A SAFE BET
There has been much angst of late about, in rapid succession, the news that Roald Dahl’s children’s novels are to be republished in ‘revised’ versions by changing or cutting material deemed unacceptable by sensitivity readers, and then that Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are being updated to remove or replace offensive language, including racial slurs and references to the ethnicity of some characters.
Examples include Augustus Gloop in Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory becoming ‘enormous’, when previously he was ‘fat’. More controversially, individual words haven’t just been changed, but entire passages completely rewritten. In Live and Let Die, James Bond goes to a nightclub in Harlem, and Fleming’s description of the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough has become Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.
The usual cries of outrage about all things ‘woke’ were heard across the land – as if being aware of and opposed to social injustice was a bad thing – but these new editions are the result of pragmatic commercial decisions. Publishers are in business to make money, and Dahl’s publisher (Penguin Random House) and Fleming’s rights’ owners (Ian Fleming Publications Ltd) have simply addressed the dilemma of how to maintain the market viability of perennially popular books given they contain material which would never make it to print now were the novels brand new.
In the end Penguin Random
House appeared to back down, and amid a storm of outrage led by the Daily Telegraph announced that they would reprint Dahl’s classics – which include James and the Giant Peach, The BFG and The Witches – in both revised and ‘original versions’ with an unaltered ‘classics collection’ due out soon. Of course Penguin might well come out the winners, as some readers will buy both revised and original flavours, potentially increasing sales significantly.
Expect Fleming’s publishers, and others of popular but increasingly ‘problematic’ authors to follow suit. As a gambling man, Fleming would likely have put money on it.
For more on this topic, see From the Other Side of the Desk, p71