Roald Dahl Children's Books Being Rewritten

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Book banning is a wholly different thing than some copyright holder making stupid decisions with work they likely didn't produce but were lucky enough to gain the rights to.

Fair enough. And the outlier cases as in post #1 got enough backlash that they had no choice but to allow both versions to coexist by rereleasing the classic. Likely not the complete originals, but the edits that happend before Roald Dahl's dearh.

I need to be more vigilant to follow the path on how to reach a goal instead of concentrating merely on the end result.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

The libraries exist on the people's allowance, and the people should decide what kind of books they should carry.

I agree partly: When people ask for something to be added to a library, the librarians should do their best (within the limits of budget and shelf space) to offer what's requested.
But when people want something removed from a library, the librarians should never had to obey that request.

A school library, in addition, should be devoid of ideology of any kind.

I suspect this one would have to be continued in the Politics and religion subforum. I'm very curious to see how you'd define "ideology of any kind".

[SomeSteve]

Perhaps writers concerned about others altering their creations should preface their books with Schopenhauer's malediction:

"My curse on anyone who, in future printings of my works, knowingly changes anything, be it a sentence, or even just a word, a syllable, a letter, a punctuation mark."*

--From his preface to a prospective edition of his complete works.

Who knows, maybe it would prevent some tampering.

In addition, concerned writers could make it a provision of their will, if such provisions are permissible and legally binding, that whoever inherits the copyrights must pledge that neither they nor anyone they grant those rights to will change anything in the writer's works. Anyone not willing to take or abide by the pledge would be disqualified from inheriting. Anyone breaking the pledge would automatically lose the inheritance. The same to apply to all subsequent heirs and anyone they lend, sell, give, bequeath, or otherwise pass the rights on to. (Details about enforcement, additional penalties, a list of substitute heirs, etc., would have to be worked out.)


* Meinen Fluch über Jeden, der, bei künftigen Drucken meiner Werke, irgend etwas daran wißentlich ändert, sei es eine Periode, oder auch nur ein Wort, eine Silbe, ein Buchstabe, ein Interpunktionszeichen. (Arthur Schopenhauer, Vorrede zu opera omnia, aus "Senilia: Gedanken im Alter", herausgegeben von Franco Volpi und Ernst Ziegler, C. H. Beck, 2010, S. 244.)

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

...concerned writers could make it a provision of their will... that whoever inherits the copyrights must pledge that neither they nor anyone they grant those rights to will change anything in the writer's works...

Yeah, I was going to say something similar. But figured I'd already blabbered enough in one post.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

In addition, concerned writers could make it a provision of their will, if such provisions are permissible and legally binding, that whoever inherits the copyrights must pledge that neither they nor anyone they grant those rights to will change anything in the writer's works. Anyone not willing to take or abide by the pledge would be disqualified from inheriting. Anyone breaking the pledge would automatically lose the inheritance. The same to apply to all subsequent heirs and anyone they lend, sell, give, bequeath, or otherwise pass the rights on to. (Details about enforcement, additional penalties, a list of substitute heirs, etc., would have to be worked out.)

I don't think inheritance laws usually work like this. What kind of instance/office would monitor whether the terms were violated for 70 years? And what if noone could be found who was willing to accept the inheritance on those terms? Unless it was a very successful author, it would probably just mean hassle with little or no benefit.

Some alternatives:

• Create an organization -- a trust or similar -- which owns the rights and has statutes for how to administer them. (Like the Tolkien Estate)
• Release the works to public domain. Then anyone can do any changes, but you're also sure that the originals will be available. You could even create some high-quality epubs and place them in Gutenberg, Mobileread etc.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

Perhaps writers concerned about others altering their creations should preface their books with Schopenhauer's malediction:

"My curse on anyone who, in future printings of my works, knowingly changes anything, be it a sentence, or even just a word, a syllable, a letter, a punctuation mark."*

A few celebrated, super high earning, authors could do this.

Self-published authors could do this.

But I'm thinking that most of the authors I read, who are mid-list, or maybe low-list, at major publishers, don't have the clout, with their publisher, to do it. Heck, they can't even dictate the titles of their books. As for the likes of Dahl, he probably didn't have the clout until after he wrote most of his books.

Also, Schopenhauer's malediction would strike many readers -- including me -- as obnoxious. It could also be distracting and confusing (especially if a childen's book).

Almost all authors would want obvious minor errors corrected. Most nonfiction authors would even want substantive errors corrected, especially if by the original editor, if still alive. What many wouldn't want is changes to the values expressed in their books.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

...I'm thinking that most of the authors I read, who are mid-list, or maybe low-list, at major publishers, don't have the clout, with their publisher, to do it. Heck, they can't even dictate the titles of their books.

Most of those mid-list authors get their rights back when their books go out of print, which is the vast majority of them.

Also, mid-list authors are very unlikely to have these issues in the first place.

