MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Mark Twain wrote that "the difference between
the almost right word and the right word is really a large
matter." A new edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and
"Tom Sawyer" will try to find out if that holds true by
replacing the N-word with "slave" in an effort not to offend
readers. Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who is working with
NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the
books, said the N-word appears 219 times in "Huck Finn" and four
times in "Tom Sawyer." He said the word puts the books in danger
of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once
humorously defined as those "which people praise and don't
read." "It's such a shame that one word should be a barrier
between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers,"
Gribben said. Yet Twain was particular about his words. His
letter in 1888 about the right word and the almost right one was
"the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
The book isn't scheduled to be published until