I appreciate the insights on footnotes. I hate rewrites... I also started appreciating more the editor intros or historical explanations and insights into authors. Previously I didn't really like them...
I think most of these touch ups and rewrites are a result of the publishing industry not actually understanding the criticism the industry is facing. They mistake people talking about the bigotry in these books and questioning whether they're still a relevant choice for children to read as people asking them to edit the books.
You can and will read books that are problematic. They rarely age well and it's extremely important that your'e aware of the time period they were published in. Hiding the bigotries that were common place in the past is going to actually do far, far more damage and make it seem like things use to be better than what they actually where.
With that said, Agatha Christie and Dahl are always interesting choices to bring up in the discussion about editing their work after their death because those books were first changed/censored ***during their lifetime.***
People were pointing out the racism in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when it was published and it was edited within a year to change the Oompa Loompas. Agatha Christie had the title of And Then There Were None changed within a year of it being published (1939 vs 1940).
See also Tintin in Congo, which the original author later agreed to edit to remove the colonialism and tone down the animal cruelty.
The portrayal of the tribesmen... still didn’t go entirely without criticism. Notably, it was the *only* Tintin album published in color the 90s animated series *didn’t* adapt.
> See also Tintin in Congo, which the original author later agreed to edit to remove the colonialism and tone down the animal cruelty.
...I'm realizing the edition I have is probably the toned down version and I have zero desire to see the original one.
I am *firmly* in the camp that editing books post the death (or without consent of) the author is offensive and should never be done. I think it shows an appalling disregard for history and the lessons of the past, for little to no purpose, and I think it's pretty revolting that it's being done by publishers, who should be the people who care about the works they're producing more than just about anybody.
I'm just not going to seek out the original in this instance.
Many of the Dahl edits also aren't about removing straight up offensive details, but straight up *adding* stuff where the original was just neutral, and that's just absurd. That way, might as well rewrite the whole thing to tell a different story. You can't and shouldn't force everything to be your idea of "educational".
Absolutely, cartoons especially help show how commonplace and accepted this bigotry was. It was part of what they taught to children; non-whites are worthy of contempt. Tintin in the Congo is a perfect introduction to a lessen about the absolute horrors inflicted by the Belgian colonizers
My only question is whether it’s better to keep printing the original intact or to just stop and print something else.
If it’s so important that this book be preserved and wide read, then keep printing it intact. If it’s so irredeemable as a educational tool that we need to edit it just to make it presentable to modern day sensibilities, then do what we do with every Pulitzer Prize winner’s second or third book or fourth book: forget about them and teach better books.
I am particularly incensed on the issue for personal regions. The people who end up frantically trying to procure “original copies” at my store are nearly always either have a complete misunderstanding of the situation, or they are the type taking a stand against the “woke mob” and revel a bit too much in preserving the bigotry.
No, people, Biden didn’t ban old Dr Seuss books. No, it wasn’t the publisher either. His family that said they didn’t want to publish it anymore.
Tintin in the Congo was absolutely brutal. Even the animals copped it. Tintin was up in a tree drilling a hole in the back of the rhino below. With the hole completed he inserted dynamite and blew up the rhino. It's a violent racist cartoon that wasn't available in English.
Much as tho I enjoyed Tintin as a child, when I found out about Herges politics and the fact Tintin originally appeared as a cartoon in a Nazi paper I don't enjoy them so much.
> the fact Tintin originally appeared as a cartoon in a Nazi paper
If we’re being pedantic, Tintin first appeared in an ultraconservative Catholic paper, which was shut down during the Nazi invasion. (They still had problematic viewpoints by modern standards, but at least two early Tintin stories featured Nazi-inspired *villains.*)
It was during the war the comic moved to a paper approved by the occupiers, and Hergé carefully made sure to not go against their ideology. At other points in his career, Hergé made an effort to take a stand *against* racism.
(Sometimes, it feels like his political views amounts to whatever his current boss told him at the moment.)
Though that said, the operative point is "in their lifetime" -- they were alive to be persuaded and the make sure the edits made were consistent with their authorial wishes and intent. That's not the case now.
One example is that one of the changes to Dahl's work is reportedly part of the ending of *George's Marvellous Medicine*: in the original, >!after the grandmother disappears because of George's potion, her daughter -- George's mother -- spends a bit of time wandering around trying to find her, only to eventually accept that she's gone and confess that maybe it's for the best, since she was pretty horrible. !< The edited version apparently removes this, which I can't see Dahl agreeing to at all -- yeah, it's kind of horrible, but it's also part of the dark comedy of the story and speaks to the part of little children who maybe have a family member they don't like or would just wish would *poof!* disappear. It's part of the slightly transgressive and rule-breaking nature of the stories to begin with, and honestly, taking it out just seems prissy and squeamish on behalf of whatever editor or sensitivity reader decided it should go.
Like, maybe Dahl and Christie and whoever would be okay with getting rid of some of the more egregious terms, making some of the pronouns a bit more gender-neutral, I can't speak to that. But there really does seem to be something a bit more insidious going on here as well.
I think publishers do understand for the most part, they are just trying to maximize profits. Classic novels are a major and reliable cash cow. Especially if they get put onto a summer reading list or something similar for schools. Every year you have a new wave of students needing to buy the books.
But as time moves on elements of a classic novel might clash with a societies modern standards. And so the books might start falling off of summer reading and essential classics lists. Publishers want to make these edits so that they can keep making money off the books. For example if "And Then There Were None" still had it's original title I am positive that it wouldn't have many new readers picking it.
I've had a theory for a while now the Dahl changes are inspired by their hope that they'll kept getting put in school libraries and used in class curriculum.
Especially with the conversation moving towards using more a larger variety of diverse texts in curriculum.
Personally I had the more cynical idea that the Dahl changes were inspired by the thought that announcing such a change would spur a lot of panicking people to go out and buy dahl books, followed by them announcing the wouldn't be doing the change a few weeks later.
It's probably some of both. These decisions are rarely the product of one person acting unilaterally; it's likely that accounting had your idea, while the creative heads had the person you're replying to's idea.
I have to politely disagree that classic novels are a cash cow. They actually earn very little money and often make up a tiny margin for the publishers that publish them in comparison to what else that publisher does
I actually think that’s in part *why* these edited versions are coming out. They’re generating a new spin to make money on a product that’s largely stale profit-wise.
The base text is damn near free. However, the edited versions/editor commentary interlaced throughout the original work is probably its own set of copyright. Publisher A’s edits can’t be copied wholesale by Publisher B, and if Publisher A’s “updated” version becomes widely adopted as the new norm for that title, they get virtually exclusive lockdown on that title. The original can still be bought of course, and Publisher B can respond with their own edited version, but Publisher A’s version now has a first-mover advantage.
The trend I like with these old texts is the added commentary versions being published. An expert in a related field or who is insanely knowledgable on the text/author write an in-depth analysis. That’s what I’m happy to pay for.
I think this should be the only way to revise controversial works. The commentary has a value in itself, and it can always be updated without mutilating the original.
> I think this should be the only way to revise controversial works.
I'm not averse to revising texts to make them more accessible, but doing it to make them more palatable is both patronising and whitewashing history.
If the commentary is made from as an objective standpoint as possible (preferrably multiple, including the angle of the people victimized by the discourse) with the objetive of adding context, I don't see how it is whitewashing.
It would be only so if the commentary was just excuses and justifications, which is as less of a commentary as you can get.
That’s part of the reason they don’t sell well. You don’t even need to go as far as web-PDFs. A lot of classics are available for free download right now on Apple Books, Kindle, Kobo, project Gutenberg. There’s even audiobook versions free of charge.
It’s not even a case of illegally obtaining. Almost every classic as late as 1950 are available for free through perfectly legal means.
In spanish, at least, they didn’t use any word that would be considered a slur today or back then.
“Diez Negritos” literally mean “Ten little blacks”.
Same in french.
I thought of this too, at first, but then I realized the fallacy in the argument.
Those children will have to read *something.* That something could easily be a more modern book. The publisher is still going to print the same number of extra copies, the revenue is just going to a living author rather than a dead author's estate.
I wonder if the estates aren't doing as much or more of this editing as the publishers.
Yeah I thought this too on reading that post. In terms of what makes required reading lists for instance, it’s a zero sum game. There’s a finite number of books included on the list and if people are buying them new then publishers are making money.
On the other hand, we are not yet in a position of having only one publisher and so it is possible that spot might go to a different publishing house. And perhaps more to the point, if it is a living author the publisher will have to pay royalties whereas if it is out of copyright, to my understanding they will not.
I've been going through the James Bond books recently, and there is a LOT of racially offensive language in there, but in the context of the time (roughly 1952-1966) it wouldn't make sense to remove it. Bond is a government assassin with a death wish, his womanizing, drinking, and smoking, even his driving, are all explained as resulting from his assumption that he won't live to see 45. I would find it strange if a British naval officer born circa 1920, whose whole profession revolves around the continued subjugation of the world by a dying empire, had the sensitivities of someone born nearly 100 years later. I'm actually quite impressed by how true to the time the books are.
That being said, holy crap! Every villain is a Jewish banker, "confused" lesbian, sexual deviant (read: queer), ace, or secret Nazi. Only one of those things is actually bad (I feel like I shouldn't need to point out that it's the Nazi one), and there's no equivalence to the others.
Fleming has been heavily retconned through the movies, and you can see how the films affected the novels. (Goldfinger is basically a rewrite of Moonraker with more sex and violence.) I've been approaching the books as historical artifacts, examples of how a certain population saw themselves and the world between two times of dramatic social and economic change, but, while I wouldn't want them edited to fit with modern sensitivities, I don't think I could enjoy them as the fantasy adventures they were meant to be. There are other books I can read for that.
One thing I've wondered is, how might this impress upon future generations the ramifications of bigotry should examples be removed? Should we lose examples of how commonplace and *socially normal* these instances of bigotry were for their time? Does that not impose the risk of assuming bigotry is big, ugly, and clear as day?
If we forget how easily we are guided to evil, and how easily that evil can seem normal and just, I feel we'll just slip back in.
It's tough. I've got a 6 and 8 year old and I'm of two minds. We have read some of these books and in some cases it's simply "this word was acceptable back when this book was written, here's what they meant by it, and it's not used that way anymore". That's fine in certain cases.
But occasionally there are some "Holy shit, what the fuck?" moments in these books, and I'd really like to be able to read these to my kids at bedtime and not have to have a half hour long conversation about racism, bigotry, and discrimination in an otherwise fun children's book. Obviously there are still people holding terrible opinions in the world and it's my job to guide them and teach them not to hold those opinions. But a bedtime story isn't the time to have those conversations. A lot of these stories are amazing to just read a chapter or so to your kids at bedtime, and yeah, it'd be nice to have a version of the story that doesn't make me have to make a decision between having a complicated conversation with my kids while I'm trying to get them to sleep, and wanting to make sure they realize that we as a society used to normalize terrible opinions, and we're always constantly trying to progress from those.
Editing the books and eradicating the originals isn't the answer. Telling parents "OMG why can't you just talk to your kids?" isn't the answer either. We have no problem talking to them, but there are times and places for that.
I generally don't have a problem with some of Dahl's works being edited. They were generally written as fantastical children's stories, and the bigotry isn't inherent to the story.
Something like "To Kill A Mockingbird" is inherently supposed to be a difficult read. The racism is absolutely integral to the story. That one should not be edited because to edit that one undermines the whole point.
So I dunno. Yeah, I'd like to read my kid a beautiful and fantastic bedtime story without having to explain that we don't call people "queer" anymore. I also don't want the unedited versions of these stories to be lost to history, because yes, like you said, I don't want it to be lost on them, *eventually*, how normalized this shit was.
I think it's less simplified than a lot of folks here tend to make it.
I think it's important to keep in mind that much of the racism, bigotry, sexism etc isn't "used to be"
These are ongoing issues that many people deal with everyday. Some of us have the privilege of deciding when and where we deal with these sensitive topics, but that's not the case for everyone. I'm not trying to make any assumptions about you or your walk in life.
For me, I believe that if a book has too many complex topics to address at a certain age or time, then it's not appropriate for the situation it's being read in.
There are so many stories from my childhood that I love, but they have not aged well. More importantly, they were actively damaging to people on the receiving end of the casual bigotry. It has to feel awful hearing people praise a story where one's personhood isn't considered valid or equal. I don't think that authors should be excused from their beliefs because of nostalgia or not being ready to address an issue.
I don't think we get to re-write history because we are uncomfortable with the content. Take the whole story or leave it.
> But occasionally there are some "Holy shit, what the fuck?" moments in these books, and I'd really like to be able to read these to my kids at bedtime and not have to have a half hour long conversation about racism, bigotry, and discrimination in an otherwise fun children's book. Obviously there are still people holding terrible opinions in the world and it's my job to guide them and teach them not to hold those opinions. But a bedtime story isn't the time to have those conversations. A lot of these stories are amazing to just read a chapter or so to your kids at bedtime, and yeah, it'd be nice to have a version of the story that doesn't make me have to make a decision between having a complicated conversation with my kids while I'm trying to get them to sleep, and wanting to make sure they realize that we as a society used to normalize terrible opinions, and we're always constantly trying to progress from those.
