Roald Dahl Books Public Domain
Willy Aucoin
Let\u2019s get this out of the way: Roald Dahl was kind of a piece of shit. Anti-Semitic, fatphobic, and plenty of other -ic adjectives you can toss in here. He was also the author of some delightfully weird and amusingly misanthropic children\u2019s novels. His work isn\u2019t particularly sacred for me. I read him as a child but have fonder memories of Shel Silverstein as far as weird children\u2019s lit goes. Still, like most people I rolled my eyes at the news that in the UK Puffin was releasing new \u201Cupdated\u201D versions of his novels. And I rolled them even harder when I saw how silly the edits were. (More on that in a second.)
Despite the internet trying to turn this into a big discussion of \u201Cwokeness gone amok\u201D or a return to \u201CVictorian-era censorship\u201D or \u201Ca threat to free speech,\u201D I think we can chalk this up to a much more powerful force: corporations protecting their IP. That was my first thought when I saw the news on Saturday morning. I have never seen anyone on the left, right, or center urge edits to Roald Dahl\u2019s books. And once this leaked, the responses was pretty overwhelmingly negative from across the political spectrum. As with the news from 2021 that the Dr. Seuss estate was pulling some of his offensive yet\u2014and this is key\u2014poorly selling books, this isn\u2019t so much about censorship as it is about corporate branding.
One way you can tell the edits are about corporate interest more than \u201Cwokeness\u201D is because, well, the edits aren\u2019t particularly woke. (The actual woke response would be to ditch Dahl not tweak a handful of lines in works of a guy who, as noted, was famously anti-Semitic.) Many of the edits involve removing words like \u201Cfat\u201D while keeping descriptions of characters as monstrous for being overweight. One character\u2019s description is changed from \u201Cugly and beastly\u201D to just \u201Cbeastly\u201D while another is changed from having \u201Cfearful ugliness\u201D to \u201Cugliness.\u201D Some of the edits themselves are more offensive, such as an \u201Cattractive middle-aged lady\u201D being changed into a \u201Ckind middle-aged lady\u201D (because middle-aged women can\u2019t be attractive?) Etc.
It\u2019s hard to argue these books are more \u201Cinclusive\u201D by such tweaks that don\u2019t alter the plots\u2014the now \u201Cenormous\u201D August Gloop is still going to be punished for his greed. The calculation is that they can keep selling copies if they sand off a few edges.
Other edits are even further removed from \u201Cpolitical correctness.\u201D In the new version of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mr. Fox has three daughters instead of three sons. This isn\u2019t because sons are politically incorrect or whatever silly way Fox News will cover this. It\u2019s a move to try and sell more copies of the books by making them more appealing to girls. Or, rather, the pocketbooks of the parents of girls. Similarly, keeping Hemingway on a list of three dead white authors hardly seems like a big improvement on the woke scale:
Many of these edits are at least defensible for not being offensive to Dahl\u2019s aesthetics. They don\u2019t really change the texture of the books even if they feel pointless. (One instance of \u201Cowch\u201D is changed to \u201Cugh.\u201D) Other edits are a lot more egregious:
The original image of a child running around yanking people\u2019s hair is delightfully naughty\u2014exactly what makes kids love Dahl\u2019s books\u2014even as the character is being told not to do it. The version on the right is not anything Dahl would ever write. A bland platitude completely out of place in the book. Edits like this give away the game. These changes are not meant to preserve the vision of the artist, nor are they merely removing outdated terms. There\u2019s a difference between excising slurs and in adding schmaltz.
Does this mean, as the usual suspects are arguing, that the edits are part of a war on free speech? That makes little sense. No one pressured the Dahl copyright holders to make edits against their will, and certainly not any government. The copyright holders initiated this \u201Creview\u201D of his work on their own to, again, make money. If there\u2019s an issue here, it\u2019s with copyright law being extended so many decades past an author\u2019s death.
