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Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#261

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

hinkley wrote: post #224
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turns out a person being something you dislike has no direct bearing on the quality of their writing and storytelling. It turns out that this has a direct bearing on my perception of his writing. For example i don't have to pay for his stories, if the author doesn't like me for the color of my skin or for belonging to people that the author happens to dislike. I am also allowed to say that these are very objectiona…

He's been dead for over 30 years. I'm pretty sure your money doesn't affect him one way or the other. If you don't have any friends who have parents who are morally reprehensible, then you don't have many friends.

> If you don't have any friends who have parents who are morally reprehensible, then you don't have many friends.

I wouldn't judge anyone for the deeds of his parents.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#262

Post by vxNsr »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #128

It turns out that Dahl was a real antisemite, to me that is more of an issue: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/06/roald-dahl-fam...

As a Jew I’d say it sounds like he had a grudge against a specific Jew that he generalized to all Jewish people. Let him be hateful doesn’t bother me. His books are fantastic, I’m gonna go on eBay and look for an older collection that isn’t badly mangled like the ones the publisher is putting out now.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#263

Post by jrmg »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #244
jrmg wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offensive is probably too strong a word. The reason to replace an aggregate ‘brothers and sisters’ with ‘siblings’, ‘mothers and fathers’ with ‘parents’, or ‘boys and girls’ with ‘children’ is because for all of these the replacement suffices without calling attention to gender when it’s not necessary to do so. There’s also an argument that the ‘X and Y’ phrasing makes the ‘X’ seem more important than the ‘Y’, or mak…

The words siblings, parents and children all existed when Dahl wrote these books, yet he chose to use brothers and sisters, mom and dad, and boys and girls. He specifically used these words, because he's the author and wanted to convey a specific meaning.

I wasn’t trying to make a value judgement about replacing the existing words in Dahl’s already-written books. The parent comment wanted an explanation to _why_ someone might select ‘siblings’ over ‘brothers and sisters’ and I answered with my understanding.

I do now attempt to use the single-word non-gendered collective nouns in speech myself for the reasons I gave, and I think it’s a good idea to do so.

To discuss the edits to Dahl’s work: I would argue that for these ‘Xs and Ys’ examples he was probably just using the popular idioms of the time rather than choosing them to convey a specific meaning as you say. That would certainly be what I would’ve done, without much consideration, 20 years ago!

But that’s obviously not the case for all the edits that are reportedly being made.

The edits in aggregate do make me uneasy. I’m not sure how I’d feel if they were more limited.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#264

Post by [deleted] »

josephg wrote: post #257
mcguire wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most cogent analysis I've seen is that the changes were made by the owners of the books in order to sell more books.

From the article: > The Dahl estate owned the rights to the books until 2021, when Netflix bought them outright for a reported $686 million, building on an earlier rights deal. The American streaming service now has overall control over the book publishing, as well as various adaptation projects that are in the works. I suspect they're hoping netflix will make movies based on his books. Netflix seems pretty sensitive…

[deleted]

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#265

Post by narrator »

mcguire wrote: post #227
narrator wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

It is, in fact, so thoroughly banned that it's available with free shipping from Barnes & Noble.

Even mentioning it indirectly gets my comment moved to shadow banned! That's why everyone is so confused where all this radical social change stuff came from. Anyone who even does research into this area gets shutdown with overwhelming force. There is no debate. Everything goes straight to censorship like an answer to the question I was replying to cannot exist. It is simply a mystery! The whole thing happened spontaneously all by itself as a fundamental process of history!

What's interesting is this is a great chance to understand how huge social changes take place and what all the moving pieces are. Heck, plan your own massive social change using this movement as a template. Create whole new consumer product categories the same way! Maybe everyone needs nose hair trimmers, how would you start that massive social change?

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#266

Post by throwaway675309 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #144
ilyt wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your triggers are your responsibility; you can just not read author instead of pushing for and celebrating desecration of their work. > once you take a position of empathy. ...and the usual thinly veiled "if you don't agree with my opinion you're a Bad Person". How about taking position of sensibility for once ?

> Your triggers are your responsibility; you can just not read author instead of pushing for and celebrating desecration of their work. The same argument can be made about people who are triggered by this edition of the book. You can just not read the new edition instead of pushing for and celebrating the silencing of its owners.

"You can just not read the new edition instead of pushing for and celebrating the silencing of its owners"

The "owners" (who likely don't have a imaginative bone in their entire skeleton), if you'll pardon my vernacular, should stay the fuck out of the authors original work instead of mucking around with it, particularly inane changes like the removal of the word fat.

And by pushing a new addition of the book while discontinuing the originals they seek to erase the authors original work. If anything this particular addition should have a large CliffsNotes banner on the cover.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#267

Post by oska »

swatcoder wrote: post #181

Those of us who grew up near various religious communities in the second half of the twentieth century are familiar with the edited and abridged versions of media made to be more palatable to the morals of whichever community, as well as the scandals over media which were an affront to them for whatever reason. Obviously, a publisher committed to those communities and who can get the rights to do so will make a “clea…

> and forgot that secular morals can run just as puritanical

I'd suggest that it is a new religion being satisfied here, that of 'wokeism'.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#268

Post by josephcsible »

bitwize wrote: post #108

The alternative is what the Seuss estate did: remove the books from print entirely. As a friend of mine said about the Seuss books, if you cannot understand why this is being done, you are part of the problem.

That's not the alternative, it's an alternative, and a bad one at that. A good alternative would be to keep making the books available forever exactly the way Dahl originally wrote them.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#269

Post by jar067 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #193
shadowgovt wrote: post #140

T.H. White's Once and Future King went through several revisions (including, unfortunately, the removal of the Madame Mim fight that showed up in the Disney movie). Only to say: such edits are not unprecedented; few things are the Bible (itself a heavily-edited book).

> including, unfortunately, the removal of the Madame Mim fight that showed up in the Disney movie Where does this character come from? Searching for Madam Mim or Madame Mim seems to turn up nothing but Disney results. Searching wikipedia for Madam Mim does nothing but redirect to the cast of The Sword in the Stone . Wickedpedia makes a claim similar to yours: > Madam Mim appears in the original version of the novel,…

The character was in the initial version of the Sword in the Stone. The Once and Future King has a revised version without Madam Mim along with other modifications. The Once and Future King is not a novel but a collection of four previously published works. It is also missing the beautiful finale: The Book of Merlyn.

You can still buy the Sword in the Stone as a standalone novel, which will be the original version and includes the character. I bought an illustrated copy for my son.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#270

Post by CyborgCabbage »

Can't really see what all the fuss is about. They shouldn't have made the changes, no doubt, but they're all pretty insignificant. Publisher's exert significantly more influence when the author is alive and writing the book in the first place. The only one that ticks me off is that they added a "dedication to doctors" to one of the books.
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