Wordwatch: Disclaimer
One of my lockdown reads has been Mark Twain’s delightful account of a cultural cruise by a party of Americans to various European countries around the Mediterranean, culminating in the Holy Land and Egypt. The author disarmingly titles it The Innocents Abroad, and makes full play with the travellers’ ignorance of the countries and peoples they encounter in the course of it.
The tour took place just after the American Civil War and the book appeared in 1869. A great part of its interest is its highlighting of the cultural differences between America and Europe at that date, as well, of course, as its descriptions of places and populations utterly alien to the Westerners through whose eyes it is all seen. (Mark Twain was based in San Francisco at the time, a very long way from the Mediterranean.)
The edition of his book that I was using was a recent one, issued in 2019. Rather to my amazement, it was prefaced by this ‘Disclaimer’ (which included some garbled syntax): “Please note that the language and opinions presented in this book as per the author’s original text and [sic] may not be considered appropriate in contemporary society and are not endorsed by the publisher in any way”.
Now a disclaimer is, in its origins, a legal term denying association or complicity with an act or statement. Its use goes back to feudal times, when a vassal might repudiate his bond-relationship to a lord or master. Despite the friendly opening: “Please note that …”, we quickly realise that we are in fact being warned formally that the contents of the book may offend ‘contemporary society’. The publisher hereby takes no legal responsibility for what he is publishing.
The book was written over 150 years ago. By what stretch of the imagination could we suppose that the ‘language and opinions’ it contains will be conformable to our own view of things? Rather, should we not be pleased to encounter things we are unused to? To be offered a sample of the thoughts and attitudes of another age?
Mark Twain is a famously engaging writer. He is deprecatory of himself and his opinions. He makes fun of American ignorance, while at the same time maintaining an understandable pride in his country and its achievements. He is also very outspoken, and doesn’t mince words over what he sees as primitive, insanitary and uncivilised conditions in some of the places he visits. He is rude about people, and often about foreigners, in terms that until very recently were commonplace everywhere. Have we become more saintly because we pussyfoot round matters that don’t harmonise with our so delicate sensitivities?
Now we hear that Huckleberry Finn, his wonderful novel about an independent-minded boy in the American West, bounded as it was then by the Mississippi (to which mighty river he amusingly compares the River Jordan with its rich associations), is to be eliminated from the canon of great literature. The elimination is along with Shakespeare, Kipling, Churchill and I suppose every other writer of the last five hundred years – because its world-view is different from ours, and – heaven forbid – might cause offence.
What has happened is that many things taken for granted until very recently have been identified and demonised by a small but powerful group of politically motivated fanatics. A whole array of subjects from gender to race and the British Empire have been redefined as obscene, and suitable for censorship and strictly controlled thinking.
This is an intolerable state of affairs and we need to fight against it with all the weapons at our disposal. We certainly need to read books like The Innocents Abroad, and benefit from the historical perspective they offer, and from the healthy, often entertaining, divergence of their points of view. Accept publishers’ disclaimers, of course. But question, every time, why they need to print them at all. Our civilisation doesn’t need that kind of molly-coddling.