Roald Dahl Children's Books Being Rewritten

[Quoth]

Though perhaps only the publicity increases sales rather than the actual changes.
I'm not sure that merging and takeovers does anything good for authors or readers, but just gives more power to marketing wonks and "investors".

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by hildea

But when changes are made/attempted by publishers because they think the changes will increase sales, they probably read widely.

The original article, printed in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, is behind a pay wall, but my public library lets me see it through ONEFILE. Here's the only thing they say about the motivation:

One warning states that the writer's prose has been altered because it was judged to be "unacceptable" by Penguin, a publishing house which enlists the services of sensitivity readers.

You could be correct that this is driven by sales projections. But the extent to which PRH owner Bertelsmann Stiftung is driven by a pure profit motive can be questioned (as I have in at least one past thread). From Wikipedia:

It was founded in 1977 by Reinhard Mohn as the result of social, corporate and fiscal considerations. As the Bertelsmann Stiftung itself has put it, the foundation promotes "reform processes" and "the principles of entrepreneurial activity" to build a "future-oriented society."

My guess is that the kind of people who read P. G. Wodehouse will dislike these changes, with bowdlerization advocated internally by PRH employees pushing their vision of a future-oriented society.

Is there anyone here who is going to buy a Wodehouse book because it's new and improved? Didn't think so. Is there anyone who, on rare occasion, reads Wodehouse, and will avoid the improved version? At least one -- me.

[JSWolf]

Sensitivity readers... load of nonsense.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

My guess is that the kind of people who read P. G. Wodehouse will dislike these changes, with bowdlerization advocated internally by PRH employees pushing their vision of a future-oriented society.

Is there anyone here who is going to buy a Wodehouse book because it's new and improved? Didn't think so. Is there anyone who, on rare occasion, reads Wodehouse, and will avoid the improved version? At least one -- me.

I read a lot of Wodehouse as a teenager, and was curious enough about this to look for specific changes. The Times wrote:

Among the examples of changes cited by the Telegraph is in the 1934 novel Right Ho, Jeeves, in which a racial term used to describe a “minstrel of the old school” has been removed.

That one's at Gutenberg, so I could find the specific quote:

Originally Posted by "Right Ho, Jeeves" by P.G.Wodehouse

When I was able to see clearly once more, I perceived that Gussie was now seated. He had his hands on his knees, with his elbows out at right angles, like a n----- minstrel of the old school about to ask Mr. Bones why a chicken crosses the road, and he was staring before him with a smile so fixed and pebble-beached that I should have thought that anybody could have guessed that there sat one in whom the old familiar juice was plashing up against the back of the front teeth.

(except in the original, n- is spelled out.) I've been thinking about rereading some Wodehouse, and I while I love how he plays around with language (why write "drunk" when you can write "one in whom the old familiar juice was plashing up against the back of the front teeth" ) I really don't think his use of n- makes that paragraph better. (Is "plashing" a typo for "splashing", by the way, or is that a real word?)


Thinking about it, I've read a lot of Wodehouse and Christie, but almost none of it in the author's original words. I read them as a young teenager, when I was mostly reading in Norwegian, and mostly getting my books from the library, which had much, much more books in Norwegian than in other languages.

I looked up some of the translated Wodehouses now, and the differences are interesting. For instance, in Norwegian we have both formal and informal versions of "you", just like in German, but these days, the formal version is almost never used. In translations from 1940s, Bertie and Jeeves both use the formal version to each other. In translations from 1980s, Jeeves uses the formal version to his employer, and Bertie uses the informal version to his employee. Not a big deal, of course, but just one of many ways that translators must decide how to retell the author's story.

[Quoth]

Plashing is a real word. But much of Wodehouse, as Orwell points out is a decade or several decades earlier in style than the publish dates of 1930s.

It's an exaggeration of how some upper class "Public School" people talk. I think there are at least 3 Public Schools in England that should be closed because of the number of sociopaths, but that's a subject for elsewhere.

Even in 1970s BBC I met some people that seemed like escapees from a Wodehouse novel.

Yes, some old books have some very offensive words. But so do some modern books and there are books I think wholly offensive and depraved but I wouldn't ban them. I'd not give them to anyone either. Some are highly acclaimed by some people.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Plashing is a real word.

Thanks!

...there are books I think wholly offensive and depraved but I wouldn't ban them. I'd not give them to anyone either.

