I’m curious where people here land on the whole Roald Dahl revision controversy.
I grew up on his books. Matilda, The BFG, The Witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, all of it. Those books were a huge part of how I fell in love with reading in the first place.
Some parts may feel a bit dated by today’s standards. But I still struggle with the idea that changing the text is the right fix.
It feels odd to go back and sand down an author’s work instead of letting it exist as a product of its time and talking about it openly. Kids are not fragile, and part of reading is encountering ideas/attitudes that don’t line up with today’s values.
Do people think the revisions were justified, or would it have been better to keep the originals and add context if needed? Where do you draw the line between updating books for modern readers and just rewriting history?
Curious to hear what others think, especially anyone else who grew up reading Roald Dahl.
by confringos
3 Comments
Unless you are the original author, no one should be revising books after the fact, just adding footnotes or introductions.
Meh, we do retellings of things all the time, it’s the way storytelling began. The only difference is now the originals are still out there for the people that want them.
No, they weren’t justified. But since the estate and the publishers want to continue making as much money as possible they’re feeling was that the books needed to cater to what they believe are modern sensitivities, so the edits were made. In my opinion the edits are egregious, with some being genuinely baffling, but that’s just my opinion. Old books shouldn’t be revised or edited, we should just leave them as they are, and new books can be written to meet modern standards for the people who want to read them.