Posted: November 2, 2024

Editing Racist Language

Once again, serendipity gave me this month's topic. Not long after I put up last month's piece on cultural appropriation, The New York Times published an article on the controversy around plans to rewrite the works of Georgette Heyer. Ms. Heyer, who wrote from the 1920s to the 1970s, essentially created the modern Regency romance.

She's delightful to read in a lot of ways. I love her use of early 19th century language, in particular. But her Jewish characters are cruel stereotypes. Her estate has agreed to a new edition of her books with the anti-Semitism edited out. It's about time.

The Times article argued both sides of the question. On one hand, readers are generally smart enough to see that things were different in the past, so posthumous rewriting to fit more modern sensibilities is unfair to the author. On the other, the racist language of the past may be so offensive that some readers will be unable to read it at all.

In Ms. Heyers' case, the offensive characters are relatively minor and easily rewritten to erase any antiSemitism. In fact, because the characters are stereotypes, the book is stronger without them.

In other cases, the racism is so interwoven in the narrative that the story can't be saved. For instance, I couldn't get through Gone With the Wind. I mean, yes, great characters, wonderful romance, historic sweep, all of that. But I couldn't get past the Lost Cause narrative -- that the Confederacy may have lost the war, but, gosh darn it, they were right all along. The book can be taught in academic settings, where a teacher can give the cultural context, but by now it is more a historical document about the bad old days than popular entertainment.

Then there's Booth Tarkington.

The house I grew up in didn't have many books, and I think I read all of them -- my older sister's Bobbsey Twins collection, Oliver Twist (when I was far too young to follow it), a 19th-century edition of Pilgrim's Progress, with woodcuts. And Penrod and Sam, a collection of short stories by Booth Tarkington. Later in life, I got hold of the first book in the series, Penrod.

Both books tell stories of Penrod Schofield, a boy growing up somewhere in the Midwest just after the turn of the 20th century. Two of Penrod's friends were Black, the brothers Herman and Verman. (That is correctly spelled, by the way. As Herman explains when they first meet Penrod, their parents just like rhyming names -- they also have an older brother Sherman.) Because Tarkington was a product of his time, the brothers are often described using racist language. But . . .

In one of the stories from Penrod, Penrod has to stay in town while most of his friends visit relatives in the country to escape the summer city heat. While on his own, Penrod meets a bully, Rupe Collins, who menaces and humiliates him. And in one of the nice bits of characterization that make Tarkington worth reading, Penrod falls straight into hero worship. He starts spending more time with Rupe and emulating him. When Sam returns from the country and runs into Rupe and Penrod, Penrod encourages Rupe to bully Sam the way Rupe bullied him. Rupe is happy to comply by putting Sam in a headlock.

Into this scene walk Herman and Verman. Their immediate reaction is to tell Rupe to leave their friends alone. Rupe orders Penrod to throw them out of the carriage house where they'd been playing, referring to them with a racial slur. Herman takes even more exception to this. Rupe responds by towering over him and threatening him, much as he had threatened Penrod.

And then Herman and Verman just beat the sweet bejesus out of him.

Again, the language is extremely, unfortunately racist. I remember one reference to Verman hitting Rupe with a rake, as hard as he could, tines down, "because, in his simple, straightforward, African way, he wished to kill his enemy and kill him as quickly as possible." And I can certainly appreciate why many readers wouldn't be able to get past the language. But the story's stuck with me all these years because what the brothers actually do is brave and honorable and done in defense of their own dignity.

Especially since Tarkington is completely behind them. They are the heroes of the story, full stop. When they send Rupe packing, they are justifiably exultant with no hint of guilt or regret. (I remember the phrase, "Look at that ol' white boy run" being used.) And their attack breaks Penrod's hero worship, helping their friend get back to normal. Despite the language, I find it hard to be offended by a story in which two Black boys are celebrated for beating the stuffing out of a white racist.

I think something that we explored a little last month might be the critical difference -- putting in the imaginative work to get into the heads of characters very different from yourself. Georgette Heyer's Jewish characters are nothing more than stereotypes, as are the happy slaves of Margaret Mitchell's south. But Tarkington reaches beyond the racism of his day to create genuine human beings, though the racism is still there in the language. In fact, Tarkington is a good candidate for a very light posthumous editing. That would allow readers to enjoy Herman and Verman without reservation.

I don't share the Times' qualms about posthumous editing. The new edition should be marked as revised, so readers will be aware that changes have been made. (Interested historians can track down the original texts.) But after all, the job of an editor is to strip away whatever prevents the story from being as good as it can be.