The Classics — Updated and Improved

By Rich Lowry

Sunday, February 19, 2023

 

Editor’s Note: The Daily Telegraph reports that the children’s books of the great author Roald Dahl, who gave us Fantastic Mr. Fox and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among other classics, are being reedited.

 

“Language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race has been cut and rewritten,” the paper writes. The work is being done in conjunction with an outfit called Inclusive Minds that describes itself as “a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature.”

 

***

 

The good news is that there is no limit to how the principles that are being used to update Roald Dahl can be applied to improve other classic works of literature.

 

Pride and Prejudice, Darcy’s impression of Elizabeth changes, chapter six

 

Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty nice; he had looked at her without admiration very respectfully at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticize with the best of intentions. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in he noticed nothing about her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent above average by the beautiful expression of her dark nondescript eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form some things about her, he was forced to acknowledge her figure personality to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware; — to her he was only the man person who made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough available to dance with.

 

Moby-Dick, the whiteness of the whale, chapter 42

 

What the white pale whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid.

 

Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick the Marine Mammal, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s, or woman’s, or person-of-any-gender’s soul feelings some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness lack of any color whatsoever of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim vague, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be naught.

 

Richard II, John of Gaunt’s deathbed speech, act two

 

This royal throne of kings monarchs, this scepter’d isle island,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars and Venus,

This other Eden, demi-paradise nice place,

This fortress built by Nature for herself theirself

Against infection and the hand of war unfortunate events,

This happy breed of men people, this little world,

This precious stone set in a silver sea next to the Atlantic Ocean

Which serves it in the office of a wall welcome mat,

Or as an moat defensive to a house open gate,

Against the envy of less happier lands To cooperate fully with equally nice places,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

 

The Iliad, Achilles responds to the embassy of the Achaean commanders, book nine

 

Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding,

tripods all for the trading, and tawny headed stallions and mares of all colors.

But a man’s person’s life breath cannot come back again —

no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,

once it slips through a man’s human being’s clenched teeth.

Mother My birthing parent tells me,

the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening [NB: I have a feeling we shouldn’t let “glistening” through. Like, what does it even mean in this context?] feet,

that two fates bear me on to the day of death.

If I hold out here and I lay siege to wait outside Troy,

my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies reputation will be enhanced.

If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,

my pride, my glory dies reputation will be somewhat diminished . . .

true, but the life that’s left me will be long,

the stroke of death will not come on me quickly.

 

1984, book one, chapter seven

 

He picked up the children’s history book and looked at the portrait of Big Brother Average-Size Sibling which formed its frontispiece. The hypnotic eyes gazed into his own. It was as though some huge force of no particular size were pressing down upon you — something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses was slightly unpleasant. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, all solutions to math problems should be considered equally valid, and you would have to believe it. consideration for learners of all abilities. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies bad thing was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four all math answers aren’t valuable so long as students show their work? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?