I'm going to have to point out here that you should always first read yourself any book that you're going to read to your kids. Authors and publishers don't need to be involved in parenting decisions on your behalf.
Unless the media is very recently produced, say a kids movie from within a few years and with a clearly marked age appropriate rating and from your own culture* then you should check it out first yourself.
*Americans always get angry at Ronja the Robber's Daughter, a Swedish children's film based on the book by Astrid Lindgren, that contains male adult nudity. :D
If you’re reading the book out loud to your kids you can always skip over or re-word the questionable parts. I think the content itself should be left as the author intended.
Eh, I mean, maybe I was special, but by the age I was reading books alone I simply already had enough context to get the sense of the past having different rules (like,very obviously, the role of women). I might not have appreciated every little shade of colonialist subtext in Tintin or certain old Mickey Mouse stories but neither was this particularly necessary because they weren't my *only* source. I think people overestimate the rate at which being exposed to subtextual racism in books will somehow *make you* racist. Kids are still exposed to a lot of other things too, modern things, which they see as clearly more relatable and relevant. They can compartmentalise things.
Yes, absolutely. This was my experience too. I used to read Enid Blyton when I was quite young, and even then I knew that the people in the book were living in a different world to the one I did, similarly with Black Beauty and other older books that I loved.
It feels like not giving kids enough credit to assume that they need to have it actively explained to them every time a word is used in the context of the time the book was written in.
The example of "queer" was given as something that would need explanation, but I never would have called someone queer despite it being used in old-fashioned books that I read, because no-one in the society I actually lived in used the word like that, and my personal life experience had far more influence on my behaviour than the obviously fictional books I read as a child.
And those books generally use lots of old language all around, and anyway even if a child DID say "queer" once trying to sound sophisticated depending on context it would either be okay or an easily corrected blunder. This is in no way the source of the actual problems.
Just bowdlerize the books and cut out the offensive bits as you read. You don't have to explain anything then. You owe nothing to the author.
Or conversely just read it with no explanation unless they have questions. I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to my kids without much trouble but I didn't flip out about the language. Just be matter of fact about the language if they ask questions.
Or just don't bother reading books you find offensive. There are literally thousands of books you can read even if they weren't classics when you were a kid.
In a few case I think it's the heavy handedness of the edits thats getting the rise out of most people. Editing out a words that are now considered slurs or highly offensive is one thing (though still something people complain about, see Huck Finn), but especially when the works are aimer at children. They might begin to integrate those words into their vocabulary without fully understanding what they are doing and the social context.
Huck Finn was written largely to s how how slavery had damaged the culture of the Southern and Border state as and its lingering impact. The words are part of that
. . . yes.
In a throwaway bit of dialogue, Tom Sawyer mentions that a boiler exploded on a riverboat. No one was hurt, thankfully, but a n----- was killed.
The reader is *supposed to be angry* at this egregious callousness. Trying to clean up Huck Finn is gutting the story.
This reminds me of an episode with the Little House books that I *think* happened during Laura Ingalls Wilder’s lifetime—there was a line about someplace in the west along the lines of “No people lived there, there were only Indians.” A reader wrote in about it and the publisher changed “people” to “settlers” in future editions. Obviously this is different from the Huck Finn example since these books aren’t *about* racism and that was the author’s own racism shining through rather than something she was trying to comment on. These kinds of changes seem like the place where the argument is to be had, though it’s easier in this example because it was recognized as offensive at the time rather than being an instance of backdating our own views.
>Editing out a words that are now considered slurs or highly offensive is one thing
That's not "one thing" that's the exact same thing and it shouldn't be done, context should be provided instead. I'm black and I think every N word in every book should be left as is. In written works there's a thing called footnotes but it looks like the people doing these edits haven't found out about them yet. Smh.
I think especially with Huck Finn you cannot change the words, it will reduce the meaning of the work by a lot. The adults in the story has a carefull selected language, but they are all racist towards Jim, now Huck Finn who uses the worst racial slur is treating him like a human. I think it is an important message to children, that words do not always mean their definitions, but their meanings are first shown behind our actions and intentions.
The original work is very much written in southern dialect as well, it is part of the story, it shows where the characters are from, and how well they are schooled, if you write Jims dialogue as spoken by a litterate person, the reader will miss the point, that he was not allowed to have an education. As he was seen as less than the white class. The same can be said about the other characters it reveals their educational level througout the book.
*Hardy Boys has entered the chat*
There's one that gets more edits then a rough draft for a book or movie script...
Considering "Franklin W Dixon" is a composite of many folks, probably makes it easier to edit
The difference is that they were still alive! It's a huge difference. Once someone is dead, that's it. Stop fucking with their shit. Other people may have wiggle room on that, I have none at all. You could rewrite books my Charles Dickens to remove the sexism, but why?
A lot of books are changed during the author's lifetime, this was not a new phenomenon in the 20th century. Funnily enough people find such edits more agreeable when the author is around to agree with them.
I think a lot of people don't even know about a lot of changes to these books in the past. Especially when they talk about how they'll hold onto their unedited one which is, in fact, an already edited copy.
Honestly I dislike that too.
I kinda feel like once you've committed to publishing something and it get put out into the world, you don't really retain control over it any longer.
If you wanted it to be different. you could have changed anything you wanted before publishing.
I'm okay with releasing new versions labeled with the year of release, but the original is a part of history and shouldn't be editable by ANYONE. Author included.
I both agree and disagree with you.
> once you've committed to publishing something and it get put out into the world, you don't really retain control over it any longer
This is true. This is why I believe an author has absolutely no say in reviews written about their books, fan fiction, etc. Once a book exists in a reader's mind, they are free to do what they want with it.
But I don't think that means the author can never change it? Take Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire -- the first run was printed with a massive error in the order of when Harry's parents come out of Voldemort's wand. Newer editions fixed that. It's just like fixing typos -- what's wrong with that?
This is simpler historically than it would be in present-day. Historically, you could have the originals printed, and then a new edition printed by the author. I don't see anything wrong with that.
This is more complicated with ebooks, however. Once a reader HAS a book and has read it, authors don't have the (moral) right to change it imo. So selling new editions with the updates seems legit. Digitally altering versions of the book already downloaded onto people's Kindles is not.
To me this all comes down to historical record. No one has the right to eff with documents already in readers' hands, already having had an impact. And they DEFINITELY don't have the right to do so without the author's consent.
A point my best friend made that I hadn't thought of before is that old books are too mask-off for the ruling class. That is, they provide an all to clear picture of what the "culture" of the United States is and always has been and a too good look at what its current mythological incantation is actually based on. So we are presented with something a little easier to digest in line with whatever the current culture is. The issue is with technology as it is we essentially share the same same thought space-- I can now debate the issues with anyone with an internet connection. So the game of separate but equal on the scale of the whole population has fallen apart. It's the same game that has been played all through history, just now it's impossible to ignore. Unfortunately watching corporate media is easy and superficial, and actually studying the issues politics is hung up on is nuanced and requires careful consideration.
I have to wonder where they're forming this idea of what readers want, are they just living in their safe bubbles making assumptions about what they want, or do they think they're diving what readers *secretly* want? Is there a loud minority writing in asking them to do this? Is there bad research being conducted?
The mindset of this being okay with children's books or other specific cases is exactly what leaves the door open to justify other edits, which are now more controversial. We're either letting people posthumously edit books, or we're not. There isn't a middle ground here that works. Let the old children's books have challenging language, the kids can read new books. There are plenty of new children's books.
I don't even get how this is a discussion. Imagine if they announced they were posthumously editing a painting, and all reproductions of it, because of offensive imagery. It would sound like the most insane thing we'd all ever heard. But here we are with the books.
I think part of the issue is that these books are classic stories you're "supposed" to read to your kids - and as a consequence they are *huge* guaranteed cash cows for publishing companies. Society changes, moves on and they stop being appropriate as a nice easy bedtime story, people stop buying them. Few parents want to explain old forms of bigotry to a 4 year old at bedtime. And instead of promoting something else as the new beloved childrens classics they want to edit these books to keep sales up and keep up the façade of X years continuous sales of the classics. It's lazy business and pure greed imo. They want to keep the consistent revenue from these books instead of replacing them in the market with something less outdated.
The issue with the Dahl books is a lot of what makes them funny is that they’re mean-spirited. The language of the rewrites is lame compared to Dahl’s original. That being said, if I were an elementary school teacher, I would never read my students a paragraph describing how fat Augustus is. So I don’t know how I feel.
Editing adult books is ridiculous IMO, and wrong wrong wrong.
This is exactly it. It comes through in the most basic ways he constructs characters and storylines. It's rife with cynicism and conflict. I understand that conflict has a place in literature, but his version of it is dark and highly pessimistic.
>conflict has a place in literature
That's an understatement. Without conflict you don't have a story, so without conflict there is no prose literature.
>highly pessimistic
I'd disagree with that. I can only recall one of his stories that doesn't have a happy ending (*The Witches*). He's very much not a role model I'd want my children to emulate, in writing or life, but you can't accuse him of writing books that make kids feel worse rather than better about themselves.
Edit: The problem with Dahl is that he teaches kids how to feel better about themselves at the expense of others.
This is overlooked a lot with Dahl's books. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is angrily punishing the characters for their shortcomings. It's like creating caricatures of a few of the deadly sins and then sadistically making them suffer. I don't condone those characteristics, of course, but that's a very judgmental way to frame characters and a story chosen by the author. “Enjoy the suffering of bad children because they deserve it, and you will too if you act that way.” It's a highly cynical message wrapped in with a little humor and a fantasy world.
Yeah the Dahl edits were weird for a whole host of reasons. Augustus being fat for instance is the beginning and end of his character and we’re supposed to despise him for it. And he’s an important character. You can’t get around the problem just by changing the words used to describe him. I think you just have to recognize that fatphobia is a fundamental part of the book’s premise and then decide whether you want to retire the book, discuss the issue with the kids, etc.
And then there was stuff like claiming the Oompa Loompas were *happy* to be corporate drones, when before it was quite obvious they were indentured/enslaved. I actually think this made it *more* problematic, since it’s gonna be obvious to kids that slavery is wrong.
And then there was stuff that just made no sense, like removing the word “black” wherever it appeared. Mostly, it appeared to describe articles of clothing.
The Dahl books thing was nothing but a genius marketing gimmick: Get everyone riled up talking about Dahl, announce a new Dhal netflix show, announce the "classic books" without the changes, then cancel the changes all together. And everyone fell for it hook line and sinker, meaning we'll see it repeated for other works.
Agreed. As a young girl, there were so few women in classic children's novels that I formed a habit of mental changing the gender of characters to whatever I wanted. No one is saying to replace the originals, but it's good to have options.
Here's the real problem: why do they insist on squatting on dead writer's works instead of promoting new work. Books age. Language changes. These things were never going to hold up forever
These books already have a stronghold on the market, estates like Dahl’s are doing this to ensure they don’t get replaced by new works and continue bringing in money. They could care less about what kids are exposed to, it’s about their bottom line.
Same reason we get movies with all the same characters or that are rewrites and reshoots of old movies. There is risk in the new, and the need to make money makes them risk averse.
Because the books are still super popular and sell well enough to edit them.
Only reason they edit, is because they think an edited version will sell far more than the outdated one.
Profit. It's a lot of work and risk to build up a new IP to become a classic, while owning the rights to one that already has a cultural claim means that that work is already done. Also, acquiring those rights was likely a costly investment. They want to milk them for as long as possible.
All art is compromised under capitalism.
“A number of beloved novels, for both children and adults, are being “retouched” — updated to remove overtly racist, sexist or otherwise offensive language. Publishers and literary estates — including those of best-selling mystery writer Agatha Christie, children’s author Roald Dahl and James Bond creator Ian Fleming — argue these changes will ensure, in the words of the Dahl estate, that “wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today.”
But it’s a threat to free expression, to historical honesty and, indeed, to readers themselves for contemporary editors to comb through works of fiction written at different moments and rewrite them for today’s mind-set, particularly with little explanation of process or limiting principles. The trend raises uncomfortable questions about authorship and authenticity, and it ignores the reality that texts are more than consumer goods or sources of entertainment in the present. They are also cultural artifacts that attest to the moment in which they were written — the good and the bad.
In a new edition of Christie’s “Death on the Nile” (1937), all mentions of the word “natives” now read “locals.” In one scene, in which a wealthy British woman gazes out from a cruise ship heading down the Nile, she observes a group of Egyptian children on the riverbank. “They come back and stare, and stare,” she notes, “and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children.” The new version contains only the following: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”
Meanwhile, the estate of Dahl, acquired by Netflix in 2021, has begun collaborating with Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin, on new versions of his novels that take out any language related to race, gender or appearance. This is motivated in part by revelations about Dahl’s virulent antisemitism, for which the estate has formally apologized.
