Ben Sixsmith has a Critic piece on keeping hold of physical book collections for a number of reasons, one of which is the current trend to produce expurgated editions for the woke reader.
Keep physical books
We have to protect cultural history
A couple of years ago, I had almost my entire collection of books shipped from England to Poland. They had been lurking in my dad’s attic but he understandably decided that he didn’t want hundreds of someone else’s books squatting there rent-free. So, I had to make my own decision: would I throw them away or have them brought to me? I haven’t had an easier dilemma since I had to choose between going to the pub and not going to the pub.
Part of it was sentimentality. I have a lot of memories wrapped up with those books — just as one does with a photo or an interesting shell pocketed on the beach. But I also had a conservationist instinct. Books are not like other objects. If a book is lost then a text might be lost as well.
The whole piece is well worth reading because of both the ephemeral nature of ebooks and the ghastly ghost of Thomas Bowdler.
Yesterday, the Telegraph reported on how new editions of classic children’s books by Roald Dahl are being published after substantial alterations made according to the urges of a morbid and absurd class of people known as sensitivity readers. The Telegraph reports:
Language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race has been cut and rewritten. Remember the Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach? They are now the Cloud-People. The Small Foxes in Fantastic Mr Fox are now female. In Matilda, a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane Austen added. It’s Roald Dahl, but different.
We have to protect cultural history
A couple of years ago, I had almost my entire collection of books shipped from England to Poland. They had been lurking in my dad’s attic but he understandably decided that he didn’t want hundreds of someone else’s books squatting there rent-free. So, I had to make my own decision: would I throw them away or have them brought to me? I haven’t had an easier dilemma since I had to choose between going to the pub and not going to the pub.
Part of it was sentimentality. I have a lot of memories wrapped up with those books — just as one does with a photo or an interesting shell pocketed on the beach. But I also had a conservationist instinct. Books are not like other objects. If a book is lost then a text might be lost as well.
The whole piece is well worth reading because of both the ephemeral nature of ebooks and the ghastly ghost of Thomas Bowdler.
Yesterday, the Telegraph reported on how new editions of classic children’s books by Roald Dahl are being published after substantial alterations made according to the urges of a morbid and absurd class of people known as sensitivity readers. The Telegraph reports:
Language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race has been cut and rewritten. Remember the Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach? They are now the Cloud-People. The Small Foxes in Fantastic Mr Fox are now female. In Matilda, a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane Austen added. It’s Roald Dahl, but different.
6 comments:
Tim Stanley in this morning's Telegraph:
Puffin the publisher has carried out a sensitivity audit of Roald Dahl’s books, to make them more palatable, I guess, to snobs, bores and maiden aunts.
Good article. I remember Ben Sixsmith when he used to write long cogently-written posts on the Guardian's CIF pages. He probably got banned from there, but he's deservedly done well for himself.
I wonder whether the new censors have the same motivations as Bowdler? From what I glean, he was trying to "clean up" texts so that women and children should not be offended by the coarseness and crudity of an earlier age. Dahl's redactors might be doing this - they might believe that the language used in the last century would be genuinely upsetting to modern children. But I don't think so. Why swap Kipling for Austen? Isn't that merely because they (wrongly) perceive Kipling to be jingoistic, and they want to eliminate him from the canon? And why "cloud people" rather than men? Isn't that some clumsy sixth-form attempt to empower women?
I actually wouldn't mind being ruled and hoodwinked by an intelligent meritocracy. As ever, what rankles here is the attempt by second rate confident people to control us.
dm: " snobs, bores and maiden aunts." and, I presume, the many self-appointed takers of offence.
Dahl: jaw-dropping.
"And why "cloud people" rather than men?"
An interesting piece of cultural appropriation. I am sure there's conservative-leaning webssite somewhere that uses the term "Cloud People" to refer to our technocratic betters, as contrasted with the "Dirt People" - all the rest of us who had just better shut up and do as we're told.
Ah, yes, it's here http://thezman.com/wordpress/ ; read if you dare, it's probably full of trigger words and nasty unapproved opinions.
dearieme - even some detective stories from the 1930s are being altered in this way for the ebook market.
Sam - I think the motives are much the same, but the moral angle is different and more political and rather weirder. I wouldn't mind being ruled by an intelligent meritocracy and I think there was a time when that was an ideal, although social class came into it too.
Jannie - and professional takers of offence. We seem to have those now too.
Sackers - it is. Quite disturbing.
Peter - thanks for the link. I used to read The Z Man and I still like his outlook but discovered I can't read everything. I think the main problem I found was that he includes what to me are many unfamiliar names which seem necessary to his story.
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