[Rand Brittain]

It's hard to imagine a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem, because:

1. almost no authors would countenance major changes to a book without their input and consent
2. many authors would be okay with minor changes if it would go over better with readers or increase sales
3. the rights of the majority of books by dead authors are not held by people who can be relied upon to make informed, public-spirited decisions

Take Agatha Christie: a lot of her books, in audio editions, omit racial slurs and denigrating language. Lord Edgware Dies, say, has a bit at the beginning where Poirot prophesies trouble for a young actress, because, as a Jewess, she will obviously have trouble controlling her love of money. The modern audiobook edits this passage so he just mentions the love of money generically and her ancestry is never mentioned.

Frankly, I think this is an improvement? The bit about her being Jewish doesn't add much to the book, and it's much easier to listen to enjoyably.

(That's actually an interesting wrinkle, because the edits are only present in the audio version; the print and epub version match the original British text. That makes sense, in a way, because books with problematic content can be read privately, whereas if I'm listening to an audiobook with racial slurs in it I may be uncomfortable listening to it in public.)

There's a much sillier edit in Hickory Dickory Dock, where a serious black student named Elizabeth is nicknamed "Black Bess" by the other students at her boarding house. The text mentions that she doesn't mind because she knows it's an affectionate gesture and not meant to be hurtful. The audiobook changes the nickname to just "Bess", but keeps in the bit about how she doesn't mind even though there's no longer anything there for her to mind.

There are authors who would mind this and authors who wouldn't. I'm sure J. K. Rowling would be incensed if anybody tried to edit her books to make them less <insert all the various reasons people are mad at J. K. Rowling>, but I doubt Christie would care. I mean, she wasn't making high art and I can't imagine she had a big enough bee in her bonnet about The Jews to insist on keeping a derogatory reference if it would hurt sales.

Unfortunately, Christie is dead and the decision won't be made by her, but by publishers, who are only thinking of the bottom line and not about the needs of art or about a work's potential to hurt.

The moral of the story is that copyright should last for death + 10.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by Rand Brittain

The moral of the story is that copyright should last for death + 10.

I agree with all of your post, including this! It would solve the problems for readers of Dahl and Christie who prefer the original versions.


Here's another example of a publisher wanting to change the text of a book: Scholastic, and a Faustian Bargain. Here, the author is alive, and refused the changes, but at the cost of an opportunity that would have been great for her career.

The book is "Love in the Library", a children's book taking place in a US interment camp for Americans of Japanese descent. Scholastic wants to materially change the author's note, removing a paragraph which puts the story into context with modern society, and removing the word "racism".

I believe that, just like the other examples in this thread, the motivation of the publisher is commercial, not ideological. They believe the book will sell better if they remove something that will offend some potential buyers and increase the risk of it being banned from schools and libraries.

As I said earlier:

Originally Posted by hildea

Like arjaybe wrote a couple of pages back, this is a commercial decision. That doesn't mean it can't be criticized, of course, I'm all for demanding that businesses act ethically even if that would hurt their profits. But don't act as if these changes are caused by grass root pressure.

I don't like Scholastic's choice here, and applaud the Tokuda-Hall for standing firm. I'm not in the market for picture books, but will check out her YA. "The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea" looks interesting.

[j.p.s]

^
Oh the irony of wanting to use an AANHPI collection to contribute to internment denial.

[Quoth]

Now Penguin is "cleaning up" P. G. Wodehouse's "unacceptable" prose.

Fortunately if you have an ereader, or a decent App on a suitable phone or tablet, there are about 45+ originals here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/783

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Now Penguin is "cleaning up" P. G. Wodehouse's "unacceptable" prose.

There's some back and forth between whether the hit is from libraries or bowdlerizing, and I'm uncertain which is worse.

In World War II, for Wodehouse, it was libraries:

George Orwell, "In Defense of P. G. Wodehouse"

numerous lending libraries withdrew Wodehouse's books from circulation

[Quoth]

Some "Literary" people and some libraries wanted to ban Enid Blyton, while she was alive and also accused her of having a team of Ghost Writers, which was untrue.

Someone started a thread on "The Neverending Story" and I think back in 1989 some people wanted it banned. A marmite sort of book some love and some hate anyway, but the people I know that hated it wouldn't want it banned.

Some people also seem to want to edit history to have books in the past be how they would have written them.

How many of the people banning or Bowdlerizing either read much fiction or write any?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

In World War II, for Wodehouse, it was libraries:

George Orwell, "In Defense of P. G. Wodehouse"

I'd not realised that part of his "career", but I've always imagined him to be more like some of the naive and idiotic characters in his books, like you know, writing from experience.

I shall try to analyse the mental atmosphere of those books in a moment, but it is important to realise that the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity. The really interesting question is how and why he could be so stupid.

While I'd be on Orwell's side (a Communist that became a socialist due to Spanish Civil War, see Animal Farm), the current rewrite has quite different motives to the 1940s library banning.

Thanks for the link. Oh, and there was a Room 101 in the BBC...

[hildea]

Originally Posted by Quoth

How many of the people banning or Bowdlerizing either read much fiction or write any?

I guess it depends. I suspect the people who want to remove books from schools or libraries don't read a lot. But when changes are made/attempted by publishers because they think the changes will increase sales, they probably read widely.