... and I forgot to mention the much-canvassed question of the use of the N-word in one of the greatest of American novels, Huckleberry Finn. It's just what Huck and Tom Sawyer and the escaped slave Jim would all have said, both in the 1830s when the book is set and the 1880s when it was written, and it would be a-historic and unreasonable to try and edit such references out.