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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

#101

Post by [deleted] »

ajross wrote: post #52
stuckinhell wrote: post #3

Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…

> But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of magnitude ? Uh... Roald Dahl is one of, arguably the greatest children's author of the 20th century. It's not like we're reprinting old pulp here because we can't write new stuff. Frankly I think your hyperbole is misplaced. Dahl's works are republished, and they're children's literature, so it's not hard to i…

[deleted]

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

#103

Post by sbaiddn »

ajross wrote: post #89
stuckinhell wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not simple republishing. The editing occurring is censorship because modern sensibilities are different today. Roald Dahl was notorious about hating people editing his works. Censorship via stealth editing is just extremely gross maybe even as bad as burning books. If those works don't meet modern standards, let new books be made. It certainly is Yikes territory to me and apparently thousands of others on red…

> This is not simple republishing. The editing occurring is censorship because modern sensibilities are different today. Good grief. That's simply not what censorship means. "Editting" happens all the time. Are journalists being "censored" when the published article doesn't match their words? In fact with translations, "editting" happens every time, by definition. How many times has the Bible been censored by now? If…

This is how of books were censored in the USSR. Or how the Chinese censor the Bible (in their version Jesus picks up the first stone to start a stoning)

Difference is the Soviet had the honesty to censor while the author was alive.

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

#104

Post by dclusin »

tptacek wrote: post #100

I'd be interested in hearing the most credible/reputable sources speaking out in favor of these changes. I've exclusively seen commentators dunking on this (rightfully so), across the political spectrum. To be clear: I'm wondering if we can find specific people speaking up for this, not an analysis of whose side of the culture war is most culpable for it.

The technical/organizational details around implementation of this and how it came to be realized would probably also be interesting to a readership as nerdy as hn. I think I’ve seen a few of these posts but can’t seem to remember them.

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

#106

Post by 40acres »

jemmyw wrote: post #24
stuckinhell wrote: post #3

Censoring old children's books. Yikes. This is frightening in more ways than one. Besides the obvious censorship, and rewriting the past being a bad thing. I can't wait to see what they do to "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984". It'll be ironic and sad if they burn the old unedited Roald Dahl books. But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of m…

> But also have we reached cultural stagnation, that old media still out competes new ones by such orders of magnitude Where is the next Dahl? Why is there no modern Beatrix Potter? Kids still love those stories and style of writing, which is less trite than most of the modern children's books. It does feel like stagnation, with lots of content being churned out but none of it with great staying power. Instead the ol…

JK Rowling built a billion dollar children’s franchise shortly after Dahls death.

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

#107

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

agentwiggles wrote: post #47

Wow. This is so gross. I was a bit put out by the Dr. Seuss controversy a few years back, but at least in those cases, they just stopped printing the books (and, to be fair, the caricatures of various ethnic groups in If I Ran The Zoo are pretty bad). It feels much more disturbing, though, to just silently update the language in the books to be more in line with modern sensibilities. Dahl was a man of his time, and a…

> Dahl was a man of his time

Everyone is a product of their time. People apparently need to be told this now.

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

#110

Post by bitwize »

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…

Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling wrote favorably about colonialism; they were replaced with more agreeable authors.

Use of gendered language is marginalizing to nonbinary people.

It's easy to figure out why these changes are being made in particular, once you take a position of empathy.

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