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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

#871

Post by foldr »

prepend wrote: post #829
WesternWind wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They often describe eye color and hair color, which is very rarely pertinent to the plot, but nobody complains about that. Weird how people love to complain about non straight people existing in stories though.

> They often describe eye color and hair color, which is very rarely pertinent to the plot, but nobody complains about that. I think because describing external characteristics is something that we all do as we experience the world. “That person has brown eyes. That person has red hair.” Are just part of moving through the world and I perceive this regardless of how consequential they are to the plot of life. Sharing…

I don't think it's unusual at all for fiction to describe internal characteristics of characters that aren't easily knowable. That happens pretty much any time a story tells you something about what a character is thinking or feeling. If you object to an author mentioning that a character is gay, it surely can't be because that's not a directly observable characteristic. You could cut The Portrait of a Lady down to about 5 pages if you removed all the descriptions of people's psychological states.

While we're on the topic of Roald Dahl (who perhaps doesn't quite reach the psychological depth of Henry James), here are a couple of examples that I easily found in The Twits:

"Mr Twit thought that this hariness made him look terrifically wise and grand."

"...his evil mind kept working away on the latest horrid trick he was going to play on the old woman."

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

#872

Post by josephcsible »

nicbou wrote: post #656
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…

> 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.

In the case of Roald Dahl's books, aren't sales of the originals going to be permanently ended?

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

#873

Post by chaostheory »

lozenge wrote: post #869
chaostheory wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do children of any specific minority feel when they read historical accounts of racial injustice against their people? Probably really terrible, and maybe even scared. Should they not learn about that history because it makes them feel horrible? That would be extremely unwise since the mistakes of history tend happen again once society forgets. Old works of fiction also belong in historical narrative because it h…

The point of the book is to entertain, not to make someone feel scared and like an outsider. Dahl also made changes for this reason.

That’s not the only point of fictional works including Dahl’s. Often there are allegorical messages, themes, and satire.

It’s not constructive to stick children’s heads into the ground, especially when that self-chosen ignorance will lead to much worse societal outcomes long term.

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

#874

Post by chaostheory »

bentcorner wrote: post #850
chaostheory wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not explain the historical context of these books instead? (That’s I what do with my children.) My children appreciate the transparency and extra discussion. That leads to a better longer term outcome for society than with the ease and convenience that censorship provides. History’s mistakes tend to repeat when society forgets them. We can’t rely on educational institutions doing our job for us since the same tre…

Fair enough, and I applaud your approach, but IMO there's a time and place, and bedtime wasn't one of those times or places I wanted to get into these kinds of discussions.

Maybe read other books instead of helping destroy classics and advancing societal censorship?

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

#875

Post by somewhat_drunk »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #786
throwaway049 wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really quite difficult to lose weight and keep it off. Certainly cheaper than dentistry, but still difficult. I read a book called 'Fat Chance' that goes into the science of why it's difficult.

I'm a bit conflicted on this. On the one hand there's an absolute overweight & obesity epidemic, roughly 80% of Americans males are Overweight (35%) or Obese (35% obese, 5% extremely obese)[0]. So obviously, it's not easy to maintain a regular weight as 80% fail. On the other hand these figures are wildly different among humans with similar genetic profiles in other countries, and among humans of the same country 1,…

Agreed. Every Sunday, I cook a large portion of something healthy, and store it in containers to eat throughout the week. This past week, it was chili with beans. The week before, chicken vegetable brown rice soup. The week before, chunky vegetable spaghetti sauce with whole wheat noodles. I've become pretty good at cooking, so it's always tasty, good food. I always get at least six large servings from what I cook, and the total cost is rarely more than $10.

For breakfast, I usually have oatmeal cooked with soy milk, with a banana chopped in, sweetened with honey. It's unreasonably good, super easy, very filling, healthy, and dirt cheap - probably less than 50 cents per breakfast.

A plate of sliced apples, avocados, whole wheat toast (ideally good specialty bread from a bakery), baby carrots, cheese, and pickled vegetables also makes for tasty, filling, easy, cheap meal.

I've always strongly disagreed with the notion that healthy food is prohibitively expensive. A quick trip to any grocery store proves that eating healthily is cheaper than eating a bunch of processed food, and I've found that you don't even have to put that much effort into cooking to get something that ticks all the boxes.

I can only conclude that most people are some combination of very lazy when it comes to cooking and ignorant about what's possible.

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

#876

Post by josephcsible »

jojobas wrote: post #610
bko wrote: post #15

Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…

Except none of that is anywhere near good.

I think GP meant that the list was good as a source of information about the changes, not that the changes themselves were good.

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

#877

Post by vineyardmike »

_heimdall wrote: post #588
vineyardmike wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to what others said, it’s just not a common saying in modern English. If you described someone annoying as screeching, older people likely would understand but most would find it strange language for today.

At 34, I can't imagine that someone 10 or 15 years younger than me would find it strange for me to say something about a car's brakes screeching Also, what should us older people call a screech owl?

Screeching car tires is common, but the book replaced a screeching woman with an annoying woman.

Sorry for the confusion, language is context dependent, and the context the book used screeching is strange in modern English.

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

#879

Post by mdp2021 »

News from Axios:

Salman Rushdie reacted: «absurd censorship» and «should be ashamed».

https://www.axios.com/2023/02/19/roald-dahl-childrens-books

--

Ok, now for the trigger of a mother of all reactions:

reportedly, some text was added in a paragraph of Dahl's about hags «bald under their wigs»:

> There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that

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

#880

Post by tedunangst »

furyofantares wrote: post #581
tedunangst wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you going to do with all the old books?

I certainly don't re-read every book I have over and over again. Mostly they're decoration. The replies about burning them are incredible when my post only said I'm less likely to keep picking the book up.

I asked because, unlike the 500 other comments opining whether they love it or hate it, you seemed to be the only person who might actually take action.
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