Walter Meyer wrote:

>I suspect Gilbert's texts may not have reflected a state of mind comparable
>to that of Mark Twain, but I'm not sure.  It is clear from many of his
>texts that he liked to puncture bubbles of pomposity.  Not knowing more
>about him, I still think it possible that by impugning the above attitudes
>(alas not totally unknown in Victorian England) to a sort of buffoon from
>an exotic land, he was holding up a mirror to his own society reminding
>them that they were not really so very different from what they were
>laughing at.

Bravo, Walter -- I think you've put your finger on it.  I wish more Mark
Twain detractors would read Huck Finn as carefully and recognize Twain's
rationale for choosing the words he does.  From what I gather, Twain was
anything *but* a racist.  And as for Gilbert, I don't think "nigger" had
the same racist overtones in his society that it has come to have in ours
(in fact, even in our own society, it's okay to use the word if you're of
certain racial/social classes but not others).  In fact, using Gilbert's
original words is very HIP.  Times, however, have changed so that we
currently regard his version of HIP as politically incorrect.

--Rich Putter
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