GET ME REWRITE: Tender sensibilities lead publishers to bowdlerize the classics

 

Headline:  New York Times,   4/3/2023

In Agatha Christie’s novels, terms like “Oriental,” “Gypsy” and “native” have been taken out, and revised versions of Ian Fleming’s “James Bond” books will be scrubbed of racist and sexist phrases. Classics by Roald Dahl have been stripped of adjectives like “fat” and “ugly” along with references to characters’ gender and skin color. 

While some changes have been made to books published in decades past, often with little fanfare, many of the current attempts to remove offensive language are systematic and have drawn intense public scrutiny. The effort has left publishers and literary estates grappling with how to preserve an author’s original intent while ensuring that their work continues to resonate — and sell. 

Finding the right balance is a delicate act: part business decision, part artful conjuring of the worldview of an author from another era in order to adapt it to the present.

Best advice I ever received in college.  

During the first session of a semester course on Chaucer, Professor Victor Doyno, suggested to the 20 or so students in the class that if we wanted to fully understand Chaucer's world and the people who inhabited it, we needed to step out of our present-day mindset.  In other words, we should refrain from transposing our personal worldview onto the past.  (Not the easiest thing for college students to do, particularly during the spring semester of 1970.)