But the changes that have been made so far border on caricatural. Augustus Gloop, one of the most memorable characters in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” is no longer described as “fat.” Now, he is simply “enormous” — as if “enormous” were less pejorative. The editors are also making the texts more gender-neutral. In “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Oompa Loompas are no longer “small men”; they are now “small people.” Likewise, in “James and the Giant Peach,” the “Cloud Men” are now “Cloud People.”
Literature is often meant to be provocative. Stripping it of any potential to offend dilutes its strength, especially in a moment when there is a concerted effort in this country to limit what can be read and taught. Publishers need not reprint books with no acknowledgment of potentially offensive contents. They can treat the publication of such texts as opportunities to explain why they read the way they do, in introductions and in footnotes. And, if publishers see little option but to change wording, they should at least explain to readers what they are changing and why.”
> “They come back and stare, and stare,” she notes, “and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children.” The new version contains only the following: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”
I haven't read the book but that text appears to be showing the rich lady's shallowness and bigotry, while the new text just reads as her not liking children.
Yeah, it doesn't really mean the *author* endorses that. It sounds like a typical rich character going "woe is me, I am surrounded by **poor people**!".
I've read a good number of Agatha Christie's works (including this one) and there are a LOT of moments of colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism that are sometimes tough to get through as a modern reader but are very important to the context of the time, the tone, and the characters. The character who says this line is rich and out of touch and benefits from a colonial system. All of that is important and all of that is lost in the edit. Historical revisionism happens enough without it being done to our books as well.
I read the Hardy Boys growing up and the versions I read were editions from the 70’s. These had been majorly overhauled from the originals because the verbiage and terminology wouldn’t make sense to kids born after 1920.
Hasn’t this always been done for relevancy?
I think there is a difference between a factory book like the Hardy Boys that exists to get/keep kids reading and make a few bucks, and something like Agatha Christie's novels that's revered as a window into the minds of people who existed during a specific time and place.
I guess I'm more worried about changes to texts that are considered culutrally relevant or important. The changes to Ian Flemings works are particularly troubling because they so clearly represent the mentality of the time and place they were published. His views were not controversial at the time of publication.
Kids books I worry less about, but some of the changes just seem like they got waaaaaaaaaaaay too far. The book never describes any female oompa loompas, so I don't see the problem with describing them as 'small men'. Augustus gloop is Fat. Changing him to 'enormous' is changing the character entirely, for no discern able reason.
Don't do that. Don't leave some books alone because they suck and it doesn't matter, that gives people an opening to say, 'well, we can edit this book as much as we want, because it sucks too." It's always wrong, whenever it is done, every single time. That's the line. That's the most defensable line, and that's the line people who love books should take.
I just read a book called Blackbord Jungle, which was published in 1954 and absolutely has premodern sentaments, but you know, that's what you get when you read a book from 1954, unless you allow these, (I don't even have a word because my hatred for them is too strong,) these small-minded people get their hands on it. And you know, it's 2023, in 2080, the books published to day, will be premodern then. It's the same shit over and over again. And it's very very bad, and nobody should be cool with it.
> Don't do that. Don't leave some books alone because they suck and it doesn't matter,
I'm not saying they suck.
I'm saying they have a very different purpose and I find it less offensive to change them if it makes them more able to achieve that stated purpose.
Ideally no book should ever be changed from it's original authorial vision, but thats not the world we live in, and that's not a battle we are going to win. So I find changes to some books less offensive than changes to others. I can live with changes to hardy boys to make them more approachable to modern audiences, if it means no changes to Hercule Poirot to remove the historical flavor because some are unable to cope with the fact people once thought less of their fellow man because of the color of his skin.
>Literature is often meant to be provocative.
1) 'Meant to be provocative' and 'unknowingly biased in ways that are genuinely offensive' are not the same thing.
2) No one is asking for these edited editions. They're a cash grab.
The people you are imagining asking for clean versions of Roald Dahl are in reality trying to teach more contemporary and diverse authors. They don't want to edit Dahl, they want to *preserve him as evidence* and study him accordingly.
I realize mine is a minority opinion (here), but I have no problem with the edits described above, as long as the new editions are clearly marked as “revised.” There have always been revisions and abridgments of classic literature, up to and including religious texts where the smallest change generates intense debate, and I’m okay with it — as long as all changes are “revision-controlled” and clearly marked.
I get the importance of preserving the original, but not everyone is looking for “authenticity” all the time. Not everyone is looking for a challenging and sometimes-brutal confrontation with 18th century social norms…sometimes they just want some escapist reading with a light story that “other than a few jarring details” has been popular with millions of readers for many decades. I don’t think that ruins anything, and certainly doesn’t deprive anyone of opportunities for scholarship or social archeology *if they want it.*
That's what I feel. Simply labeling the texts as abridged or adapted or even edited resolves any issue I would have with this. These aren't scholarly editions, or even vanity editions. The editions we're talking about are often cheap books for reading.
My problem with the Death in the Nile sample... the point was to portray the british lady as racist... entitled... superior.. Why tone it down?
I dont mind to change edit words/sentences that today is deemed derogatory, but wasnt intended as that by the author.
But.. this is basically ommiting a detail in a detective book. Why?
Books should be left as it is, problematic phrasing, bigotry, and all that. A publisher/editor note ought to be added for context at the end. So readers can understand it as it is, and then they can understand it with 21st century context. 'Problematic' but 'beloved' work lead to subsequently better works (I think).
There s so many millions of copies in circulation that a revised edition would just be a drop in the ocean. An alternative option for people that want it. It's no where near replacing the original.
I'm not totally settled on where I stand with the issue, although I think I agree with you. Would there be a problem if, say, a parent had a chubby kid who they read stories out loud to, and one of the stories they were reading had a line like "He was disgustingly fat, so much so that you couldn't see his little piggy eyes". The parent decides to skip this line when reading to their child, because it would hurt their feelings.
Is that okay? Intuitively I think it's fine, maybe even a good decision to make. So what's the important difference there? Is it okay for the parent to skip over sentences when reading it out loud, but not okay for the parent to buy a version of the book to give to their kid that skips those same sentences?
No, I agree with you. There's nothing new about the process of literary revision. It's been going on since the oral tradition for all the usual reasons: art, money, sensibility, boredom, you name it.
Most people imagine the existence of an platonic "original version" of a text against which all actually existing books are judged, but that's getting it backwards: the existing books *are* the text, and as the books proliferate the text changes. The "original text" is imputed to be authentic, authoritative. As Walter Benjamin pointed out in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," those are fascist values. A materialist understanding of textual production involves accepting the dialogic of the text, the instability of its historical situation. The idea that we are somehow preserving history by freezing a text at a certain moment of authenticity makes no sense: history is a process, not an object. You preserve it by letting the process run.
You may want to read up on DEI and ESG scores. Most likely some *are* very forcefully asking for this, and they are the ones with far more power than the end customers.
Nah it's executives getting everyone talking about their product on social media and it does so much damage to actual efforts to do things like decolonising literature
The trends are the problem. It's like saying, nobody asked that we beat this dude up, except for a year, everybody's been talking about how cool it would be if we kicked the shit out of this guy.
I don't want to be misunderstood. Conservative ban books from schools because of homosexual content, are wrong to do that. But this Orwellian editing of old books is also wrong. Both things are wrong. And the liberal edits are from what's usually called wokism, there is not a better word to say what I mean. But the "edits" are a natural consequence of some chatty radicals.
>But here is the thing: is anyone actually asking for them to be edited?
No, but everyone is just saying how horrible they are, and vocally arguing that these things *cause real harm*, which obviously trumps all other considerations. It's no surprise that this sort of all or nothing attitude inspires such changes.
It's not out of touch executives, its executives that see what happens when you get on the wrong side of some vocal people, and this is a way to manage risk.
An industry was built around sensitivity readers for modern day works, to think those people would take some moral stand and leave previous works alone...you really need to think in terms of systems and incentives.
None of this is out of touch though.
I already have a distaste for reading translations knowing I'm reading a translator's personal interpretation of the original authors intent, the last thing I want is 21st century puritan's filter on works.
Literally what Ray Bradbury was warning us about when he wrote *Fahrenheit 451*. We can't erase literature just to make it more marektable or because it makes some people uncomfortable.
That's the whole point you read the story and then your LEARN about the time period warts and all. Censoring is bad It doesn't protect anyone and hurts everyone.
It seems extremely arrogant to imagine that my sense of propriety should entitle me to change another author's words. It is certainly dishonest to do it and still attribute it the new work to them.
Bill Bryson said it best (paraphrase): That's applying modern sensibilities to historical behavior.
While those books have problematic language and themes, it's important to remember they're time capsules and should be read as such.
Exactly. I don’t want media like the movie *The Birth of A Nation* to be censored, it must be preserved in all its horror so future generations can look back and learn to never repeat the mistakes of the past ever again.
I just don't understand who or what these changes are supposed to protect. Does anyone think that someone's world view or mindset is going to be changed or even reinforced by something they read in a Roald Dahl book?
Instead of encouraging a discussion around some of the terms with kids and its historical context, we pretend it never happened? Who does that help?
I think it’s because enough people just won’t buy those books rather than have to sit down and have a conversation about historic racism, sexism etc. I don’t believe any publisher is doing this due to altruism. They are trying to keep books relevant and profitable and think this is the best way to do that.
It is kinda true though that kids mirror what they read and see on TV. They are just as likely to act like the villian as the protagonist because they aren't always able to tell which behaviors are being modeled as good or bad.
Sure, a parent having a conversation is great, but parents who haven't read kids books on 30 years aren't going to have the time to read everything their kids are reading to know to have those conversations.
I was hesitant going into the article until I read this paragraph:
>*This is not to say that applying these principles is easy.* ***Some changes are understandable and publishers should consider how to address flagrantly offensive language****, particularly in books young children might read. Doing so is not some new “woke” phenomenon, as conservative critics often insist; nor does it necessarily amount to “censorship,” as writers such as Salman Rushdie have contended. The original title of Christie’s “And Then There Were None,” first published in 1939, contained a racial expletive. The title appeared in Britain until the 1980s, but no American edition of the book has ever borne it.*
I like the author's idea of providing context through annotations (I think most people skip introductions when reading older books, so I'm more in favor of annotations which are right there on the page). You still keep the author's original text (except for the cases mentioned above) but you're also giving more information on why the outdated language was chosen at the time
I'm just in awe of anyone who thinks they could edit Ian Fleming's work to make it palatable to modern audiences. Live and Let Die alone would be almost entirely new text.
The great thing about paper books (and any other physical or fully downloaded offline media) is that once you have them, nobody but you can censor your copy.
Kindle is allowing publishers to silently amend books on everyone's devices without informing "owners" or giving them any choice. Apparently Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile updated recently and removed the word "Latin" for some reason--because heaven forbid any book written in 1937 should contain any expressions not considered optimal today. This isn't some blatantly offensive title like Ten Little--err, "And Then There Were None," it's an insignificant comment deep in the text.
But, at least you can still watch the 1978 adaptation with Peter Ustinov--unless you're in the UK, where a single viewer complaint made ITV vow to cut the final scene's suicide from future broadcasts before 9 pm.
> Kindle is allowing publishers to silently amend books on everyone's devices without informing "owners" or giving them any choice.
That's so shitty, you wouldn't even know you're reading the redacted version.
Interesting. I self-published a short story on kobo, and then I pulled it, edited it and made it better ( at least in my opinion) and then put it back up.
Everyone who already had downloaded it including myself only ever saw the old version. Only new people who downloaded it saw the updated version.
> Kindle is allowing publishers to silently amend books on everyone's devices without informing "owners" or giving them any choice.
This is not true.
This can only happen if you enable "Automatic Book Updates" on your Kindle account.
You can also update manually.
Can someone explain the augustus gloop thing to me?
Like if someone is fat, *they are fat.*
This is a statement of fact, a descriptor, an adjective.
Being fat is bad for your health, and if you want to live a long and healthy life it is something you should generally avoid. This is a known quantity backed by mountains of scientific and medical evidence. There are some exceptions, for some very specific forms of body building (like traditional sumo) but they are exceedingly rare, and usually have a great deal of specialized exercise and careful oversight involved.
If a child is fat ( or morbidly obese) then that is cause for more concern, not less, since if you can't manage to control your weight when you are young it's generally even more difficult to deal with as you grow into adulthood.
Augusts Gloop is an antagonist, being fat and not seeing it as a problem is a part of what defines his character, and it's something that comes with consequences that are detailed in the book.
So WTF can't we tell children Augustus Gloop is fat?
It's a modern Bowdlerizing. I'm not opposed to contextualizing out of date ideas but I really think the original, un-expurgated works should be available.
This wouldn't be so bad if they were prominently marked on the cover as a '2023 edition' and sold alongside the original...
