Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 992 posts

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

#651

Post by oblio »

mandmandam wrote: post #175
Aflynn50 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adults don't, but children might. These books arn't consumed by people who are particularly aware of the cultural context of the ear in which they were written. Things are going to very much taken at face value. A lot of things have changed in the last 60 years.

We gonna edit all books so kids don't take the crazy parts at face value? Swift? Dickens? The Bible? The Torah? There have been thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children's books written in the last sixty years. Leave the classics the fuck alone, especially when the authors are unable to defend their work.

> The Bible? The Torah?

Funny examples you list there, where reinterpretations still happen after 2000+ years.

The approach in your comment is very pop culture or mainstream religion view of this, not an actual, historical one.

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

#652

Post by detrites »

josephcsible wrote: post #92
whoopdedo wrote: post #59

When you rewrite a book like this, does it reset the copyright? Matilda was set to become public domain in 2060 (70 years after Dahl's death). With the books now owned by a corporation and essentially recreated by them, the copyright extends another fifty years.

The rewritten version gets a fresh copyright timer of its own, but the original's copyright still expires the same time it was always going to.

So, if the publisher changes a single word in a new copyright, and the old one expires, can the publisher sue someone who shared the old version? It'd only be one word off, so they could argue it's effectively infringement...

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

#653

Post by VSerge »

webmaven wrote: post #460
faeriechangling wrote: post #160

This is why supporting things like zlibrary is important. One of the arguments I heard in favour of copyright was to give a financial incentive to preserve and maintain old cultural works. Lol guess that theory is out the window. This entire debacle is only possible because of the publishers.

It will be interesting when these works as originally written and published enter the public domain, and the altered versions remain in copyright. I predict that there will be an audience for reading the originals, and a market for brand new updated versions that are more skillfully done (perhaps by a bylined author), but that these specific (and rather ham-handed) publisher-edited versions will be quickly forgotten.

If I understand it correctly, the version entering the public domain would also include the author's own editions (as the limit to copyright of an author is 70 years). In Dahl's case, he had removed some elements that were offensive already in the 60s-70s - think Oompa Loompas as slaves from Africa paid in cocoa beans in his first version. So you would have the still colorful and probably somewhat controversial author versions go into the public domain, and the sanitized versions remain on the publisher side if authored by someone else with new copyright running etc. I agree with the prediction that both types of versions would probably find an audience, and would also predict that kids would probably gravitate towards the version that is the most lively and colourful.

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

#654

Post by PostOnce »

They left in wonky nose, crooked mouth, and stick out teeth, but took out the reference to fat? That's wild.

The fat is arguably the only fixable thing, or at least the cheapest. You can't "just stop eating so much" and fix a wonky nose or stick out teeth.

Calories aren't magic and hard to fathom.

Normalizing being overweight is going to kill a lot of people early.

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

#655

Post by gsinclair »

stordoff wrote: post #198
arthurcolle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like he removed them from his comment or something?

They still seem to be there for me - the poster made a number of replies to the linked comment (one per book) with a table of changes. Direct links to each reply: * Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1154tr5/the_hundreds... * Esio Trot - https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1154tr5/the_hundreds... * The Enormous Crocodile - https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1154tr5/th…

No mention of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Why would that be?

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

#656

Post by nicbou »

double2helix wrote: post #606

I'm a gay man and I think we are going to far with this PC nonsense. I had a hard time growing up in the 90s knowing I was different and being tormented by my peers, so I'm happy to see gay "normalized" in current pop culture more because I think it teaches the younger generation to accept themselves and others. However I feel that it's going to far, for example I started reading a novel the other day but gave up a t…

I've been to a lot of art museums when travelling. If you judged the world by the thousands of paintings in those museums, you could assume that people of color simply didn't exist back then, and that poor people showed up at some point during the 17th century.

I could understand why people might want art to portray a broader world that includes them in it, especially when introducing their children to that world.

It must be wild to see the world portrayed as if you didn't exist, and I think it's cool to adapt beloved classics with that in mind. Comic books have tried every thinkable variation of a character, from a Soviet Superman to a black Spiderman. It did not diminish the originals, but offered new versions with new perspectives.

This is something I'm okay with, so long as the originals don't get labeled as problematic or something.

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

#657

Post by morbia »

double2helix wrote: post #606

I'm a gay man and I think we are going to far with this PC nonsense. I had a hard time growing up in the 90s knowing I was different and being tormented by my peers, so I'm happy to see gay "normalized" in current pop culture more because I think it teaches the younger generation to accept themselves and others. However I feel that it's going to far, for example I started reading a novel the other day but gave up a t…

Another gay man here.

To me it seems like we have this paradoxical situation where the media want to simultaneously present inclusivity and diversity, but don't dare present any of the real diversity for fear of stereotyping. The end result is some token LGBTQ+ characters who are heteronormative, which is disingenuous.

If it is a choice between no gay character and some gay character who is essentially 'straight acting', I'd choose the former every time.

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

#658

Post by wolfendin »

oska wrote: post #404
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See this post by @jasonhansel https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283

Ok, I read the article [1] linked in that comment and I think it's mostly junk. To give one example, the author's picking on the large noses and wigs of the witches as somehow mirroring negative portrayals of Jews is a massive stretch. The stereotypes of witches include all sorts of negative prejudices against older women . Older people have larger noses (and ears), as their faces 'shrink in' a bit (and I think carti…

Damn, I wish I could stretch like this

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

#659

Post by robocat »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #500
jasonhansel wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, The Witches is full of obviously intentional antisemitic tropes: https://www.heyalma.com/is-roald-dahls-the-witches-antisemit...

also the image of the Oompa Loompa in 'charlie and the chocolate factory' can also be interpreted as racist. The NAACP launched a protest, back in 1971 - at a time when racist attitudes were much more common. https://daily.jstor.org/roald-dahls-anti-black-racism/ The movie paints them with orange colored skin, no one was protesting that edition of the original text.

Dahl answered that criticism, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34853399

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

#660

Post by oska »

mongol wrote: post #649
oska wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man's car breaks down in the desert; he's rescued and taken back to his rich rescuer's oasis household. The rich man has a beautiful daughter and equally beautiful wife. A female sneaks into his room over two successive nights and they enjoy wild and ecstatic sex before she sneaks out again, identity unknown. The man cannot figure out whether it's the wife or daughter he has slept with and he's dying to know. On le…

Yeah, but that would never happen unless a more inclusive title instead of "Switch Bitch" is invented. Or, in the words of Chat GPT: "Switch Bitch" is a title of a book by Roald Dahl, which is a collection of four short stories. The term "switch bitch" is a play on words that has a vulgar connotation, and it generally refers to a woman who is promiscuous and willing to engage in sexual activity with multiple partners…

Polly Molly ?
Post reply on HN