"The Past Is Not the Present'

The last of the books from my late father-in-law’s personal library have arrived from Virginia, and now we’re mostly down to barrel scrapings. I’ll keep the Everyman’s Library edition of Crime and Punishment in the Constance Garnett translation. My father-in-law inscribed the title page and added “1956.”

Another volume poses a perennial question: to read or not to read? The book is Booth Tarkington’s Penrod (1914). I’ve never read a word by this once immensely popular Indiana novelist (1869-1946), though I’ve often seen The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Orson Welles’ adaptation of Tarkington’s 1918 novel. I lived in Indiana for more than two years, working as a reporter for the newspaper in Richmond, and I have a sentimental loyalty to the Midwest, though I haven’t lived there in going on forty years.

 

In the April 1970 issue of Encounter, Paul Fussell published “The Strange Case of Penrod (Revised),” subtitled  “Or, How to Expurgate a Text.” Fussell discovered the 1965 paperback edition of Penrod his teenage daughter was reading had been silently censored:

 

“I turned to one of my favourite chapters, nicely titled ‘Coloured Troops in Action.’ But right away I saw that something was wrong: the chapter was now titled ‘Troops in Action.’ And it wasn’t an error, for the emended chapter-title was repeated in three running-heads and in the table of contents.”

 

In other words, there’s nothing new about scolds, busybodies, schoolmarms and social engineers thinking they know what’s good for us. Recently, these moralistic thugs had their way with Roald Dahl’s books. He’s not my literary cup of tea but I remember reading his books to my younger sons repeatedly. Michael especially liked BFG (1982), and that's a treasured memory. Those who presume to know better than ourselves what we should and shouldn’t read will always be with us. But I don’t like being treated as though I were a backward child. Grown-ups understand that if you don't like a book, don't read it.

 

Chapter 23 in my father-in-law’s copy of Penrod is safely titled “Coloured Troops in Action,” and for just that reason I intend to read the novel. Fussell writes:

 

“[T]he paperback text has been slyly manipulated throughout to purge the evidence of Tarkington’s characteristic affectionate condescension towards Negroes. And as the evidence has been secretly destroyed, so have Tarkington’s wit and vigour. The text has been reduced to insipidity: we have now, as William Carlos Williams might have put it, a Penrod consonant with our day.”

 

Fussell goes on to make a larger point:

 

“The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the conscience. The sainted Samuel Johnson did not say to Garrick, ‘I’ll come no more behind your scenes, David; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.’ What he did say was, ‘No, David, I will never come back. For the white bubbies and silk stockings of your actresses excite my genitals.’ Twain’s Jim was called Nigger Jim. Conrad’s novel is titled The Nigger of the Narcissus. H. L. Mencken did entertain his correspondents by using stationery headed ‘The American Institute of Arts & Letters (Coloured).’”

 

Unpleasant words, still offensive, words civilized people would never use seriously, but we’re all big boys and girls here, and we can take it.