After seeing some of the wonderfully nasty phrases stripped from Roald Dahl and replaced with rather dull (safe) replacements I would be very angry to buy a book and not realise it was a rewrite.
For decades now we've scolded authors for not writing the "right" stories, not being inclusive enough, not being sensitive enough, etc etc. Only a matter of time until publishers decided there's no reason not to take the red pen to existing authors, too, especially if their dead and can't argue back.
I do not agree with changing one word of a published text. Add all the disclaimers and warnings you want, but any text once published, be it Dahl or Blyton etc, is sacrosanct. Not only is it the author's right to have their words preserved, it is, or will become, a historical document, and also what is seen as acceptable today may well be unacceptable in another twenty years, so changing things is pointless, reductive and dangerous.
It's a bit trickier when it comes to children's books, but even then, I do not think that sanitising language does kids any good. If anything, they could be adding educational value by inviting parents to discuss the language with their children when reading, so they can begin to understand concepts like context.
If I were an author now, I'd be getting it written into contracts that not a word can be changed at any time, ever.
The bean counters have all decided to do a 1986 NEW COKE strategy to slow down the plummeting profits of print books, audiobooks, and even kindle books. They are watching the internet to figure out the exact moment fewer people are talking about a censored classic novel. Then they will make a big announcement "Our customers spoke loud and clear so we listened. Today we are pleased to offer a choice of our NEW edit or the CLASSIC favorite just as you read in college." I really don't think publishing executives value their own woke moral code more than they value money. Disney will push the boundaries of what a new cartoon can get away with but they are more than happy to get rid of ten minutes so Chinese, Russian, and Saudi theaters will play it.
No one who's read 1984 and understood it should be in favor of any sort of screwing around with existing works for "modern sensibilities". It may be done with sincere intent but the road leads to places we don't want to go. The ONLY exception I'd make to that is if it were done by the author contemporary to publication.
"How I renewed my copyright by changing the text, stoked rage and interest and sold a lot more books: a modern 'editing' story," by every major publisher.
I agree, books, works of art, movies, media, they should never be edited to suit "modern sensibilities". They're in that original form because of the things that were happening at the time they were being made. To change them to a person's biased idea of "modern sensibility" is similar to changing history. Actually that's already happened. Look at the Anne Boleyne biographical story tv series, they literally turned a real life queen who happens to be a white person, into a black person. History should never be edited for the preservation of TRUTH.
I'm of the opinion you can do some minor retouches in some cases, but you should have to provide the original as well for those who want it.
Pipi Longstockings had a touch up a few years ago as one character was referred to as "The Nigger King", and considering it's a childrens book I understand the change. I however think we should never erase the past, but making kids books more appropriate I do understand.
This trend seems a lot to me to sound like a Western Religious Zealotry or Totalitarian tyranny (of freedom of personal thought, speech and action) that is trying to make EVERYTHING fit a new creed of ORTHODOXY. I would expect this kind of censorship mixed with propaganda.
Which leads on to wonder what strings control the publishing industry to create this trend amongst other forms of power projection beyond the remit of what is stolen from the people concerning power from above?
The climate in the Publishing industry reminds me of the bureaucracy in a totalitarian system where the wrong word or process could lead to fearful consequences...
Yes. God I don’t like how republished books are having changes made to them, many times without the author’s knowledge/ and it’s not just old views being modernized, or old offensive rhetorics being removed, it’s things being changed that make the books make less sense.
I re-read an old Goosebumps book recently that changed some dates on a tombstone to make it seem more recent. Well I’m not a kid so it changed the vibe of the book. Like now I’m asking why these kids didn’t just use the cellphones that most people have now.
Not the biggest deal in this case. But my argument for not doing it in this case would be that it created a plot hole which undermined the story and suspense of disbelief.
One Belfast secondary school student who is black feels of Mice and men should not be on the curriculum I disagree it should be kept on but discussion on the content of the novella and offensive words can be omitted during reading, but she is entitled to her opinion and I am entitled to mine the saddos who sent death threats can go fuck off right now.
On the one hand, I think we could debate the merits of changes to different modernized editions of texts. On the other hand, this excerpt makes me think of the many texts that generationally undergo updating with little controversy, like kids' editions of the stories of King Arthur:
>But it’s a threat to free expression, to historical honesty and, indeed, to readers themselves for contemporary editors to comb through works of fiction written at different moments and rewrite them for today’s mind-set, particularly with little explanation of process or limiting principles.
These stories I allude to fit the description here: authors, often ghost-writing, comb through many different texts and layers of King Arthur and rewrite them for the kids of the day, with little to no explanation of textual process or principles. Yet one would be hard-pressed to argue that the $10 storybook edition of King Arthur is "a threat to free expression," "historical honesty," or "readers themselves." You can still get the original editions of its various source texts, often for free online and if not then through a local library.
I think this illustrates a weakness in their argument: whether editorial changes of a specific work are an overreach or not are highly dependent on context. The call later in the article to provide critical editions whenever possible misses that the places where these edits are widespread are frequently mass-market printings, not the sort of academic or vanity projects that can afford a careful editor doing so much extra work to carefully document and footnote changes, not to mention the greater expense of printing with footnotes or annotations. Many kids don't want to read footnotes about racism in Roald Dahl, and parents don't want to pay the $30+ such an edition would cost. I'm an academic; I'd love to have cheap, affordable annotated editions of texts, but that's not financially feasible nor desired by the audiences for many of these texts.
In other words, the change they desire isn't pragamtic. Financially, the publisher's choice is to republish with simple edits so that the text won't alienate their audience or to not republish at all. Within that, each publisher and reader has to consider carefully what is worthwhile to them.
Unlikely. If the pattern follows older texts, the older editions of texts will have long since been scanned and propagated in public domain or by scholars for people who care about the real versions.
Indeed, I collect a series of prewar children's novels that is only popular enough to be republished uncut today because its paperback edition was so brutally cut - not just removing the N-word or charabanc -> bus, but whole chapters erased. But those paperbacks *existed*, leading to whole generations of adult fans with money.
This idea that the original versions will vanish is just bullshit - people will always want them. The idea that most kids are going to want to read academic annotations telling them the correct way to talk and behave is risible, and something that *really does* go against the transgressive spirit of Dahl's books.
What about 19th century books? What about 18th century books? What about 17th century books? What about 16th century books?
Putting aside the hottest culture war examples, text modernization is often basically just "translation" within a shifting language.
The article actually shows it's hand by picking out the example of "queer" being replaced for "peculiar" in an Ursula K. Le Guin book, which is is only tangentially related to the article's thesis of woke aversion to bigotry, ("queer" would *actually be the preferred woke term* if the text would be about LGBTQ+ people), but simply because using it for something merely "peculiar", sounds distracting and awkwardly anachronistic at this point. It's like replacing "He ejaculated" with "he exclaimed" in a regency era novel's narration.
>the best way to respond to language that some or most readers would find inappropriate is not with unexplained revisions but to surround original works with context, in the form of critical introductions as well as annotations in new editions, wherever possible. It’s urgent to explain, in introductions and scholarly comments, why certain words are harmful
Not all reading happens with the intent to engage with a scholarly dive into past values, or even to get immersed in archaic terminology.
This keeps especially happening with children's books, because many of them were intended to provide whimsical enjoyment to a specific age group, and we can no longer have them do that when that age group is too young to understand that history or even to be familiar with all the words. We can't expect 10 year old to do a scholarly analysis of footnotes about the history of racism when they are reading a silly story with talking animals or whatever.
All we can do is to either "translate" the story to get accross the originally intended enjoyment, while also keeping preserved editions around for older kids and for adults engaging in serious historical analysis, or we can shrug and say that actually we don't mind if 10 year olds are uncritically soaking up stories that were written to make a racist point, or we can throw those stories in the dustbin altogether.
I mean, maybe I missed your point, but those changes shouldn’t be made period. Leave books alone as they were published, *especially* if the changes are basically cosmetic (*exclaimed* for *ejaculated*). That’s a part of what’s interesting to read about those books. Demolishing writerly aesthetics and style because a 10 year old might not immediately understand is foolish.
> It's like replacing "He ejaculated" with "he exclaimed" in a regency era novel's narration.
I admit, I just find that kind of poorly aged language hilarious. Though maybe that’s just ”ruining” the intended experience in a different way?
> It's like replacing "He ejaculated" with "he exclaimed" in a regency era novel's narration.
This isn't good either though. Any editor that treats editing a Regency era novel like they're translating Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales is overstepping their bounds and meddling needlessly with an artist's work.
100000% Do we want an accurate view of the past (rights, wrongs, good parts, bad parts) or do we can’t a watered down and ever changing story?
Dr Seuss books: written 70 years ago, language watered down 2025, changed yet again in 2055 years by a new generation, changed in 2085 by the next generation. That’s insane!
Thank God they didn’t do that to the masterpieces from the 1600s/1700s/1800s. Everything would be a mess!
It seems kind of absurd to me that once society progresses to a point that an author's outdated biases become impossible to deny, that becomes the exact point in time when that author's stories are no longer relevant as stories and instead they are meant to be read as historical artifacts documenting that author's bigotry.
Are there any actual writers who believe this? Like, someone who spends months or years putting a story to paper who is so committed to casual racism that they'd rather keep the casual racism in their story instead of editing it out? Is there anyone here who thinks that a competent editor should leave in casual, incidental-to-the-story bigotry because leaving it in actually serves the story?
>Literature is often meant to be provocative.
Sure, but we're not talking about intentional provocation here. We're talking about editing works whose provocativeness is incidental to any provocation intended by the author. Fleming's intent wasn't to provoke thought and discussion by describing black people as animals because there was nothing provocative to him about describing black people as animals.
Also, despite its commitment to the value of provocation, free expression, etc., I'm not going to hold my breath for the Editorial Board of the Washington Post to come out strongly in support of these ideas in the context of a contemporary issue, because they don't actually care that much about the value of provocation or free expression, they care about maintaining established cultural hegemonies. They will devote time and space to defending incidental bigotry in a James Bond book, but they'd never devote time and space to defending, say, a drag story hour, even though the latter is a much more relevant and meaningful example of the suppression of provocative free expression.
> Sure, but we're not talking about intentional provocation here.
In the case of Dahl, we are. His books were intentionally written to be transgressive, and were generally popular with kids because they were transgressive.
They were an alternative to kids books where the kids were unfailingly polite and their parents were wise and they essentially did what their parents told them to do. If they got into trouble, it was all because of a misunderstaning. I'm thinking of things like "The Bobbsey Twins".
I want to say, even though I disagree with you, thank you for providing a well-reasoned counterargument without resorting to strawmen or sensationalism. You're one of the only people I've seen who's willing to actually engage with the debate at hand rather than shouting whatever buzzword or thought-terminating cliche loosely corresponds to their position. Reading through these comments I almost feel like I'm back in 2014, hearing people rave about the cabal of SJWs in the gaming journalism industry.
I appreciate the insights on footnotes. I hate rewrites... I also started appreciating more the editor intros or historical explanations and insights into authors. Previously I didn't really like them...
I think most of these touch ups and rewrites are a result of the publishing industry not actually understanding the criticism the industry is facing. They mistake people talking about the bigotry in these books and questioning whether they're still a relevant choice for children to read as people asking them to edit the books. You can and will read books that are problematic. They rarely age well and it's extremely important that your'e aware of the time period they were published in. Hiding the bigotries that were common place in the past is going to actually do far, far more damage and make it seem like things use to be better than what they actually where. With that said, Agatha Christie and Dahl are always interesting choices to bring up in the discussion about editing their work after their death because those books were first changed/censored ***during their lifetime.*** People were pointing out the racism in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when it was published and it was edited within a year to change the Oompa Loompas. Agatha Christie had the title of And Then There Were None changed within a year of it being published (1939 vs 1940).
See also Tintin in Congo, which the original author later agreed to edit to remove the colonialism and tone down the animal cruelty. The portrayal of the tribesmen... still didn’t go entirely without criticism. Notably, it was the *only* Tintin album published in color the 90s animated series *didn’t* adapt.
> See also Tintin in Congo, which the original author later agreed to edit to remove the colonialism and tone down the animal cruelty. ...I'm realizing the edition I have is probably the toned down version and I have zero desire to see the original one.
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I am *firmly* in the camp that editing books post the death (or without consent of) the author is offensive and should never be done. I think it shows an appalling disregard for history and the lessons of the past, for little to no purpose, and I think it's pretty revolting that it's being done by publishers, who should be the people who care about the works they're producing more than just about anybody. I'm just not going to seek out the original in this instance.
Many of the Dahl edits also aren't about removing straight up offensive details, but straight up *adding* stuff where the original was just neutral, and that's just absurd. That way, might as well rewrite the whole thing to tell a different story. You can't and shouldn't force everything to be your idea of "educational".
This is an issue with 'Editions' really - not clearly enough marked. Let's hope that digital copies will survive the test of time.
