The following editorial was originally published by the New York Daily News:
Like the rest of the sane universe, we couldn’t believe the gall of Puffin U.K. when word came out that the publishing house and the Roald Dahl Story Co., the entity that manages his work, had conspired to make hundreds of changes to the writer’s iconic books.
After sensitivity readers flagged language as objectionable, the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory aren’t “small men” anymore; they’re now “small people.” The chickens in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” are no longer “stupid.” Augustus Gloop isn’t “fat”; now he’s “enormous” (that’s better?). In “The Twits,” a language referred to as a “weird African language” is now simply an “African language.” In “The BFG,” the description of a character as having “reddish-brown” skin is now gone. In “The Witches,” a sentence is added: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”
Because these novels would still say “By Roald Dahl” on the covers, this is nothing more than putting words in — and taking them out of — a dead man’s mouth.
A play or movie or TV show or graphic novel or theme park ride based on Dahl is free to take liberties. Nor are we opposed to creators producing works for multiple audiences. With J.K. Rowling’s permission, the Harry Potter books use some different language in their U.K. and U.S. editions. We know of at least one girl who enjoys “New York State of Mind” with the clean, rather than the explicit, lyrics.
But in free and democratic society, paintings are not painted over -- no matter how far out of favor those artists have fallen. Mark Twain put the N-word in “Huckleberry Finn” very much on purpose; to remove it now is both to miss the point and to sanitize history.
Friday, in an attempt to quell the furor, Dahl’s craven publisher said it would release the original stories as a “Classic Collection” alongside the updated editions. We’d recommend adding a trigger warning: The pages can cause paper cuts.
(C)2023 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
UPDATE: Penguin Random House, of which Puffin U.K. is an imprint, has decided to publish “The Roald Dahl Classic Collection,” which would offer readers 17 of Dahl’s original titles without any of the sensitivity rewrites.
On Friday, Puffin released a statement offering a compromise of sorts, according to a story by the Los Angeles Times.
“We recognise the importance of keeping Dahl’s classic texts in print,” the statement reads. “By making both Puffin and Penguin versions available, we are offering readers the choice to decide how they experience Roald Dahl’s magical, marvellous stories. Puffin announces today the release of The Roald Dahl Classic Collection, to keep the author’s classic texts in print.”
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