I only say this to you because I like you and don’t think you’re having fun being an asshat. Well not entirely lol we all enjoy a bit of fun with each other. But several of your comments about authors and authors ITT are way out of line. Respect the integrity of the artist please. You are in no position to say you can tell whether someone has written a book by their comments about writing.
This has been my morning “wait, did I take that comment way too earnestly”
I’m not in a very argumentative mood, but we can run through the main points of this thread if you like. I’d be interested in your perspective.
I’m glad you agree we should respect the integrity of the artist. This is the main dividing line in this discussion. VFS, Wookie, and Dr.C either believe we should not respect the integrity of the artist or don’t think that such a thing even exists, so there’s no point in respecting something that doesn’t exist. (See: “the copyright holders can do whatever they want” + “hundreds of clunky edits with no mention of an editor are fine” etc etc).
The point about who is and isn’t an artist and why this matters got away from me a little. It was meant to be a very mundane point about whose opinion should hold weight when we ask “Is X valuable?” I was trying to say that those on the anti-respect the integrity of an artist side of things are so out there with their opinions that it is very very likely they have no experience with what we’re talking about. Because of this I’m not that interested in what they have to say. The idea comes from John Stuart Mill: to be a competent judge of X, you must have experienced X.
The point about “some gatekeeping is good, actually” was just this point with some rhetorical flourish lol. It’s a very boring, super standard opinion that these guys I’m sure even agree with and would say so if they didn’t hate my guts.
I am not interested or capable of having a productive conversation on this topic when you talk about it like this.
I think the facts for Dahl case and why the Dahl estate asked to publish these new editions kind of speak for themselves? I read a lot of the people quoting each other’s outrage as facts and got tired.
The separately revised editions were created and published in conjunction with the author’s estate. They are horrified by the outrageous and fucking evil things Dahl put in print. Offering separate editions is fine.
this is not true for me. integrity of the artist’s work exists, and most people give it whatever respect they feel it deserves already. same holds for editorial input, which is inseparable from virtually all published works today. between author, editor, and reader, neither exists in a vacuum away from the other two, not to mention the work itself is entangled with its cultural context, modern and historical.
you are perfectly capable of buying and reading old editions of dahl, and if copyright law wasn’t so LOLLAW, you’d be able to re-publish them sooner than 2060. with or without eidts. you can even publish some version you don’t respect!
Among the examples of changes cited by the Telegraph is the 1937 Poirot novel Death on the Nile, in which the character of Mrs Allerton complains that a group of children are pestering her, saying that “they come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children”.
This has been stripped down in a new edition to state: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”
Can you imagine what these hacks are doing to newly written stuff?
I don’t agree with everything here, but there are some compelling points about the cynicism undergirding the use of sensitivity readers and, as voiced many times in this thread, the denial of respect for artist integrity in favor of the copyright holder’s bottom line.
I cannot understand how it’s not disgusting that their goal is to lie about what their ancestor wrote, in order to have fewer people realize their ancestor was outrageously evil.
Like there does not have to be a sanitized version of Mein Kampf. It’s actually evil to try to pass one off. If you’re ashamed, and you have all this money from your evil ancestor, go use that money to discover and promote things written by the people your ancestor thinks are subhuman.
I cannot understand how Dahl’s estate is not gross and evil and money-chasing to do this. The only alternative is that they believe there just aren’t enough great works of fiction to go around, so we are forced to whitewash what their ancestor wrote if we don’t want to live in a bleak, gray, fictionless world.
Like a long while ago, the extemely clumsy “point” was made that if you’re not in favor of editing Dahl, then you’re not in favor of removing Confederate statues.
No, the edited Dahl is the statues. How can people not see that?
If you’re against the statues, you’re against the edited Dahl.
The purpose of statues is to commemorate or celebrate someone or something. History being what it is, these people and events are often pretty awful and the statues are deliberately misrepresenting them as heroic.
People who equate removal of these statues with editing old books are fools (or maybe arrogantly and abrasively stupid).
It’s offensive that people decades later won’t know that most crackers enjoyed racist fiction, or won’t understand exactly what was so racist about it.
Similar to how it’s offensive that Mad Men acted like nearly all honkeys were devastated that MLK got assassinated.
Sorry to hear you feel that way, but you’re entitled to your own way of seeing things. I will just accept that’s how you feel about it. You are too far apart from what I consider to be a reasonable position on this with what you say and how you choose to say it. Please don’t ask me to talk to you about it again.
That’s not how I remember that episode. Only Pete was actually upset, which seemed true to Pete. Harry was worried about ads not running or something, Don was worried about race riots.