THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, February 4, 1997             TAG: 9702040230
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Column 
SOURCE: Guy Friddell 
                                            LENGTH:   55 lines

OF HUCK, JIM AND THE ANGELS THEY SAILED WITH

They're trying to civilize Huck again just as Miss Watson, a prim maiden lady, tried at the start of ``Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.''

``They'' have been trying to curb him since his birth in 1885 when the Hartford, Conn., library banned him. Now ``they'' are parents in a Texas town who demand that Huck be combed out of the curriculum so children can't read his adventures.

Poor souls, they don't know better, which is how Huck, an instinctive humanitarian, might put it.

Those adults have been denied the joy - and enlightenment - of reading the greatest of American novels. Even Papa Hemingway, who couldn't abide competitors, conceded Twain is champ.

``All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called `Huckleberry Finn,' '' Hemingway wrote. ``If you read it, you must stop where Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That's the real end. The rest is just cheating, but it's the best book we've had. All American literature comes from it. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.''

Nor will there ever.

Omitting that, Hem faltered.

My debt is to Miss Minter, who read a chapter of Huck each day before recess. To get an extra chapter, we'd give up recess. (Nobody, not even parents, meddled with Miss Minter's sixth grade.)

In Texas, the deluded parents, white and black, decry the use of the ``N'' word. They couldn't have read the book or they would understand it is an indictment of all bigotry, especially racism.

In a society of legalized slavery, Huck accepts Jim, a runaway slave, as his equal. The two innocents float on a raft down the Mississippi toward freedom.

Each time they go ashore, they encounter inhumanity: a blood feud that kills a boy Huck's age; a lynching; a duel when a cool aristocrat slays a drunken fool; two swindlers who con a town and conspire to sell Jim into slavery.

A gripping, rolling panorama unfolds the ills of those times - some of which plague these.

In a TV report the other night, a schoolteacher, who happens to be black, defended the book. It is, she said, a legacy of freedom of speech.

After Huck and Jim escape the parasite pair, lawmen come long side the raft and demand of Huck whether a runaway is aboard.

``Who's with you?'' one calls.

``My Pap. He has smallpox!'' Huck says. They flee.

Every constraint in Huck's upbringing commands he betray Jim. Instead, he lied to save his friend, deciding, ``All right, I'll go to Hell!''

That cry, a great preachment of loyal brotherhood, should be explained to misguided students.

Huck and Twain side with the angels. The protesting parents, in pitiful ignorance, abet bigotry.