Jeff writes that Puffin Books has “relented” over its stance on bowdlerizing Roald Dahl’s work.
But although it’s true that Puffin Books has conceded some ground, it’s worth looking (appropriately enough) at the small print.
Clicking on the link to Puffin’s statement reveals this:
Puffin announces today the release of The Roald Dahl Classic Collection, to keep the author’s classic texts in print. These seventeen titles will be published under the Penguin logo, as individual titles in paperback, and will be available later this year. The books will include archive material relevant to each of the stories.
The Roald Dahl Classic Collection will sit alongside the newly released Puffin Roald Dahl books for young readers, which are designed for children who may be navigating written content independently for the first time.
Readers will be free to choose which version of Dahl’s stories they prefer.
It will be interesting to see what that “archive material” is, and how it is framed.
More to the point, Penguin (Puffin’s “parent”: Both companies are part of a larger conglomerate) is an adult imprint. While it is good that the original text will be available, for a while anyway, Puffin, the children’s imprint, will be selling the bowdlerized version. And it is that censored and rewritten version that will, almost certainly, be used in schools and sold in the children’s sections in bookstores.
Look closely, too, at some of the wording in the statement by Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Random House Children’s (my emphasis added):
At Puffin we have proudly published Roald Dahl’s stories for more than forty years in partnership with the Roald Dahl Story Company. Their mischievous spirit and his unique storytelling genius have delighted the imaginations of readers across many generations. We’ve listened to the debate over the past week which has reaffirmed the extraordinary power of Roald Dahl’s books and the very real questions around how stories from another era can be kept relevant for each new generation.
Somehow, I think that the fear of Puffin’s censors was that Dahl’s books might be too relevant, rather than too little. That’s why the wording had to be changed.
Meanwhile, the Guardian (the Guardian!) is reporting this:
One of Roald Dahl’s best-known characters was the Enormous Crocodile, “a horrid greedy grumptious brute” who “wants to eat something juicy and delicious”.
Now a conversation the author had 40 years ago has come to light, revealing that he was so appalled by the idea that publishers might one day censor his work that he threatened to send the crocodile “to gobble them up”.
The conversation took place in 1982 at Dahl’s home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, where he was talking to the artist Francis Bacon.
“I’ve warned my publishers that if they later on so much as change a single comma in one of my books, they will never see another word from me. Never! Ever!” he said.
With his typically evocative language, he added: “When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.”
He was referring to his Norwegian roots and to his earlier story of “the greediest croc” in talking to Bacon, who apparently felt just as strongly about the subject, telling him: “There must be no changes to an artist’s original work when he is dead for any reason whatsoever.” Crossing himself in jest, Dahl replied: “I just hope to God that will never happen to any of my writings as I am lying comfortably in my Viking grave.”
The conversation was recorded, with permission from both men, by Barry Joule, who had accompanied his friend Bacon to spend a weekend with the writer . . .
Oh yes, the London Times is reporting that “owners” of electronic versions of the “offending” Dahl books are having their versions retrospectively altered. This is all too credible, I fear, and a reminder that in our current era it’s a good idea to own physical CDs, DVDs, and books that might be . . . vulnerable. Book burnings, at least, have to be carried out in public, and we are not (the odd incident apart) there yet.