Belgian, surely…
I am unsure of Pullman’s motive here.
Is his feeling that authors like Dahl take up too much space in contemporary fiction?
I agree with the sentiment on wokeness. In my view we are sanitising the world beyond repair.
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Same country, worse beer.
I think Pullman’s point is that Dahl’s books should be allowed to fade into the background, alongside those of others who’s work no longer fits with what society wants to consume.
But in this case Puffin and the Dahl estate are trying to keep these books alive and profitable by editing them to suit modern tastes. Pullman is noting that in doing so they crowd out newer, talented authors.
Which brings us back to the point about the Dahl Estate and Puffin Publishing. The edits have been undertaken at their behest. There is no woke police demanding these changes, and even if there have been complaints, a massive publishing house isn’t going to take the scissors to their golden goose because of a handful of complaints from a noisy minority.
They have decided to do this because it makes commercial sense. They would like these books to remain profitable for the next 50 years, and that isn’t going to happen with them full of casual racism and misogyny. They know which way the wind is blowing in regards to readers and audience. They aren’t daft.
And that’s really the story behind any of these stories of wokeness - corporations making economic decisions with the aim of future proofing their intellectual copyright.
By the way, would anyone be surprised if Puffin announced a big U Turn on these changes, and announced that the Dahl books will be restored to their full unsanitised glory, just in time for a new print run, and the first of the Netflix collaborations to hit screens?
Ker-ching!
Modern audiences……
What I want to consume isn’t the current bilge being shat out by the mad left content creators.
If wokeness, and the quest for everything to be 100% consumer friendly and sanitised didn’t exist, then classics wouldn’t need to be altered.
What’s next? Revise Shakespeare? Lets see what Dickens really meant? Lets visit Stoker to see if the Count was a misogynist?
I believe that racism and all forms of marginalisation have no place in modern society, but I also believe that society is sophisticated and educated enough to make up their own minds about context and timing of classic works.
That the Dahl family choose to extend the lifes work of Roald is in my view fair and economically sound. That they have to decimate those works is a symptom of wokeness.
We are rendering ourselves into magnolia, tepid people, where there will be zero room for humour.
George’s Marvelous Medicine has been read back to back about 20 times in our house in the last month to a 4 year old, who loves it. Never picked up on anything I’d consider of bad taste.
Now the three little pigs… Some very hardcore some versions of that!
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It isn’t a new thing. Dahl himself revised Chocolate Factory in the seventies when what he wrote was considered racist even back then.
Perhaps we should be able to buy Christie’s And then there were none by its original title?
You’re saying that if wokeness didn’t exist then classics wouldn’t need to be altered, and then to undermine your own argument have listed three classics that have remained untouched.
So have a look a bit deeper. Why is no-one sensitivity checking Taming of the Shrew (Will’s most sexist play), or Tale of Two Cities, or Dracula?
The answer is because they are long out of Copyright. No-one owns the rights to those novels. They have passed into public utility. No-one is making very much money on those books remaining best sellers and so no-one is that arsed if people stop reading them, although especially in the case of Dickens, that would be a tragedy.
By contrast, the rights on the Dahl Estate are private until 2060. The Estate has 37 years to wring every last drop out those books, which is clearly what they are trying to do here by attempting to insulate them against not just current thinking, but thinking for the next four decades.
That’s well over the top. The Dahl Estate is not going to decimate their golden goose.
Of all the changes I’ve seen, none of them any anything more than superficial edits, and someone like me, who has read the Dahl books multiple times, would struggle to tell the difference.
Which isn’t to say that some of the changes aren’t absurd. Removing the word ‘black’ as used to describe the colour of a tractor is, even to lefty like me, ridiculous.
But there is nothing I’ve seen that would detract from the books in any way. Charlie is not, due to the obesity crisis, visiting a Humous Factory.
I think you missed my overarching point, maybe I just didn’t state it very clearly.
