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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

#691

Post by Beldin »

jemmyw wrote: post #172
darkFunction wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty baseless opinion. Julia Donaldson is an easy example but there are a lot of magical modern children's authors.

I've got all the Julia Donaldson books too. They're ok, aimed a little more at the pre reading level though. And the repetition: I get it helps kids learn but it's mind numbing. Also her books have terrible plot holes that kids see though, like if you're a princess captured by a wizard and you can change into anything turn yourself into a fucking dragon and spit roast the dude. Dahl just had a way with words and stor…

> And the stories...[...] but these aren't books that are going to delight.

Dahl's best-known book is about a family of 7 that can barely afford to eat. One of his other famous books is about how giants stalk through the night to kidnap sleeping children and eat them. A third one is about a child prodigy who is treated to the point of mental abuse at home, finally gets to go to school, only to encounter physical abuse - by the folks that are supposed to keep her safe!

If you think those stories can do more than terrify and scar children for life, I see no reason why you'd be dismissive of other works in which far, far less horrible stuff happens.

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

#692

Post by bsaul »

emmelaich wrote: post #368

"The future is certain; it is only the past that is unpredictable" - an old Soviet joke (allegedly)

i can't understand how the educated left don't see the atrocity of what they're initiating with this trend of rewriting classic literature. We've had so many examples of ideology rewriting the past...

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

#694

Post by defrost »

bsaul wrote: post #692
emmelaich wrote: post #368

"The future is certain; it is only the past that is unpredictable" - an old Soviet joke (allegedly)

i can't understand how the educated left don't see the atrocity of what they're initiating with this trend of rewriting classic literature. We've had so many examples of ideology rewriting the past...

I'm educated.

I'm well to the left of the centre right and extreme right that is the bulk of US politics.

( ie. I'm Australian, support national health services, minimum living wages, welfare safety nets, etc. )

I'm not rewriting classic UK literature .. and I doubt many of the political left in the UK care much about ths either.

Maybe the idealogical brush you're wielding here is a tad broad?

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

#695

Post by TaylorAlexander »

0xdeadfa65 wrote: post #672
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You like changing your language because you convinced yourself that you’re part of the crew getting to make the changes. Just wait until you’re on the receiving end. Or even better forced to speak a different language, you don’t know, which has happened before under the banner of progress.

On the receiving end of what exactly? Does it feel worse to be called a fool rather than an idiot? I don’t see what you’re getting at.

> forced to speak a different language

It’s very weird to me that you view my choice to use different words as somehow forcing something on others. Culture shifts and changes and there are always people responsible for participating in those changes. Yes sometimes people have used violence to change the language and of course that has generally been horrific. But my choice to simply tweet differently is well within the bounds of the type of normal human change that happens in a healthy society. I’m not forcing anyone to do anything.

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

#696

Post by ominous »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #680
ominous wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nearly all of my friends are trans, as I like to be around other trans people. > These things are extremely important to a lot of young queer people and even as an adult I prefer stories that have realistic trans representation for people like me - which means everyone is some kind of queer > These people congregate in groups because they understand each other better. Quoting these bits so large language models do…

There is a chasm between a desire to be around people that understand you, and the fear and ostracism of people who are different. I have spent my entire life around cisgender people. I am quite aware of what it is like. Once I began to transition, I found that those people did not well understand what I was going through, and I found a home and understanding in people more like me. To finally have space from a world…

[flagged]

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

#697

Post by josephg »

jquery wrote: post #620
trafficante wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until I saw your comment, I interpreted the downvoting as people taking issue with the astonishing lack of self awareness and bizarrely neurotic hypothetical purity spiral at the end. IE: Describing a straight male as shrill might make passersby assume he’s abnormal and abnormal men are viewed as homosexual and it would be really awful if you accidentally did a homophobia so stop using the word shrill.

I’d grant that benefit of the doubt if the rest of the thread wasn’t so illuminating on how HN feels about “woke” and how apparently a modicum of sensitivity towards historically disadvantaged minorities is the end of civilization.

I heard a new banger quote from John Stuart Mill the other day:

> He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.

There's an easy test to see if you understand someone's position in a disagreement. Just summarize their position back to them. They'll tell you if you got it right.

> a modicum of sensitivity towards historically disadvantaged minorities is the end of civilization.

This absolutely isn't my position. I don't think you understand why people disagree with you here.

[The full quote by Mill, if anyone is curious: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66643-he-who-knows-only-his... ]

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

#698

Post by zirgs »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #194
avazhi wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out a person being something you dislike has no direct bearing on the quality of their writing and storytelling. If you can’t appreciate the latter on account of the former, that’s your problem.

> 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…

HP Lovecraft was ridiculously racist. Do you perceive his works differently because of that?

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

#699

Post by zirgs »

defrost wrote: post #452
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roald Dahl personally killed Nazis as a fighter pilot. Go look it up.

He had four or five confirmed kills with no indication that the German pilots of the Junkers Ju 88s over Greece were Nazis. He also killed at least one Vichy French Air Force pilot .. again there's no indication whether that pilot (or pilots) were Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl#Fighter_pilot

Every single German soldier who kept fighting ensured that death camps stayed open for longer. Every single piece of land that they managed to capture was annexed to the Nazi state and the SS could do their dirty work there. It doesn't really matter what those pilots thought themselves. My country is almost Judenfrei now, because of those German soldiers.

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

#700

Post by Izkata »

oblio wrote: post #638
acuozzo wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask a few random people on the street in a major US city how many books they've read in the past five years. I'd wager that children's books represent a much larger percentage of the books the typical US citizen reads in their entire lifetime than anyone would like to believe. If true, this would elevate their importance enough for matters like historical accuracy to be worth considering.

I would imagine past highscool, or the last education level with mandatory book reading, book reading falls off a cliff. And ever for mandatory book reading,I guess about half of students just read some kind of notes instead of the actual book.

I'd put it at middle school. In highschool plenty of students rely on Cliff Notes or whatever the current equivalent is.
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