A good illustration

Written by

Ophelia Benson

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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.

Comments

5 responses to “A good illustration”

  1. Athel Cornish-Bowden Avatar
    Athel Cornish-Bowden

    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.

  2. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    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.

  3. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    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.

  4. Holms Avatar
    Holms

    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.

  5. Athel Cornish-Bowden Avatar
    Athel Cornish-Bowden

    Dahl’s estate is apparently on board with this, which is a shame.

    As long as it makes money for them it’s OK.

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