Our sanitisation of every product, of language, of sport, of comedy, of culture will render us into soulless beings. We will be afraid to encounter difference, or challenge what is there to challenge us.
Changing the language in books to fireproof feelings is bordering on censorship. Nobody wants anybody to feel hurt or discriminated against, but this form of censorship takes no account of societies ability to discern.
The woke police, the political correct brigade make assumptions on our behalf, fuck it, they feel offended on our behalf. And thats where this editing and revision becomes senseless censorship.
I understand your rebuttal of the classics I mentioned. Fair enough.
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Your point is sort of pointless though. Either you already own Roald Dahl books or you don’t. If you don’t, then you clearly aren’t that bothered about them in the first place. If you do, well, nobody is going to come round your house with a bottle of tippex and a biro to stop you from reading the word ugly.
For future generations, buying and reading the book for the first time, they won’t know any different, and kids won’t dislike it because it isn’t racist enough.
This also isn’t a slippery slope. Nobody is coming for other books. If living authors are making these changes or the estates of dead authors - well that’s their right.
There is no actual brigade of woke people. People making content which happens to be woke, are doing it because that’s what they want to do.
Not really.
Most authors, performers are aware of what us considered risky, what people will purposely take offence at.
But, I think you also missed the point. In fact your opening line illustrates that.
I think the point that audiences (collectively) are smart enough to properly navigate these issues has been shown to have its limitation over and over again.
Fight Club was written by a gay man as a criticism of, among other things, masculinity as an identity. It has since been adopted unironically by incels and the “masculinity is under attack” subcultures almost as a manifesto. Michael Lewis wrote Liar’s Poker as a criticism of the investment banking world, and later commented that business school grads spent the next 20 years repeatedly telling him it was the best how to go guide for how to get rich on Wall St there was. Dave Chapelle famously found his lampooning of racists to be misunderstood and instead celebrated by the people he was trying to make fun of. It caused him to walk away from comedy for the best part of a decade and 10s of millions of dollars.
Not all artists respond to set the record straight, but many choose to back away from those works, especially in cases where time reframes the original work in ways they have increasing become uncomfortable with. But book publishing is different because you’d be amazed how many typos and unsatisfactory sentences can still exist in a 2nd edition publication from a major publisher. These are addressed, to the extent they are known about at the time, prior to each new publication run. This covers not just typos, but ideas the writer wants to change or clarify. They happen ALL THE TIME without anyone ever recognizing it.
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That’s true. Mary Shelley substantially revised Frankenstein. Both editions remain available in the public domain. Most books die aborning, so no need to revise. Then there are the writers who not only revise their work after dying but keep on writing. Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy, for example. Then we have authors who have entire sweatshops putting out work that they then put their name on (James Patterson).
The state and integrity of publishing continues to get worse.
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I think you’ll find and Mascot as put it well several times these decisions are market forces same goes for most things.
Talons of Weng Chiang is an absolutely brilliant Dr Who story it’s also terribly racist, so what do you with a fan base that’s increasingly liberal, Britbox put a sensitivity note, some will scream “wokeness” but it’s really not, the thing is there to watch and the person who watches does so at their own risk.
As for Doctor Who suddenly going “woke”, I’m almost at the end of a run through the entire classic series and you’ve got pro climate change, anti racism, a veiled attack on Thatcher, two pro EU stories and several pro worker and Union stories (of course none of that is actually “woke”, but I’ll cover this in a moment).
How long have film classifications been in place? They are “woke” if you want to debase the word to what seems it’s current context.
Then again my entire sexuality is also “woke” and so you see why some people get angry at people using it out of context or literally for anything.
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From CNN. I didn’t read the article, but I find the writer’s little selfie hilarious. For the love of God, will someone please get her a sandwich!!
I picked up a book from a charity shop last week by an academic who has extensive experience in both trading and poker and cited Liar’s Poker as the inspiration behind his career after he read a copy that his dad gave him when he was a temporarily bedridden high school student recovering from an injury.
Well done to @Mascot for calling it
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Just came in here to post this! 
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