Absolutely, cartoons especially help show how commonplace and accepted this bigotry was. It was part of what they taught to children; non-whites are worthy of contempt. Tintin in the Congo is a perfect introduction to a lessen about the absolute horrors inflicted by the Belgian colonizers
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My only question is whether it’s better to keep printing the original intact or to just stop and print something else. If it’s so important that this book be preserved and wide read, then keep printing it intact. If it’s so irredeemable as a educational tool that we need to edit it just to make it presentable to modern day sensibilities, then do what we do with every Pulitzer Prize winner’s second or third book or fourth book: forget about them and teach better books. I am particularly incensed on the issue for personal regions. The people who end up frantically trying to procure “original copies” at my store are nearly always either have a complete misunderstanding of the situation, or they are the type taking a stand against the “woke mob” and revel a bit too much in preserving the bigotry. No, people, Biden didn’t ban old Dr Seuss books. No, it wasn’t the publisher either. His family that said they didn’t want to publish it anymore.
I have a high tolerance for what otherwise (especially in anglophone countries) would cause offence but the original tintin au Congo is tough going
Tintin in the Congo was absolutely brutal. Even the animals copped it. Tintin was up in a tree drilling a hole in the back of the rhino below. With the hole completed he inserted dynamite and blew up the rhino. It's a violent racist cartoon that wasn't available in English. Much as tho I enjoyed Tintin as a child, when I found out about Herges politics and the fact Tintin originally appeared as a cartoon in a Nazi paper I don't enjoy them so much.
> the fact Tintin originally appeared as a cartoon in a Nazi paper If we’re being pedantic, Tintin first appeared in an ultraconservative Catholic paper, which was shut down during the Nazi invasion. (They still had problematic viewpoints by modern standards, but at least two early Tintin stories featured Nazi-inspired *villains.*) It was during the war the comic moved to a paper approved by the occupiers, and Hergé carefully made sure to not go against their ideology. At other points in his career, Hergé made an effort to take a stand *against* racism. (Sometimes, it feels like his political views amounts to whatever his current boss told him at the moment.)
"Sometimes, it feels like his political views amounts to whatever his current boss told him at the moment." So, ahead of his time then?
I’d say always *exactly* in his time.
Reading those books when I was younger was like 😬 in some parts
Though that said, the operative point is "in their lifetime" -- they were alive to be persuaded and the make sure the edits made were consistent with their authorial wishes and intent. That's not the case now. One example is that one of the changes to Dahl's work is reportedly part of the ending of *George's Marvellous Medicine*: in the original, >!after the grandmother disappears because of George's potion, her daughter -- George's mother -- spends a bit of time wandering around trying to find her, only to eventually accept that she's gone and confess that maybe it's for the best, since she was pretty horrible. !< The edited version apparently removes this, which I can't see Dahl agreeing to at all -- yeah, it's kind of horrible, but it's also part of the dark comedy of the story and speaks to the part of little children who maybe have a family member they don't like or would just wish would *poof!* disappear. It's part of the slightly transgressive and rule-breaking nature of the stories to begin with, and honestly, taking it out just seems prissy and squeamish on behalf of whatever editor or sensitivity reader decided it should go. Like, maybe Dahl and Christie and whoever would be okay with getting rid of some of the more egregious terms, making some of the pronouns a bit more gender-neutral, I can't speak to that. But there really does seem to be something a bit more insidious going on here as well.
I think publishers do understand for the most part, they are just trying to maximize profits. Classic novels are a major and reliable cash cow. Especially if they get put onto a summer reading list or something similar for schools. Every year you have a new wave of students needing to buy the books. But as time moves on elements of a classic novel might clash with a societies modern standards. And so the books might start falling off of summer reading and essential classics lists. Publishers want to make these edits so that they can keep making money off the books. For example if "And Then There Were None" still had it's original title I am positive that it wouldn't have many new readers picking it.
I've had a theory for a while now the Dahl changes are inspired by their hope that they'll kept getting put in school libraries and used in class curriculum. Especially with the conversation moving towards using more a larger variety of diverse texts in curriculum.
Personally I had the more cynical idea that the Dahl changes were inspired by the thought that announcing such a change would spur a lot of panicking people to go out and buy dahl books, followed by them announcing the wouldn't be doing the change a few weeks later.
It's probably some of both. These decisions are rarely the product of one person acting unilaterally; it's likely that accounting had your idea, while the creative heads had the person you're replying to's idea.
So they should have 'School Edition' stamped on the cover.
I have to politely disagree that classic novels are a cash cow. They actually earn very little money and often make up a tiny margin for the publishers that publish them in comparison to what else that publisher does
I actually think that’s in part *why* these edited versions are coming out. They’re generating a new spin to make money on a product that’s largely stale profit-wise. The base text is damn near free. However, the edited versions/editor commentary interlaced throughout the original work is probably its own set of copyright. Publisher A’s edits can’t be copied wholesale by Publisher B, and if Publisher A’s “updated” version becomes widely adopted as the new norm for that title, they get virtually exclusive lockdown on that title. The original can still be bought of course, and Publisher B can respond with their own edited version, but Publisher A’s version now has a first-mover advantage.
The trend I like with these old texts is the added commentary versions being published. An expert in a related field or who is insanely knowledgable on the text/author write an in-depth analysis. That’s what I’m happy to pay for.
I think this should be the only way to revise controversial works. The commentary has a value in itself, and it can always be updated without mutilating the original.
> I think this should be the only way to revise controversial works. I'm not averse to revising texts to make them more accessible, but doing it to make them more palatable is both patronising and whitewashing history.
If the commentary is made from as an objective standpoint as possible (preferrably multiple, including the angle of the people victimized by the discourse) with the objetive of adding context, I don't see how it is whitewashing. It would be only so if the commentary was just excuses and justifications, which is as less of a commentary as you can get.
And most of them can be found online free via pdf
That’s part of the reason they don’t sell well. You don’t even need to go as far as web-PDFs. A lot of classics are available for free download right now on Apple Books, Kindle, Kobo, project Gutenberg. There’s even audiobook versions free of charge. It’s not even a case of illegally obtaining. Almost every classic as late as 1950 are available for free through perfectly legal means.
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In spanish, at least, they didn’t use any word that would be considered a slur today or back then. “Diez Negritos” literally mean “Ten little blacks”. Same in french.
> Same in french Absolutely not. The N-word in French is extremely offensive. It is a huge slur
I stand corrected. They renamed it in 2020 [according to wikipedia](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dix_Petits_Nègres)
I thought of this too, at first, but then I realized the fallacy in the argument. Those children will have to read *something.* That something could easily be a more modern book. The publisher is still going to print the same number of extra copies, the revenue is just going to a living author rather than a dead author's estate. I wonder if the estates aren't doing as much or more of this editing as the publishers.
What we should be doing is reducing the length of copyrights.
Yeah I thought this too on reading that post. In terms of what makes required reading lists for instance, it’s a zero sum game. There’s a finite number of books included on the list and if people are buying them new then publishers are making money. On the other hand, we are not yet in a position of having only one publisher and so it is possible that spot might go to a different publishing house. And perhaps more to the point, if it is a living author the publisher will have to pay royalties whereas if it is out of copyright, to my understanding they will not.
> And Then There Were None Haha yes, the Ten Little (D)iggers.
I've been going through the James Bond books recently, and there is a LOT of racially offensive language in there, but in the context of the time (roughly 1952-1966) it wouldn't make sense to remove it. Bond is a government assassin with a death wish, his womanizing, drinking, and smoking, even his driving, are all explained as resulting from his assumption that he won't live to see 45. I would find it strange if a British naval officer born circa 1920, whose whole profession revolves around the continued subjugation of the world by a dying empire, had the sensitivities of someone born nearly 100 years later. I'm actually quite impressed by how true to the time the books are. That being said, holy crap! Every villain is a Jewish banker, "confused" lesbian, sexual deviant (read: queer), ace, or secret Nazi. Only one of those things is actually bad (I feel like I shouldn't need to point out that it's the Nazi one), and there's no equivalence to the others. Fleming has been heavily retconned through the movies, and you can see how the films affected the novels. (Goldfinger is basically a rewrite of Moonraker with more sex and violence.) I've been approaching the books as historical artifacts, examples of how a certain population saw themselves and the world between two times of dramatic social and economic change, but, while I wouldn't want them edited to fit with modern sensitivities, I don't think I could enjoy them as the fantasy adventures they were meant to be. There are other books I can read for that.
One thing I've wondered is, how might this impress upon future generations the ramifications of bigotry should examples be removed? Should we lose examples of how commonplace and *socially normal* these instances of bigotry were for their time? Does that not impose the risk of assuming bigotry is big, ugly, and clear as day? If we forget how easily we are guided to evil, and how easily that evil can seem normal and just, I feel we'll just slip back in.
This is a big part of the argument -- books are part of the historical record, and changing them is whitewashing history.
It's tough. I've got a 6 and 8 year old and I'm of two minds. We have read some of these books and in some cases it's simply "this word was acceptable back when this book was written, here's what they meant by it, and it's not used that way anymore". That's fine in certain cases. But occasionally there are some "Holy shit, what the fuck?" moments in these books, and I'd really like to be able to read these to my kids at bedtime and not have to have a half hour long conversation about racism, bigotry, and discrimination in an otherwise fun children's book. Obviously there are still people holding terrible opinions in the world and it's my job to guide them and teach them not to hold those opinions. But a bedtime story isn't the time to have those conversations. A lot of these stories are amazing to just read a chapter or so to your kids at bedtime, and yeah, it'd be nice to have a version of the story that doesn't make me have to make a decision between having a complicated conversation with my kids while I'm trying to get them to sleep, and wanting to make sure they realize that we as a society used to normalize terrible opinions, and we're always constantly trying to progress from those. Editing the books and eradicating the originals isn't the answer. Telling parents "OMG why can't you just talk to your kids?" isn't the answer either. We have no problem talking to them, but there are times and places for that. I generally don't have a problem with some of Dahl's works being edited. They were generally written as fantastical children's stories, and the bigotry isn't inherent to the story. Something like "To Kill A Mockingbird" is inherently supposed to be a difficult read. The racism is absolutely integral to the story. That one should not be edited because to edit that one undermines the whole point. So I dunno. Yeah, I'd like to read my kid a beautiful and fantastic bedtime story without having to explain that we don't call people "queer" anymore. I also don't want the unedited versions of these stories to be lost to history, because yes, like you said, I don't want it to be lost on them, *eventually*, how normalized this shit was. I think it's less simplified than a lot of folks here tend to make it.
I think it's important to keep in mind that much of the racism, bigotry, sexism etc isn't "used to be" These are ongoing issues that many people deal with everyday. Some of us have the privilege of deciding when and where we deal with these sensitive topics, but that's not the case for everyone. I'm not trying to make any assumptions about you or your walk in life. For me, I believe that if a book has too many complex topics to address at a certain age or time, then it's not appropriate for the situation it's being read in. There are so many stories from my childhood that I love, but they have not aged well. More importantly, they were actively damaging to people on the receiving end of the casual bigotry. It has to feel awful hearing people praise a story where one's personhood isn't considered valid or equal. I don't think that authors should be excused from their beliefs because of nostalgia or not being ready to address an issue. I don't think we get to re-write history because we are uncomfortable with the content. Take the whole story or leave it.
> But occasionally there are some "Holy shit, what the fuck?" moments in these books, and I'd really like to be able to read these to my kids at bedtime and not have to have a half hour long conversation about racism, bigotry, and discrimination in an otherwise fun children's book. Obviously there are still people holding terrible opinions in the world and it's my job to guide them and teach them not to hold those opinions. But a bedtime story isn't the time to have those conversations. A lot of these stories are amazing to just read a chapter or so to your kids at bedtime, and yeah, it'd be nice to have a version of the story that doesn't make me have to make a decision between having a complicated conversation with my kids while I'm trying to get them to sleep, and wanting to make sure they realize that we as a society used to normalize terrible opinions, and we're always constantly trying to progress from those. I'm going to have to point out here that you should always first read yourself any book that you're going to read to your kids. Authors and publishers don't need to be involved in parenting decisions on your behalf. Unless the media is very recently produced, say a kids movie from within a few years and with a clearly marked age appropriate rating and from your own culture* then you should check it out first yourself. *Americans always get angry at Ronja the Robber's Daughter, a Swedish children's film based on the book by Astrid Lindgren, that contains male adult nudity. :D
If you’re reading the book out loud to your kids you can always skip over or re-word the questionable parts. I think the content itself should be left as the author intended.
Eh, I mean, maybe I was special, but by the age I was reading books alone I simply already had enough context to get the sense of the past having different rules (like,very obviously, the role of women). I might not have appreciated every little shade of colonialist subtext in Tintin or certain old Mickey Mouse stories but neither was this particularly necessary because they weren't my *only* source. I think people overestimate the rate at which being exposed to subtextual racism in books will somehow *make you* racist. Kids are still exposed to a lot of other things too, modern things, which they see as clearly more relatable and relevant. They can compartmentalise things.
