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Originally Posted by Glice
There are at least 3 On the Roads, several Ulysseses, shelves of Shakespeares and an entirely baffling array of Bibles (especially if you include pseudepigrapha, upper- and lower-apocrypha and the various non-Christian traditions).
I've also seen a few people mentioning Burroughs, here and elsewhere - Burroughs isn't, so far as I know, taught to young and impressionable children. It's as preposterous to compare Twain to Burroughs as it is to compare Twain to de Sade or Bataille.
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And it's preposterous to compare scholars attempting to arrive at a definitive Ulysses text with what's going on here.
And since you're unfamiliar with American lit, you have no idea how huge this is, at least on a symbolic level.
Look, as a Jew, I've had to deal with a ton of blatant anti-semitism as I've gone through world literature (though the English and French seem to have other nations beat when it comes to this). And yes, it has led to some distress, particularly when I was younger. But I would never suggest chopping up, say, Dickens simply to appease future generations of young Jews. The text is what it is, and one must put on their critical thinking cap and hopefully find good resources to navigate this issue. This is part of true literacy.
Which is the basic problem with revising this seminal American work. Yes, more children may read the book thanks to the revision, but in a more significant way they will grow less literate.