Dahl has been dead for over 30 years. If copyright ended at or soon after an author\u2019s death, then none of this would be an issue at all. Public domain books are frequently edited or changed. You can find countless \u201Cmodernized\u201D Shakespeare books (as Lorentzen wrote about) and shortened and edited versions of classic novels. No one finds those a \u201Cthreat to free speech.\u201D The difference is purely one of copyright, because anyone can publish the originals or their own edits. Whereas these Dahl books will likely be the only editions available in the UK, unless the backlash makes Puffin cancel their plans.
Still, I do find these edits distasteful. And pointless. Kids don\u2019t need to be protected from Mr. Fox having \u201Cthree sons\u201D or a character being called \u201Cugly and beastly\u201D instead of just \u201Cbeastly.\u201D And the last thing our IP-driven culture needs is even more focus on rebooting the same handful of properties over and over and over.
The rare defenses of these edits I\u2019ve seen are also silly. This is not about the theories of Derrida or Barthes. It\u2019s just a corporation trying to make money. Some claimed that because Dahl edited his works in his lifetime it was \u201Chypocritical\u201D to be offended at these edits. Nonsense. Authors edit their own work all the time. They\u2019ll rewrite entire stories from magazine publication to book publication, or they\u2019ll rework old material to fit new worldbuilding ideas (as Tolkien did with The Hobbit). The principle is that artists should have the right to control their work but other people shouldn\u2019t be changing their work. Saying Dahl can edit his own words and others shouldn\u2019t is completely consistent.
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British writer Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a beloved novelist, short story writer, poet, and screenwriter. Before that, he was -- and, I'm not making this up -- an accomplished fighter pilot and intelligence officer during World War II.
Dahl was an incredibly gifted storyteller and his books for children are treasured throughout the world, they include: James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits, and George's Marvellous Medicine. Dahl sold over 250 million copies of his books worldwide.
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men." -- Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) proclaims in the original movie adaptation, excerpted from the book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972). Though Roald Dahl's work is not yet in the public domain, we offer summaries and reminiscence here for your enjoyment.
There are of course a couple approaches to when a book gets old like this, and what was once generally acceptable becomes unacceptable. You can reprint it as it was, you can reprint it as it was but contextualize it or disclaim it, or you can edit it to remove what is offensive.
In each case, the difference is one of market. Books of Wonder's reproductions of the Baum novels were targeting the library market and contemporary readers: these were editions intended to be given to current children. So it would make sense that the text would be edited. On the other hand, their Thompson editions are aimed at a market of Oz collectors, adults who want the original texts and can also understand the difference between 1923 and 2023.
There's something in here, of course, about what we think children's literature does and what it's for. It is okay for an adult to read a book with racism in it, but not a child. I probed at these attitudes back when I taught a class on children's literature. We praise The Outsiders because it doesn't filter things for its reader, it shows them the good and the bad and lets them decide. But then we turn around and say, no, when it comes to issues of race or gender, you ought to decide for the kids. I don't think this is a wrong distinction to make, but I think sometimes we are not honest with ourselves that, like the Victorians, we expect our literature for children to provide good moral instruction. It's just that we've changed our minds about what good moral instruction is.
The thing that's different about Oz versus Dahl is that for Oz, the original texts can continue to circulate alongside revised ones. This isn't true for Dahl, who remains under copyright. I think that his works will not enter into the public domain until 2060! Which is, frankly, an absurdly long amount of time. Over a century from publication to public domain for some of his works! Why? Back when the similar Dr. Seuss thing was going down, I read someone's take that the real problem here is that publishers and literary estates are able to extend control over the works of dead authors far too long. If we had good copyright laws, there would be amended Dahl books and original Dahl books. Parents and readers would have the same options they already do for Oz.
EDIT: I learned after I wrote this before it was published that Dahl's publishers backtracked, and they will keep the original texts in print as separate editions... I would not be surprised, however, if they quietly let them fall out of print. I also appreciated this Guardian column about how there's some stuff you just can't take out of James Bond without it all falling apart; the series is intrinsically built around ableism, for example.