A good illustration
I haven’t read much Roald Dahl because I was put off by his unabashed hatred of women decades ago.
Hatred of women never goes away. Never.
Tip Jar
I haven’t read much Roald Dahl because I was put off by his unabashed hatred of women decades ago.
Hatred of women never goes away. Never.
Yes, but now Puffin books have bowdlerized his books by removing all rude words like “fat” from them. I don’t much like that either. In the days when I had small children I wasn’t too keen on Roald Dahl’s books and wasn’t too sure why he was so popular, but bowdlerizing is not the answer.
I don’t much like it either, but I also don’t like his brusque contempt for fat people, ugly people, old people, women, and especially fat ugly old women. Maybe a good compromise would be to put a big label on the front of all his books saying DAHL IS A RUDE SCORNFUL BULLY.
I quite enjoyed reading Dahl’s books as a child. They were exuberant and funny, and I adored the Quentin Blake illustrations. Yes, he was mean-spirited, sexist (and though not in the kids’ books, anti-Semitic) but he had a gift for thinking like a child and writing good stories for children.
I do remember the grandmother in “The Witches” being funny, smart and brave. Maybe there’s some like mitigation of the anti-woman and anti-old people stuff there?
As for the alternations…It’s not just a few phrases they’ve changed- “Matilda” has been re-edited so that the titular heroine no longer enjoys reading Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad. Seems like an ideological alteration is taking place as well.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/roald-dahl-books-being-rewritten-26271629
Dahl’s estate is apparently on board with this, which is a shame.
I dislike the idea of modifying the text of an author and presenting it without this being made clear. If a modern publisher wants to present an old story without its baggage to a new audience, I would hope the cover says something like ‘adapted from the original story’ or similar.
As long as it makes money for them it’s OK.