Buy Old Books

By David Harsanyi

Thursday, March 16, 2023

 

We recently learned that Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, and many other classic children’s books, had had his work bowdlerized by a publisher. The revisions, explained the London Times, related to “weight, mental health, violence, gender and race.” The offensive words “mothers” and “fathers” had been replaced with “parents.” A “female” became a “person.” A “man-eating giant” became a “human-eating giant.” The word “attractive” was changed to “kind,” altering the meaning. The color “black” was now “dark,” even though the original connotation had absolutely nothing to do with race.

 

When it comes to sanitizing language, one can never be too careful, I guess. But you know you’re old when you struggle even to grasp why they’re pretending to be offended. How is an “old hag” any more upsetting to a reader than an “old crow”? Why is the phrase “taught him how to spell and write sentences” any more unpleasant than “volunteered to give him lessons”? Mysteries.

 

A skeptic might wonder whether all these “sensitivity” edits of classics are just an old-fashioned cynical capitalistic ploy to renew interest in the titles by sparking controversy. How many parents are really grousing about the word “fat”? The publisher now says it will publish two sets of Dahl books, one bowdlerized and one not, which is very convenient.

 

Dahl’s delightfully imaginative books read as more dangerous than the usual kids’ fare because they are infused with a macabre British sense of humor and because his adult characters are often disconcertingly nefarious. It is part of why they have had an enduring appeal.

 

If you’re parents who believe a gendered pronoun will shatter your kid’s world, perhaps Dahl is not the author to begin with. Though many of the people who find the word “female” or Huck Finn’s period language unpalatable no doubt do not object to descriptions of sex and gender dysphoria in elementary-school libraries.

 

For me, typically unoffended by dead writers, there is a temptation to imagine Dahl — a malevolent person who remained a Hitler fanboy his entire life — sitting helplessly in the underworld and watching some purple-haired, nonbinary junior editor cleansing his wonderful little books. The author who after a fatwa was issued on Salman Rushdie’s life called him a “dangerous opportunist” who “knew exactly what he was doing and cannot plead otherwise” probably deserves it.

 

Nevertheless, we can’t allow the normalization of cultural revisionism. We can confidently say that Dahl, who threatened to send an “Enormous Crocodile” to eat his publishers if they edited his work to be more politically correct, would oppose any posthumous changes to his words. Changing his words without his permission is tantamount to altering the colors on a Caravaggio or toning down a chord progression in Wagner. Sometimes they don’t even wait for you to die. R. L. Stine, the still-living author of the popular children’s-book series Goosebumps, also had his work revised by a publishing company without his permission.

 

The revisionist movement isn’t only about children, of course. Another victim of editorial vandalism is Ian Fleming, whose James Bond novels are going to be scrubbed of all racial references and tagged with disclaimers warning readers that the attitudes depicted in the books might be “considered offensive by modern readers.” So what you’re telling me is that a Cold War–era spy who is given carte blanche by Her Majesty to travel to exotic locales, carouse with women, and murder people doesn’t hold values that comport with our modern sensibilities? When do we get warnings on The Taming of the Shrew and All the King’s Men? Wait until these people read what the Old Testament has in store for the Amalekites.

 

Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of all this is that electronic books purchased through your devices or lent through library apps are being automatically updated with the edited language. I’m grateful for the ease of cultural access the internet has afforded us. But the control that electronic booksellers and music- and movie-streaming companies have over content also leaves me uneasy. It would not be particularly difficult to cancel or severely limit the reach of artists if the right companies were inclined or pressured to do so. When child-abuse accusations against Woody Allen reemerged not long ago, I went out and bought virtually every one of his films on DVD just in case.

 

Editing of classic works goes far beyond run-of-the-mill political correctness. It is cultural presentism, an effort to rewrite the past. Literature has never been purely about reading a good yarn or character study. It’s about experiencing a world and time through the prism of the author’s experiences and imagination.

 

All of this is a long way of saying: Buy old books. It’s a moral imperative. Old, physical copies of books. If you, like me, love bibliosmia — the smell of old hardcovers; or, rather, the odor created by chemical compounds in paper breaking down after being exposed to light, water, and heat for extended periods of time — then you’ve been trolling the garage sales and thrift and antique shops as well. For years I struggled to justify my addiction. Now I’ve been vindicated, and so have you. It’s nothing less than cultural preservation. Just in case.