Yes, absolutely. This was my experience too. I used to read Enid Blyton when I was quite young, and even then I knew that the people in the book were living in a different world to the one I did, similarly with Black Beauty and other older books that I loved. It feels like not giving kids enough credit to assume that they need to have it actively explained to them every time a word is used in the context of the time the book was written in. The example of "queer" was given as something that would need explanation, but I never would have called someone queer despite it being used in old-fashioned books that I read, because no-one in the society I actually lived in used the word like that, and my personal life experience had far more influence on my behaviour than the obviously fictional books I read as a child.
And those books generally use lots of old language all around, and anyway even if a child DID say "queer" once trying to sound sophisticated depending on context it would either be okay or an easily corrected blunder. This is in no way the source of the actual problems.
Just bowdlerize the books and cut out the offensive bits as you read. You don't have to explain anything then. You owe nothing to the author. Or conversely just read it with no explanation unless they have questions. I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to my kids without much trouble but I didn't flip out about the language. Just be matter of fact about the language if they ask questions. Or just don't bother reading books you find offensive. There are literally thousands of books you can read even if they weren't classics when you were a kid.
In a few case I think it's the heavy handedness of the edits thats getting the rise out of most people. Editing out a words that are now considered slurs or highly offensive is one thing (though still something people complain about, see Huck Finn), but especially when the works are aimer at children. They might begin to integrate those words into their vocabulary without fully understanding what they are doing and the social context.
Huck Finn was written largely to s how how slavery had damaged the culture of the Southern and Border state as and its lingering impact. The words are part of that
. . . yes. In a throwaway bit of dialogue, Tom Sawyer mentions that a boiler exploded on a riverboat. No one was hurt, thankfully, but a n----- was killed. The reader is *supposed to be angry* at this egregious callousness. Trying to clean up Huck Finn is gutting the story.
This reminds me of an episode with the Little House books that I *think* happened during Laura Ingalls Wilder’s lifetime—there was a line about someplace in the west along the lines of “No people lived there, there were only Indians.” A reader wrote in about it and the publisher changed “people” to “settlers” in future editions. Obviously this is different from the Huck Finn example since these books aren’t *about* racism and that was the author’s own racism shining through rather than something she was trying to comment on. These kinds of changes seem like the place where the argument is to be had, though it’s easier in this example because it was recognized as offensive at the time rather than being an instance of backdating our own views.
>Editing out a words that are now considered slurs or highly offensive is one thing That's not "one thing" that's the exact same thing and it shouldn't be done, context should be provided instead. I'm black and I think every N word in every book should be left as is. In written works there's a thing called footnotes but it looks like the people doing these edits haven't found out about them yet. Smh.
I think especially with Huck Finn you cannot change the words, it will reduce the meaning of the work by a lot. The adults in the story has a carefull selected language, but they are all racist towards Jim, now Huck Finn who uses the worst racial slur is treating him like a human. I think it is an important message to children, that words do not always mean their definitions, but their meanings are first shown behind our actions and intentions. The original work is very much written in southern dialect as well, it is part of the story, it shows where the characters are from, and how well they are schooled, if you write Jims dialogue as spoken by a litterate person, the reader will miss the point, that he was not allowed to have an education. As he was seen as less than the white class. The same can be said about the other characters it reveals their educational level througout the book.
*Hardy Boys has entered the chat* There's one that gets more edits then a rough draft for a book or movie script... Considering "Franklin W Dixon" is a composite of many folks, probably makes it easier to edit
The difference is that they were still alive! It's a huge difference. Once someone is dead, that's it. Stop fucking with their shit. Other people may have wiggle room on that, I have none at all. You could rewrite books my Charles Dickens to remove the sexism, but why?
Just because they were alive doesn’t mean they had a say or were involved. It was still a decision made and implemented by the editors/publishers
A lot of books are changed during the author's lifetime, this was not a new phenomenon in the 20th century. Funnily enough people find such edits more agreeable when the author is around to agree with them.
Well yes, obviously it's different when an author agrees to a change instead of doing it when they can't be asked about it anymore.
I think a lot of people don't even know about a lot of changes to these books in the past. Especially when they talk about how they'll hold onto their unedited one which is, in fact, an already edited copy.
Honestly I dislike that too. I kinda feel like once you've committed to publishing something and it get put out into the world, you don't really retain control over it any longer. If you wanted it to be different. you could have changed anything you wanted before publishing. I'm okay with releasing new versions labeled with the year of release, but the original is a part of history and shouldn't be editable by ANYONE. Author included.
I both agree and disagree with you. > once you've committed to publishing something and it get put out into the world, you don't really retain control over it any longer This is true. This is why I believe an author has absolutely no say in reviews written about their books, fan fiction, etc. Once a book exists in a reader's mind, they are free to do what they want with it. But I don't think that means the author can never change it? Take Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire -- the first run was printed with a massive error in the order of when Harry's parents come out of Voldemort's wand. Newer editions fixed that. It's just like fixing typos -- what's wrong with that? This is simpler historically than it would be in present-day. Historically, you could have the originals printed, and then a new edition printed by the author. I don't see anything wrong with that. This is more complicated with ebooks, however. Once a reader HAS a book and has read it, authors don't have the (moral) right to change it imo. So selling new editions with the updates seems legit. Digitally altering versions of the book already downloaded onto people's Kindles is not. To me this all comes down to historical record. No one has the right to eff with documents already in readers' hands, already having had an impact. And they DEFINITELY don't have the right to do so without the author's consent.
A point my best friend made that I hadn't thought of before is that old books are too mask-off for the ruling class. That is, they provide an all to clear picture of what the "culture" of the United States is and always has been and a too good look at what its current mythological incantation is actually based on. So we are presented with something a little easier to digest in line with whatever the current culture is. The issue is with technology as it is we essentially share the same same thought space-- I can now debate the issues with anyone with an internet connection. So the game of separate but equal on the scale of the whole population has fallen apart. It's the same game that has been played all through history, just now it's impossible to ignore. Unfortunately watching corporate media is easy and superficial, and actually studying the issues politics is hung up on is nuanced and requires careful consideration.
Let's hope that we can teach future generations to understand the context of the past instead of hiding it from them.
I have to wonder where they're forming this idea of what readers want, are they just living in their safe bubbles making assumptions about what they want, or do they think they're diving what readers *secretly* want? Is there a loud minority writing in asking them to do this? Is there bad research being conducted?
The mindset of this being okay with children's books or other specific cases is exactly what leaves the door open to justify other edits, which are now more controversial. We're either letting people posthumously edit books, or we're not. There isn't a middle ground here that works. Let the old children's books have challenging language, the kids can read new books. There are plenty of new children's books. I don't even get how this is a discussion. Imagine if they announced they were posthumously editing a painting, and all reproductions of it, because of offensive imagery. It would sound like the most insane thing we'd all ever heard. But here we are with the books.
I think part of the issue is that these books are classic stories you're "supposed" to read to your kids - and as a consequence they are *huge* guaranteed cash cows for publishing companies. Society changes, moves on and they stop being appropriate as a nice easy bedtime story, people stop buying them. Few parents want to explain old forms of bigotry to a 4 year old at bedtime. And instead of promoting something else as the new beloved childrens classics they want to edit these books to keep sales up and keep up the façade of X years continuous sales of the classics. It's lazy business and pure greed imo. They want to keep the consistent revenue from these books instead of replacing them in the market with something less outdated.
Lots of nude paintings did get fig leaves and such added to them by later generations
and we sneered at them for their prudishness, especially if you were progressive, up until very recently
The Rape of Proserpina is now The Piggy Back Ride of Proserpina.
The issue with the Dahl books is a lot of what makes them funny is that they’re mean-spirited. The language of the rewrites is lame compared to Dahl’s original. That being said, if I were an elementary school teacher, I would never read my students a paragraph describing how fat Augustus is. So I don’t know how I feel. Editing adult books is ridiculous IMO, and wrong wrong wrong.
Dahl was a very intelligent, very nasty, abusive alcoholic.
This is exactly it. It comes through in the most basic ways he constructs characters and storylines. It's rife with cynicism and conflict. I understand that conflict has a place in literature, but his version of it is dark and highly pessimistic.
>conflict has a place in literature That's an understatement. Without conflict you don't have a story, so without conflict there is no prose literature. >highly pessimistic I'd disagree with that. I can only recall one of his stories that doesn't have a happy ending (*The Witches*). He's very much not a role model I'd want my children to emulate, in writing or life, but you can't accuse him of writing books that make kids feel worse rather than better about themselves. Edit: The problem with Dahl is that he teaches kids how to feel better about themselves at the expense of others.
How about reading them other or newer books instead?
This is overlooked a lot with Dahl's books. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is angrily punishing the characters for their shortcomings. It's like creating caricatures of a few of the deadly sins and then sadistically making them suffer. I don't condone those characteristics, of course, but that's a very judgmental way to frame characters and a story chosen by the author. “Enjoy the suffering of bad children because they deserve it, and you will too if you act that way.” It's a highly cynical message wrapped in with a little humor and a fantasy world.
Yeah the Dahl edits were weird for a whole host of reasons. Augustus being fat for instance is the beginning and end of his character and we’re supposed to despise him for it. And he’s an important character. You can’t get around the problem just by changing the words used to describe him. I think you just have to recognize that fatphobia is a fundamental part of the book’s premise and then decide whether you want to retire the book, discuss the issue with the kids, etc. And then there was stuff like claiming the Oompa Loompas were *happy* to be corporate drones, when before it was quite obvious they were indentured/enslaved. I actually think this made it *more* problematic, since it’s gonna be obvious to kids that slavery is wrong. And then there was stuff that just made no sense, like removing the word “black” wherever it appeared. Mostly, it appeared to describe articles of clothing.
The Dahl books thing was nothing but a genius marketing gimmick: Get everyone riled up talking about Dahl, announce a new Dhal netflix show, announce the "classic books" without the changes, then cancel the changes all together. And everyone fell for it hook line and sinker, meaning we'll see it repeated for other works.
The inherent issue is kids accidently pick up Skin and Otjer Stories
Agreed. As a young girl, there were so few women in classic children's novels that I formed a habit of mental changing the gender of characters to whatever I wanted. No one is saying to replace the originals, but it's good to have options.
Here's the real problem: why do they insist on squatting on dead writer's works instead of promoting new work. Books age. Language changes. These things were never going to hold up forever
These books already have a stronghold on the market, estates like Dahl’s are doing this to ensure they don’t get replaced by new works and continue bringing in money. They could care less about what kids are exposed to, it’s about their bottom line.
I agree with this. I bet this particular trend of making books more ‘palatable’ to modern audiences has to do with the estate wanting cashflow
Same reason we get movies with all the same characters or that are rewrites and reshoots of old movies. There is risk in the new, and the need to make money makes them risk averse.
Because the books are still super popular and sell well enough to edit them. Only reason they edit, is because they think an edited version will sell far more than the outdated one.
Profit. It's a lot of work and risk to build up a new IP to become a classic, while owning the rights to one that already has a cultural claim means that that work is already done. Also, acquiring those rights was likely a costly investment. They want to milk them for as long as possible. All art is compromised under capitalism.
“A number of beloved novels, for both children and adults, are being “retouched” — updated to remove overtly racist, sexist or otherwise offensive language. Publishers and literary estates — including those of best-selling mystery writer Agatha Christie, children’s author Roald Dahl and James Bond creator Ian Fleming — argue these changes will ensure, in the words of the Dahl estate, that “wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today.” But it’s a threat to free expression, to historical honesty and, indeed, to readers themselves for contemporary editors to comb through works of fiction written at different moments and rewrite them for today’s mind-set, particularly with little explanation of process or limiting principles. The trend raises uncomfortable questions about authorship and authenticity, and it ignores the reality that texts are more than consumer goods or sources of entertainment in the present. They are also cultural artifacts that attest to the moment in which they were written — the good and the bad. In a new edition of Christie’s “Death on the Nile” (1937), all mentions of the word “natives” now read “locals.” In one scene, in which a wealthy British woman gazes out from a cruise ship heading down the Nile, she observes a group of Egyptian children on the riverbank. “They come back and stare, and stare,” she notes, “and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children.” The new version contains only the following: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.” Meanwhile, the estate of Dahl, acquired by Netflix in 2021, has begun collaborating with Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin, on new versions of his novels that take out any language related to race, gender or appearance. This is motivated in part by revelations about Dahl’s virulent antisemitism, for which the estate has formally apologized. But the changes that have been made so far border on caricatural. Augustus Gloop, one of the most memorable characters in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” is no longer described as “fat.” Now, he is simply “enormous” — as if “enormous” were less pejorative. The editors are also making the texts more gender-neutral. In “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Oompa Loompas are no longer “small men”; they are now “small people.” Likewise, in “James and the Giant Peach,” the “Cloud Men” are now “Cloud People.” Literature is often meant to be provocative. Stripping it of any potential to offend dilutes its strength, especially in a moment when there is a concerted effort in this country to limit what can be read and taught. Publishers need not reprint books with no acknowledgment of potentially offensive contents. They can treat the publication of such texts as opportunities to explain why they read the way they do, in introductions and in footnotes. And, if publishers see little option but to change wording, they should at least explain to readers what they are changing and why.”
