HOW TO JUDGE A BOOK
“There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.” — text inserted into Roald Dahl’s “The Witches,” after a passage describing the witches as bald beneath their wigs
In a misguided attempt to keep the works of Roald Dahl in circulation, the Dahl estate decided to go through his books changing words and adding sentences such as the passage above. If you do want to keep reading the works of Roald Dahl, I would argue, this is not the way to go about it.
You, the reader, are capable of discerning where classic books are wrong — about how they describe people, about what they portray as moral or immoral. You are even more capable of looking at the life the author led and saying, “Yikes!” The books don’t have to spell everything out for you, in the process destroying the things that made them worth reading in the first place.
Anyway, I have taken the liberty of giving other books the same treatment.
“Paradise Lost”: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!” This is not true. Satan was not right to say that.
“The Lord of the Rings”: “So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.” Most people’s pupils are black, and there is nothing wrong with that! There were a lot of reasons to dislike Sauron, and his physical appearance or the condition of his eyes was the least of them.
“Dracula”: “Strange to say, there were hairs in the center of his palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.” Gingivitis is a perfectly normal thing to have, and people have hairy hands. The thing that was bad about Count Dracula was that he was a vampire.
“Lolita”: Before I say anything else, let me note that I, Humbert Humbert, am a bad man. Now, then: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
“The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”: “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” Although Aslan was almost certainly Jesus, there are plenty of other religions that are also very good, whether I, C. S. Lewis,
You, the reader, are capable of discerning where classic books are wrong. You are even more capable of looking at the life the author led and saying, “Yikes!”
feels passionately about them or not.
“The Wizard of Oz”: It was all right when Dorothy’s house fell on and crushed that witch, but, in general, it is bad.
“Lord of the Flies”: “The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, traveled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went . ... Piggy fell 40 feet and landed on his back across the square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red.” None of this should have happened.