Quote:
Originally Posted by plib
This really does display an astonishing contempt for your "target audience". Does it not occur to you that a reader, "young US reader" or not, will investigate if they don't understand a particular phrase. Or that parents can explain about changing social mores and their effects on language?
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It's very likely Muckraker has learned that common sense has nothing to do with the litigious nature of U.S. education in an age in which the enemies of controversial or political subject matter can get books pulled from the curriculum on a technicality, and both children and parents can have teachers fired or dismissed in an effort to avoid receiving lower grades and test scores. I personally know a teacher who was sued for "making a sexual move" while teaching. The man thrust his pelvis while making a point and raising one finger in the air.
There is no doubt in my mind that the word
faggot, even when used to mean a bundle of sticks, could be litigious. And even though the PC spelling is now
fagot, the very pronunciation of the word in class or at home could result in negative action.
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I'm not a fan of changing the word
gay in existing publications. I would also hesitate to buy a version of a previously published text in which the word had been changed by panicky or overly zealous editors.
However, I think it's unnecessary to berate Muckraker and vow never to buy any of the books s/he might publish. For one thing, there could be no other way to buy an e-book version of one of those books. For another, it's better to engage a publisher in a debate and allow them to learn from feedback than to treat every decision they've made until now as a reason to disqualify them in the future.
Let's just give Muckraker some needed feedback and say we're far less likely to buy a classic or frequently published text which has been altered in the ways that have been described.
Recently, I edited an interview with the late William Burroughs and made the decision to change the punctuation, but that's because
the author is the person who submitted the transcription and not William Burroughs himself. The words are by Burroughs, but the punctuation is not.
We did not wish to change the actual language, of course, even though it would have been within our purview to eliminate the kinds of hemming and hawing that are routinely edited out in published interviews.
I also edited the bracketed explanations and omitted incorrectly spelled names in Allen Ginsberg's introduction to the interview. Again, these qualifying bracketed instances were the work of the person who
transcribed that passage from Ginsberg's unpublished journal and
not Ginsberg himself.
Besides which, the person who transcribed the interview and journal passage is still alive and was available to us to consult. This was useful because the way in which Burroughs said things in the original recording might have led to certain decisions which seemed to us to be unnecessary or odd. We needed to confirm that such issues weren't in conflict with our corrections.
The trick is to catch real mistakes before they become enshrined, and to know the difference between standing and editable text. One can edit out things like unintended homonyms, but not instances of perceived untimely usage. The latter is something which a copy editor or editor suggests to the author pending approval. If an editor is assigned to a particularly disorganized or sloppy writer under contract (as they were in the case of Brett Easton Ellis's
American Psycho, which was largely rewritten by editors), then a publishing emergency must be dealt with and that is a different story.
If I were Muckraker and still chose to make such decisions, I'd insert a disclaimer to that effect at the beginning of the book. I might also insert into attributions and advertisements a phrase such as "Newly edited by [the Honorable Dr. Emilio Y.] Muckraker [III]."