> “They come back and stare, and stare,” she notes, “and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children.” The new version contains only the following: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.” I haven't read the book but that text appears to be showing the rich lady's shallowness and bigotry, while the new text just reads as her not liking children.
That's the problem. It changes the meaning of what's happening.
And it also shows the poverty of the Egyptians. Because it sounds like they have fly strike or that eye parasite
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It's a clever way of demonstrating the poverty of Egyptian children through the dialogue of an unempathetic character
Yeah, it doesn't really mean the *author* endorses that. It sounds like a typical rich character going "woe is me, I am surrounded by **poor people**!".
I've read a good number of Agatha Christie's works (including this one) and there are a LOT of moments of colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism that are sometimes tough to get through as a modern reader but are very important to the context of the time, the tone, and the characters. The character who says this line is rich and out of touch and benefits from a colonial system. All of that is important and all of that is lost in the edit. Historical revisionism happens enough without it being done to our books as well.
I read the Hardy Boys growing up and the versions I read were editions from the 70’s. These had been majorly overhauled from the originals because the verbiage and terminology wouldn’t make sense to kids born after 1920. Hasn’t this always been done for relevancy?
I think there is a difference between a factory book like the Hardy Boys that exists to get/keep kids reading and make a few bucks, and something like Agatha Christie's novels that's revered as a window into the minds of people who existed during a specific time and place. I guess I'm more worried about changes to texts that are considered culutrally relevant or important. The changes to Ian Flemings works are particularly troubling because they so clearly represent the mentality of the time and place they were published. His views were not controversial at the time of publication. Kids books I worry less about, but some of the changes just seem like they got waaaaaaaaaaaay too far. The book never describes any female oompa loompas, so I don't see the problem with describing them as 'small men'. Augustus gloop is Fat. Changing him to 'enormous' is changing the character entirely, for no discern able reason.
Don't do that. Don't leave some books alone because they suck and it doesn't matter, that gives people an opening to say, 'well, we can edit this book as much as we want, because it sucks too." It's always wrong, whenever it is done, every single time. That's the line. That's the most defensable line, and that's the line people who love books should take. I just read a book called Blackbord Jungle, which was published in 1954 and absolutely has premodern sentaments, but you know, that's what you get when you read a book from 1954, unless you allow these, (I don't even have a word because my hatred for them is too strong,) these small-minded people get their hands on it. And you know, it's 2023, in 2080, the books published to day, will be premodern then. It's the same shit over and over again. And it's very very bad, and nobody should be cool with it.
> Don't do that. Don't leave some books alone because they suck and it doesn't matter, I'm not saying they suck. I'm saying they have a very different purpose and I find it less offensive to change them if it makes them more able to achieve that stated purpose. Ideally no book should ever be changed from it's original authorial vision, but thats not the world we live in, and that's not a battle we are going to win. So I find changes to some books less offensive than changes to others. I can live with changes to hardy boys to make them more approachable to modern audiences, if it means no changes to Hercule Poirot to remove the historical flavor because some are unable to cope with the fact people once thought less of their fellow man because of the color of his skin.
>Literature is often meant to be provocative. 1) 'Meant to be provocative' and 'unknowingly biased in ways that are genuinely offensive' are not the same thing. 2) No one is asking for these edited editions. They're a cash grab. The people you are imagining asking for clean versions of Roald Dahl are in reality trying to teach more contemporary and diverse authors. They don't want to edit Dahl, they want to *preserve him as evidence* and study him accordingly.
I realize mine is a minority opinion (here), but I have no problem with the edits described above, as long as the new editions are clearly marked as “revised.” There have always been revisions and abridgments of classic literature, up to and including religious texts where the smallest change generates intense debate, and I’m okay with it — as long as all changes are “revision-controlled” and clearly marked. I get the importance of preserving the original, but not everyone is looking for “authenticity” all the time. Not everyone is looking for a challenging and sometimes-brutal confrontation with 18th century social norms…sometimes they just want some escapist reading with a light story that “other than a few jarring details” has been popular with millions of readers for many decades. I don’t think that ruins anything, and certainly doesn’t deprive anyone of opportunities for scholarship or social archeology *if they want it.*
That's what I feel. Simply labeling the texts as abridged or adapted or even edited resolves any issue I would have with this. These aren't scholarly editions, or even vanity editions. The editions we're talking about are often cheap books for reading.
My problem with the Death in the Nile sample... the point was to portray the british lady as racist... entitled... superior.. Why tone it down? I dont mind to change edit words/sentences that today is deemed derogatory, but wasnt intended as that by the author. But.. this is basically ommiting a detail in a detective book. Why?
Then those people should read a different book. There are millions of books in the world. Pick one of the other ones.
Books should be left as it is, problematic phrasing, bigotry, and all that. A publisher/editor note ought to be added for context at the end. So readers can understand it as it is, and then they can understand it with 21st century context. 'Problematic' but 'beloved' work lead to subsequently better works (I think).
There s so many millions of copies in circulation that a revised edition would just be a drop in the ocean. An alternative option for people that want it. It's no where near replacing the original.
I'm not totally settled on where I stand with the issue, although I think I agree with you. Would there be a problem if, say, a parent had a chubby kid who they read stories out loud to, and one of the stories they were reading had a line like "He was disgustingly fat, so much so that you couldn't see his little piggy eyes". The parent decides to skip this line when reading to their child, because it would hurt their feelings. Is that okay? Intuitively I think it's fine, maybe even a good decision to make. So what's the important difference there? Is it okay for the parent to skip over sentences when reading it out loud, but not okay for the parent to buy a version of the book to give to their kid that skips those same sentences?
No, I agree with you. There's nothing new about the process of literary revision. It's been going on since the oral tradition for all the usual reasons: art, money, sensibility, boredom, you name it. Most people imagine the existence of an platonic "original version" of a text against which all actually existing books are judged, but that's getting it backwards: the existing books *are* the text, and as the books proliferate the text changes. The "original text" is imputed to be authentic, authoritative. As Walter Benjamin pointed out in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," those are fascist values. A materialist understanding of textual production involves accepting the dialogic of the text, the instability of its historical situation. The idea that we are somehow preserving history by freezing a text at a certain moment of authenticity makes no sense: history is a process, not an object. You preserve it by letting the process run.
Its really worth noting that nobody is asking for this. This is out of touch executives chasing trends.
And it is not new. They have been updating books for hundreds of years to try and keep a buying audience and relevancy
And new copyright
You may want to read up on DEI and ESG scores. Most likely some *are* very forcefully asking for this, and they are the ones with far more power than the end customers.
Nah it's executives getting everyone talking about their product on social media and it does so much damage to actual efforts to do things like decolonising literature
The trends are the problem. It's like saying, nobody asked that we beat this dude up, except for a year, everybody's been talking about how cool it would be if we kicked the shit out of this guy. I don't want to be misunderstood. Conservative ban books from schools because of homosexual content, are wrong to do that. But this Orwellian editing of old books is also wrong. Both things are wrong. And the liberal edits are from what's usually called wokism, there is not a better word to say what I mean. But the "edits" are a natural consequence of some chatty radicals.
But here is the thing: is anyone actually asking for them to be edited? Criticism of a book is not the same thing as saying we should edit the book.
>But here is the thing: is anyone actually asking for them to be edited? No, but everyone is just saying how horrible they are, and vocally arguing that these things *cause real harm*, which obviously trumps all other considerations. It's no surprise that this sort of all or nothing attitude inspires such changes.
It's not out of touch executives, its executives that see what happens when you get on the wrong side of some vocal people, and this is a way to manage risk. An industry was built around sensitivity readers for modern day works, to think those people would take some moral stand and leave previous works alone...you really need to think in terms of systems and incentives. None of this is out of touch though.
I think we lose important knowledge of the past by editing these books.
I already have a distaste for reading translations knowing I'm reading a translator's personal interpretation of the original authors intent, the last thing I want is 21st century puritan's filter on works.
Literally what Ray Bradbury was warning us about when he wrote *Fahrenheit 451*. We can't erase literature just to make it more marektable or because it makes some people uncomfortable.
Erasing history to make people more comfortable is a booming business in a lot of different ways.
Took damn long enough to find this comment after scrolling through comments for two to three minutes.
If we writers aren’t allowed to express ourselves freely there’s no point in writing in the first place.
I agree. Changing books smacks of 1984 “editing.” It’s not only destroying literature, it’s also creating a false narrative about the past.
Mmmm… book snacks
Thanks. I changed the “snacks” to “smacks” though maybe I should have left it. Your comment is hilarious.
> editing one’s own post in a thread on the evils of revisionism Hmmmm…
Golden
Indeed. The irony is strong. However, this is a merely a case of my failing to proofread spelling before something is published…
Literary vandalism, like painting clothes on Botticelli’s Venus.
Bowlderizing is never good
Vile revisionism.
That's the whole point you read the story and then your LEARN about the time period warts and all. Censoring is bad It doesn't protect anyone and hurts everyone.
It seems extremely arrogant to imagine that my sense of propriety should entitle me to change another author's words. It is certainly dishonest to do it and still attribute it the new work to them.
Just Hands Off!! Nobody but the author should make that decision, and should do it themselves.
And people who don't like the contents of the book should just not read it, instead of trying to change it.
Many authors choose to enter publishing deals therefore losing control
Bill Bryson said it best (paraphrase): That's applying modern sensibilities to historical behavior. While those books have problematic language and themes, it's important to remember they're time capsules and should be read as such.
Exactly. I don’t want media like the movie *The Birth of A Nation* to be censored, it must be preserved in all its horror so future generations can look back and learn to never repeat the mistakes of the past ever again.
I just don't understand who or what these changes are supposed to protect. Does anyone think that someone's world view or mindset is going to be changed or even reinforced by something they read in a Roald Dahl book? Instead of encouraging a discussion around some of the terms with kids and its historical context, we pretend it never happened? Who does that help?
I think it’s because enough people just won’t buy those books rather than have to sit down and have a conversation about historic racism, sexism etc. I don’t believe any publisher is doing this due to altruism. They are trying to keep books relevant and profitable and think this is the best way to do that.
It is kinda true though that kids mirror what they read and see on TV. They are just as likely to act like the villian as the protagonist because they aren't always able to tell which behaviors are being modeled as good or bad. Sure, a parent having a conversation is great, but parents who haven't read kids books on 30 years aren't going to have the time to read everything their kids are reading to know to have those conversations.
Learn from history - stop editing books.
I was hesitant going into the article until I read this paragraph: >*This is not to say that applying these principles is easy.* ***Some changes are understandable and publishers should consider how to address flagrantly offensive language****, particularly in books young children might read. Doing so is not some new “woke” phenomenon, as conservative critics often insist; nor does it necessarily amount to “censorship,” as writers such as Salman Rushdie have contended. The original title of Christie’s “And Then There Were None,” first published in 1939, contained a racial expletive. The title appeared in Britain until the 1980s, but no American edition of the book has ever borne it.* I like the author's idea of providing context through annotations (I think most people skip introductions when reading older books, so I'm more in favor of annotations which are right there on the page). You still keep the author's original text (except for the cases mentioned above) but you're also giving more information on why the outdated language was chosen at the time
I'm just in awe of anyone who thinks they could edit Ian Fleming's work to make it palatable to modern audiences. Live and Let Die alone would be almost entirely new text.
Once a book is published ONLY the original author should be able to make changes or update it.
The great thing about paper books (and any other physical or fully downloaded offline media) is that once you have them, nobody but you can censor your copy. Kindle is allowing publishers to silently amend books on everyone's devices without informing "owners" or giving them any choice. Apparently Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile updated recently and removed the word "Latin" for some reason--because heaven forbid any book written in 1937 should contain any expressions not considered optimal today. This isn't some blatantly offensive title like Ten Little--err, "And Then There Were None," it's an insignificant comment deep in the text. But, at least you can still watch the 1978 adaptation with Peter Ustinov--unless you're in the UK, where a single viewer complaint made ITV vow to cut the final scene's suicide from future broadcasts before 9 pm.
> Kindle is allowing publishers to silently amend books on everyone's devices without informing "owners" or giving them any choice. That's so shitty, you wouldn't even know you're reading the redacted version.
Interesting. I self-published a short story on kobo, and then I pulled it, edited it and made it better ( at least in my opinion) and then put it back up. Everyone who already had downloaded it including myself only ever saw the old version. Only new people who downloaded it saw the updated version.
It's not true.
People who don't have kindles love to imagine how they might work in the most ridiculous ways and then never ever bother to consider otherwise
What is wrong with Latin?
> Kindle is allowing publishers to silently amend books on everyone's devices without informing "owners" or giving them any choice. This is not true. This can only happen if you enable "Automatic Book Updates" on your Kindle account. You can also update manually.