I'm guessing that's what the publisher is thinking, too. So their choice is:

1. Republish with all the original phrasing, and probably lose money
2. Republish with some of the most offensive words changed
3. Not republish

They aren't likely to choose 1, so it'll be 2 or 3. Personally, I'd prefer if they went for 3, and instead put their effort and investments into new books, but I don't think it's that terrible that they prefer 2.

[issybird]

I wonder what they'll do with the Wodehouse tale where there's a blackface jazz band and a change of identity using said blackface is the means of escaping from a yacht where a character is being held prisoner? It's not just a passing comment; it's a major plot point.

[Quoth]

They should stick to publishing living authors instead of trying to monetise the PD works.
Maybe Disney & friends should have had a special copyright dispensation instead of the crazy extension of life + ever-increasing-years for everything.

The Black and White Minstrel Show was a British light entertainment show that ran for twenty years on BBC prime-time television. Running from 1958 to 1978, it was a weekly variety show that presented traditional American minstrel and country songs, as well as show tunes and music hall numbers, lavishly costumed. —Wikipedia

Wasn't it more than 20 years past its sell by date in 1958 and always offensive? I lived in the UK till 1983 so remember my parents watching it.

The band in Wodehouse's book as a plot point is certainly offensive but it was even more a real thing in real life than the 20 years later start of the BBC thing. Which even as a kid I thought was very weird. Also puzzled by Al Jolson and the sequence in Bing Crosby's Holiday Inn. I thought, why are people doing this?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

They should stick to publishing living authors instead of trying to monetise the PD works.

Why? Changes to public domain works are perfectly fine and legit. Anybody can make any change they choose, which is how we get things like most Disney animated movies, most of the work of Gregory Maguire and Rocky and Bullwinkle's Fractured Fairy Tales.

Also, I'm pretty sure the changes in question are to Wodehouse works that are not in the public domain.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by hildea

[*]Republish with all the original phrasing, and probably lose money

1. Whether changes as big as with Dahl were made to Wodehouse, we don't know yet, perhaps because the Wodehouse news story only broke a day or two ago (depending on your time zone). But if all they did was find and replace the most offensive word in the English language, I don't think PRH would acknowledge it, or that we would be discussing it.

2. I still don't get the lose money thing. What happens in Waterstones when someone opens Right Ho, Jeeves, looks at the first few pages, and sees the edit warning? I think the effect is either neutral, or it decides them on not buying. Conceivably, maybe, a WHSmith or Waterstones buyer threatened to stop stocking a book if it wasn't bowdlerized. But I think bookstore chain management would override the threat. That's because, if it ever got out that a high street bookstore chain actually dropped Wodehouse for this reason, the publicity would harm the chain's sales generally. So I still think the bowderization, and trigger warnings, probably come from staff who sincerely believe in what is, to me, a 1984-light appoach to literature of the past.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

...I still think the bowderization, and trigger warnings, probably come from staff who sincerely believe in what is, to me, a 1984-light appoach to literature of the past.

Yes, I agree.

[Sarmat89]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Why? Changes to public domain works are perfectly fine and legit.

You still cannot misattribute your changes as belonging to the original work.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

2. I still don't get the lose money thing.

There's at least one poster in this thread who's said that they prefer not to read books with very offensive language. But I was thinking more about the gift market. You need a gift for someone you don't know all that well, but you know they read, so you pick something you have nostalgic feelings about, and that you know is well written.

...and at the next family dinner, your niece is looking at you weirdly, and mentions that the book you gave her mentioned Black people using the n-word or described a Jew as "fond of money like all of her race". I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty embarrassed, and would never again buy books by that author for anyone but myself.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

So I still think the bowderization, and trigger warnings, probably come from staff who sincerely believe in what is, to me, a 1984-light appoach to literature of the past.

I think 1984-light fits better to describe Scholatic's demand to remove the word "racism" (post #264) (and to the majority of book bannings from libraries and schools, but that's more of a topic for Politics and religion).

[hildea]

Originally Posted by issybird

I wonder what they'll do with the Wodehouse tale where there's a blackface jazz band and a change of identity using said blackface is the means of escaping from a yacht where a character is being held prisoner? It's not just a passing comment; it's a major plot point.

The publishers might choose not to republish that one at all, if they don't think it will sell.

There was at least one republishing of the Tintin series where the publishers omitted "Tintin in Congo" -- it's so steeped in gross racism that there's no way to change it in edits.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Why? Changes to public domain works are perfectly fine and legit.

They can only publish and market a certain number of books a year. So by reducing the marketing effort and royalty payments by publishing well known PD works they are limiting income of living authors. It's a safe and lazy decision. They also pay the sensitivity readers/editors a pittance.