In her previous posts, Erika Dreifus blogged on her upcoming panel at AWP, “Beyond Bagels and Lox”, and the inspiration for Quiet Americans. She has been be blogging all week for the Jewish Book Council and MyJewishLearning‘s Author Blog.
The online literary world has been atwitter (please pardon the pun!) about the changes—some are calling it censorship—that appear in a new edition that presents “updated” versions of Mark Twain’s classic novels, Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Continue reading here.
The ProsenPeople 
A provocative, brave blog post, Erika. I do remember that story well from reading your collection, and the words did not even faze me because of the situation you were describing.
I have been following the Mark Twain debate with great interest. I so remember reading all of his books in my youth. And I was born in Elmira, NY, where Twain summered. It’s hard to imagine either Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer having the same authenticity with the objectionable words changed.
Thank you so much, Linda. I’m especially interested to know how the words struck you (or did not strike you) as you read. Thanks again.
Hi Erika,
I am so pleased to hear some of the background behind this story. I have chosen it as the story we are planning to discuss in our March short story class here at Sinai Temple in LA. I got your book for our library and for some reason I read this story first and knew it would be a wonderful one for discussion in our class. Thank you!
Lisa, I’m so sorry I hadn’t seen this earlier. If there’s anything I can do to help out–answering questions by email or phone–I’d be more than happy to do so. Thanks so much for your support, and please contact me via my website if you’d like to “talk” further: http://www.erikadreifus.com.
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