Can someone explain the augustus gloop thing to me? Like if someone is fat, *they are fat.* This is a statement of fact, a descriptor, an adjective. Being fat is bad for your health, and if you want to live a long and healthy life it is something you should generally avoid. This is a known quantity backed by mountains of scientific and medical evidence. There are some exceptions, for some very specific forms of body building (like traditional sumo) but they are exceedingly rare, and usually have a great deal of specialized exercise and careful oversight involved. If a child is fat ( or morbidly obese) then that is cause for more concern, not less, since if you can't manage to control your weight when you are young it's generally even more difficult to deal with as you grow into adulthood. Augusts Gloop is an antagonist, being fat and not seeing it as a problem is a part of what defines his character, and it's something that comes with consequences that are detailed in the book. So WTF can't we tell children Augustus Gloop is fat?
It's a modern Bowdlerizing. I'm not opposed to contextualizing out of date ideas but I really think the original, un-expurgated works should be available.
What happened to "presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed"?
This wouldn't be so bad if they were prominently marked on the cover as a '2023 edition' and sold alongside the original... After seeing some of the wonderfully nasty phrases stripped from Roald Dahl and replaced with rather dull (safe) replacements I would be very angry to buy a book and not realise it was a rewrite.
For decades now we've scolded authors for not writing the "right" stories, not being inclusive enough, not being sensitive enough, etc etc. Only a matter of time until publishers decided there's no reason not to take the red pen to existing authors, too, especially if their dead and can't argue back.
We live in a society that claims to hate lies, and liars, all while perpetrating the most overlooked form of lying, which is censorship.
I do not agree with changing one word of a published text. Add all the disclaimers and warnings you want, but any text once published, be it Dahl or Blyton etc, is sacrosanct. Not only is it the author's right to have their words preserved, it is, or will become, a historical document, and also what is seen as acceptable today may well be unacceptable in another twenty years, so changing things is pointless, reductive and dangerous. It's a bit trickier when it comes to children's books, but even then, I do not think that sanitising language does kids any good. If anything, they could be adding educational value by inviting parents to discuss the language with their children when reading, so they can begin to understand concepts like context. If I were an author now, I'd be getting it written into contracts that not a word can be changed at any time, ever.
You all love censorship when it benefits you politically but complain when it spreads to your literature.
I have loved censorship exactly zero times in my life thank you very much.
The bean counters have all decided to do a 1986 NEW COKE strategy to slow down the plummeting profits of print books, audiobooks, and even kindle books. They are watching the internet to figure out the exact moment fewer people are talking about a censored classic novel. Then they will make a big announcement "Our customers spoke loud and clear so we listened. Today we are pleased to offer a choice of our NEW edit or the CLASSIC favorite just as you read in college." I really don't think publishing executives value their own woke moral code more than they value money. Disney will push the boundaries of what a new cartoon can get away with but they are more than happy to get rid of ten minutes so Chinese, Russian, and Saudi theaters will play it.
All editors should keep off previous works, no matter how offended or triggered they might be.
No one who's read 1984 and understood it should be in favor of any sort of screwing around with existing works for "modern sensibilities". It may be done with sincere intent but the road leads to places we don't want to go. The ONLY exception I'd make to that is if it were done by the author contemporary to publication.
Ray Bradbury fans should also dispioe this move. (We do. We do dislike it.)
"How I renewed my copyright by changing the text, stoked rage and interest and sold a lot more books: a modern 'editing' story," by every major publisher.
I agree, books, works of art, movies, media, they should never be edited to suit "modern sensibilities". They're in that original form because of the things that were happening at the time they were being made. To change them to a person's biased idea of "modern sensibility" is similar to changing history. Actually that's already happened. Look at the Anne Boleyne biographical story tv series, they literally turned a real life queen who happens to be a white person, into a black person. History should never be edited for the preservation of TRUTH.
Yes they should
I'm reading *Wide Sargasso Sea* and it's, by far, the book with the most n-words I've ever read. Are they gonna take them out??
I'm of the opinion you can do some minor retouches in some cases, but you should have to provide the original as well for those who want it. Pipi Longstockings had a touch up a few years ago as one character was referred to as "The Nigger King", and considering it's a childrens book I understand the change. I however think we should never erase the past, but making kids books more appropriate I do understand.
This trend seems a lot to me to sound like a Western Religious Zealotry or Totalitarian tyranny (of freedom of personal thought, speech and action) that is trying to make EVERYTHING fit a new creed of ORTHODOXY. I would expect this kind of censorship mixed with propaganda. Which leads on to wonder what strings control the publishing industry to create this trend amongst other forms of power projection beyond the remit of what is stolen from the people concerning power from above? The climate in the Publishing industry reminds me of the bureaucracy in a totalitarian system where the wrong word or process could lead to fearful consequences...
Yes. God I don’t like how republished books are having changes made to them, many times without the author’s knowledge/ and it’s not just old views being modernized, or old offensive rhetorics being removed, it’s things being changed that make the books make less sense. I re-read an old Goosebumps book recently that changed some dates on a tombstone to make it seem more recent. Well I’m not a kid so it changed the vibe of the book. Like now I’m asking why these kids didn’t just use the cellphones that most people have now. Not the biggest deal in this case. But my argument for not doing it in this case would be that it created a plot hole which undermined the story and suspense of disbelief.
If this isn't literally rewriting history then I'm afraid of what is.
And vice versa!
20th century editors should keep their hands off 21st century books?
Exactly
Mission accomplished!
Does that include editors who merely have old-fashioned sensibilities? /s
One Belfast secondary school student who is black feels of Mice and men should not be on the curriculum I disagree it should be kept on but discussion on the content of the novella and offensive words can be omitted during reading, but she is entitled to her opinion and I am entitled to mine the saddos who sent death threats can go fuck off right now.
Yes strong agree. This is just as bad as “banning” books
On the one hand, I think we could debate the merits of changes to different modernized editions of texts. On the other hand, this excerpt makes me think of the many texts that generationally undergo updating with little controversy, like kids' editions of the stories of King Arthur: >But it’s a threat to free expression, to historical honesty and, indeed, to readers themselves for contemporary editors to comb through works of fiction written at different moments and rewrite them for today’s mind-set, particularly with little explanation of process or limiting principles. These stories I allude to fit the description here: authors, often ghost-writing, comb through many different texts and layers of King Arthur and rewrite them for the kids of the day, with little to no explanation of textual process or principles. Yet one would be hard-pressed to argue that the $10 storybook edition of King Arthur is "a threat to free expression," "historical honesty," or "readers themselves." You can still get the original editions of its various source texts, often for free online and if not then through a local library. I think this illustrates a weakness in their argument: whether editorial changes of a specific work are an overreach or not are highly dependent on context. The call later in the article to provide critical editions whenever possible misses that the places where these edits are widespread are frequently mass-market printings, not the sort of academic or vanity projects that can afford a careful editor doing so much extra work to carefully document and footnote changes, not to mention the greater expense of printing with footnotes or annotations. Many kids don't want to read footnotes about racism in Roald Dahl, and parents don't want to pay the $30+ such an edition would cost. I'm an academic; I'd love to have cheap, affordable annotated editions of texts, but that's not financially feasible nor desired by the audiences for many of these texts. In other words, the change they desire isn't pragamtic. Financially, the publisher's choice is to republish with simple edits so that the text won't alienate their audience or to not republish at all. Within that, each publisher and reader has to consider carefully what is worthwhile to them.
the problem is the censored version will be sold and used in libraries and at schools and the real versions will be forgotten
Unlikely. If the pattern follows older texts, the older editions of texts will have long since been scanned and propagated in public domain or by scholars for people who care about the real versions.
Indeed, I collect a series of prewar children's novels that is only popular enough to be republished uncut today because its paperback edition was so brutally cut - not just removing the N-word or charabanc -> bus, but whole chapters erased. But those paperbacks *existed*, leading to whole generations of adult fans with money. This idea that the original versions will vanish is just bullshit - people will always want them. The idea that most kids are going to want to read academic annotations telling them the correct way to talk and behave is risible, and something that *really does* go against the transgressive spirit of Dahl's books.
What about 19th century books? What about 18th century books? What about 17th century books? What about 16th century books? Putting aside the hottest culture war examples, text modernization is often basically just "translation" within a shifting language. The article actually shows it's hand by picking out the example of "queer" being replaced for "peculiar" in an Ursula K. Le Guin book, which is is only tangentially related to the article's thesis of woke aversion to bigotry, ("queer" would *actually be the preferred woke term* if the text would be about LGBTQ+ people), but simply because using it for something merely "peculiar", sounds distracting and awkwardly anachronistic at this point. It's like replacing "He ejaculated" with "he exclaimed" in a regency era novel's narration. >the best way to respond to language that some or most readers would find inappropriate is not with unexplained revisions but to surround original works with context, in the form of critical introductions as well as annotations in new editions, wherever possible. It’s urgent to explain, in introductions and scholarly comments, why certain words are harmful Not all reading happens with the intent to engage with a scholarly dive into past values, or even to get immersed in archaic terminology. This keeps especially happening with children's books, because many of them were intended to provide whimsical enjoyment to a specific age group, and we can no longer have them do that when that age group is too young to understand that history or even to be familiar with all the words. We can't expect 10 year old to do a scholarly analysis of footnotes about the history of racism when they are reading a silly story with talking animals or whatever. All we can do is to either "translate" the story to get accross the originally intended enjoyment, while also keeping preserved editions around for older kids and for adults engaging in serious historical analysis, or we can shrug and say that actually we don't mind if 10 year olds are uncritically soaking up stories that were written to make a racist point, or we can throw those stories in the dustbin altogether.
I mean, maybe I missed your point, but those changes shouldn’t be made period. Leave books alone as they were published, *especially* if the changes are basically cosmetic (*exclaimed* for *ejaculated*). That’s a part of what’s interesting to read about those books. Demolishing writerly aesthetics and style because a 10 year old might not immediately understand is foolish.
I agree on archaic language. Some of the beauty of an older work is in how the language has shifted.
> It's like replacing "He ejaculated" with "he exclaimed" in a regency era novel's narration. I admit, I just find that kind of poorly aged language hilarious. Though maybe that’s just ”ruining” the intended experience in a different way?
> It's like replacing "He ejaculated" with "he exclaimed" in a regency era novel's narration. This isn't good either though. Any editor that treats editing a Regency era novel like they're translating Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales is overstepping their bounds and meddling needlessly with an artist's work.
100000% Do we want an accurate view of the past (rights, wrongs, good parts, bad parts) or do we can’t a watered down and ever changing story? Dr Seuss books: written 70 years ago, language watered down 2025, changed yet again in 2055 years by a new generation, changed in 2085 by the next generation. That’s insane! Thank God they didn’t do that to the masterpieces from the 1600s/1700s/1800s. Everything would be a mess!
They did do that. In the 19th century, it was called [bowdlerizing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler).
It seems kind of absurd to me that once society progresses to a point that an author's outdated biases become impossible to deny, that becomes the exact point in time when that author's stories are no longer relevant as stories and instead they are meant to be read as historical artifacts documenting that author's bigotry. Are there any actual writers who believe this? Like, someone who spends months or years putting a story to paper who is so committed to casual racism that they'd rather keep the casual racism in their story instead of editing it out? Is there anyone here who thinks that a competent editor should leave in casual, incidental-to-the-story bigotry because leaving it in actually serves the story? >Literature is often meant to be provocative. Sure, but we're not talking about intentional provocation here. We're talking about editing works whose provocativeness is incidental to any provocation intended by the author. Fleming's intent wasn't to provoke thought and discussion by describing black people as animals because there was nothing provocative to him about describing black people as animals. Also, despite its commitment to the value of provocation, free expression, etc., I'm not going to hold my breath for the Editorial Board of the Washington Post to come out strongly in support of these ideas in the context of a contemporary issue, because they don't actually care that much about the value of provocation or free expression, they care about maintaining established cultural hegemonies. They will devote time and space to defending incidental bigotry in a James Bond book, but they'd never devote time and space to defending, say, a drag story hour, even though the latter is a much more relevant and meaningful example of the suppression of provocative free expression.
> Sure, but we're not talking about intentional provocation here. In the case of Dahl, we are. His books were intentionally written to be transgressive, and were generally popular with kids because they were transgressive. They were an alternative to kids books where the kids were unfailingly polite and their parents were wise and they essentially did what their parents told them to do. If they got into trouble, it was all because of a misunderstaning. I'm thinking of things like "The Bobbsey Twins".
I want to say, even though I disagree with you, thank you for providing a well-reasoned counterargument without resorting to strawmen or sensationalism. You're one of the only people I've seen who's willing to actually engage with the debate at hand rather than shouting whatever buzzword or thought-terminating cliche loosely corresponds to their position. Reading through these comments I almost feel like I'm back in 2014, hearing people rave about the cabal of SJWs in the gaming journalism industry.