and no news was being shared. I learned that all but one stolen document had been recovered, and the press release issued today states that that document is the second page of a Charles Wesley letter from 1755 (they do have a scan, seen here at left).

The silver lining in this story is that Drew has implemented security changes that will hopefully ensure no further incidents. But that doesn't mean restricting access to originals -- Dr. Andrew Scrimgeour, dean of the library, makes a point worth sharing, "...The care of special material is an essential trust, but it should not preclude the singular delight that only comes in working with the special volume--seeing its size, feeling its heft, turning the pages, smelling its aroma, inspecting the watermarks, reveling in the binding, illustrations, and illumination, and enjoying the perfection of ink on paper. That experience should remain the hallmark of special collections of Drew University." 

So reported the New York Times today, the London-based auction house that bills itself as the leading auctioneer of books and manuscripts is in limbo. From the short article:

Rupert Powell, the company's deputy chairman, said in an interview that the branch was not closing. "We're just having a strategic review about what we decide to do," he said, adding, "I can't really give you any more clues." [Read More]

No upcoming sales are listed on Bloomsbury's online calendar.

If you think you knew all you needed to know about Virginia Woolf, think again. I've just read an excellent article, "Dancing on Hot Bricks: Virginia Woolf in 1941" by Maureen E. Mulvihill. A scholar and writer in New York City, Dr. Mulvihill--who we've brought to your attention before with her treatment of the Paula Peyraud collection and a recent Jane Austen exhibit--was this time commissioned by Rapportage magazine to cover the last few months in Woolf's life. Her essay was then included in a traveling exhibit of Carl Kohler's literary portraits (now at the University of Cork, Boole Library, Ireland). The photo below here shows Mulvihill's essay in the University of Chicago installation. By focusing on the rich details of Woolf's last months, Mulvihill offers a magnified look at the desperate writer in her last days.

Kohler's portrait of Woolf, used in Mulvihill's paper, is seen here at right. The Kohler collection contains fifty portraits of writers--Grass, Joyce, Kafka, and Miller among them--that has traveled from Sweden to New York City, to Brooklyn, Washington, Canada, Chicago, and now Ireland. To see more images from the exhibit, and to read Mulvihill's essay, visit the ILAB website, which has a page devoted to it. 

Like last year, I'll highlight a few of the notable anniversaries coming up in 2011:

50 years ago (1961):

• Jasper Fforde born, 11 January.
• Chuck Palahniuk born, 21 February.
• Dashiell Hammett dies, 10 January.
• Ernest Hemingway dies, 2 July.
• James Thurber dies, 2 November.
• Sheila Burnford's The Incredible Journey published.
• Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach published.
• Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land published.
• Joseph Heller's Catch-22 published.
• Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy published.
• Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins wins the Newbery Medal.
• Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

I have decided to start the new year off with a few books that came to my attention a bit too late to make my holiday roundups, but which are eminently worthy of notice all the same. Think of each one as a little present for yourself; you won't be disappointed.

The Horse: From Cave Paintings to Modern Art, by Jean-Louis Gourand, Michel Woronoff, Henri-Paul Franefort, and others; Abbeville Press, 400 pages, with 328 full-color illustrations, boxed, $150. So you didn't get a pony for Christmas, too bad, but you can still treat yourself to what is easily the most magnificent art book devoted to the horse that I have ever seen, and the best part is you don't have to feed it or clean out its stall. Arguably the most beautiful animal in nature, the horse has inspired creative expression for many centuries, with magnificent examples in a multitude of media to be found in the prehistoric caves of Lascaux, the sands of Mesopotamia, and depicted over the generations by cultures as varied as Babylonian, Scythian, Chinese, Greek, and Roman. First published in France in 2008, this remarkable book, newly translated and issued in a lovely boxed edition, pays homage to the horse in all its glory, with more than 300 color illustrations and thirteen learned essays to make the case. The horse, John Louis Gourand writes, is "undoubtedly the most frequently represented living being in art after man himself, from the very earliest of times." Abbeville Press lives up to its well-earned reputation for producing art books in the grand tradition; the illustrations are superbly chosen, and vividly reproduced. George Washington's America: A Biography Through Maps, by Barnet Schecter; Walker, 304 pages, $67.50.

Known most famously, of course, as hero of the Revolution and first President of the United States, George Washington also worked as a surveyor early in his life, and had a lifelong relationship with maps. At his death, many of the charts he had owned and used were bound into an atlas that eventually made its way to the Map Collection of Sterling Library at Yale University, a corpus that provides the framework for this most interesting examination. In addition to the maps he purchased, Washington drew a number of his own that have survived. "These visual images," historian Robert Schecter writes, "place us at the scene of his youthful ambition and his later battles--in the landscapes and on the waterways that were the theater of war in Britain's North American colonies, and that sparked the imagination and desires of the preeminent founder of the United States." Once independence was secured, the maps helped shape Washington's "vision of America as 'a rising empire in the New World.'" The Encyclopedia of New York City: Second Edition, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson; Yale University Press, 1,561 pages, $65.

First published in 1995, this wonderful, one-volume encyclopedia about the city that never sleeps was one of the most successful books in the long history of the Yale University Press, prompting the preparation of this completely updated effort. The World Trade Center no longer anchors the Manhattan skyline, to cite just one major change, and Bernie Madoff was not a household name back then. The E-Z pass hadn't been invented yet either, and the New York Giants hadn't shocked the New England Patriots in the 2008 Super Bowl. These are just a few of the 800 entries to be added to the mix, bringing the total to 5,000. Each is written by an acknowledged authority, be it in sports, entertainment, finance, architecture, or art, and each is a delightful little essay in its own right about every manner of New York person, place, institution, and curiosity, spanning pre-history to the present, and covering all five boroughs.This is one of my very favorite reference books, all spiffed up, and relevant as ever.

J.D. Salinger was born on this day in 1919. Last year he celebrated his very last birthday; he died on the 27th of the month.