I wrote today about the totalitarians having come for Roald Dahl. To that piece, I’d like to add a second thought about where this all ends.
One of the passages that was removed completely from Matilda reads like this:
She wore heavy make-up and had one of those unfortunate bulging figures where the flesh appears to be strapped in all around the body to prevent it from falling out.
This is a fat joke. It relies for its humor upon the person in question being fat, and the description of what that fat person looks like being linguistically amusing. Perhaps you think it’s funny. (I do — very much so.) Perhaps you don’t. I don’t really care. What I care about is where this trend will go next, because if this isn’t “inclusive,” then nor is, say, P. G. Wodehouse, who made a whole bunch of jokes like this — all of which are, in my view, excruciatingly good:
She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.
And:
He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when!’
And:
The lunches of fifty-seven years had caused his chest to slip down into the mezzanine floor.
And:
She had more curves than a scenic railway.
Wodehouse also wrote about people who look peculiar:
His chin gave up the struggle about half-way down, and he didn’t appear to have any eyelashes. A mild, furtive, sheepish sort of blighter, in short.
And:
As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.
And:
He looked like a vulture dissatisfied with its breakfast corpse.
And:
She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.
And:
She looked like something that might have occurred to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.
He wrote about stupid people, too:
And she’s got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.
And:
He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.
I would like to know — in plain, comprehensible English — why Wodehouse’s publisher shouldn’t take out these descriptions and replace them with insipid garbage. What’s the limiting principle? Why not take this line:
She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.
And make it, instead:
She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who understood that people are obese for many legitimate reasons and that it’s kind to design furniture for all shapes.
Answers on a postcard, please.