Said Roald Dahl, quoted in "Roald Dahl promised to set a crocodile on anyone who changed his words" (London Times).
This is from a recorded conversation he had with the artist Francis Bacon in 1982.
Bacon told him: “There must be no changes to an artist’s original work when he is dead whatsoever.”
Dahl also said, "You know, it was Marx and Lenin who commenced this political correctness rubbish way back in 1917, and by God it’s creeping into this country."Crossing himself, 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.”
“He suddenly grabbed [a copy of 'Revolting Rhymes' and roughly flipped through several pages to a fine comical drawing by Quentin Blake of Miss Red Riding Hood wearing a heavy wolfskin coat. ‘For instance, look here — knickers!’ he exclaimed [at the line ‘She whips a pistol from her knickers’] and pressed his forefinger fingernail under the eight letters so hard an imprint was left behind… noting, ‘I suppose if the political correctness police could get ahold of that, they’d change the filthy word to “ladies underwear apparel”!’
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21 comments:
It would be fitting if anonymous people started sending the publisher live crocodiles.
I will send the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.
That bites.
We should bring back the word knickers for women’s underwear apparel. Fewer letters and sounds more fun.
Heh. He knew he was being naughty.
But by God if you can't be naughty in books, where can you be?
History is consistent. The pendulum always swings.
Humans are biologically consistent.
It starts with whisper campaigns and the spreading of tribal animus.
Then the tribe casts out the unwanted.
Eventually the unwanted outnumber the tribe and they return and take over the tribe.
Now they start the whisper campaign...
The people that changed Roald Dahl's words have cast so many people out of the tribe they are outnumbered 100's to 1 through a long series of actions.
Their demise is as predictable as demographics.
The pendulum will always come back.
I have only read short stories by Dahl. But both there and in the Willie Wonka movies, both Gene Wilder and Johnnie Depp versions, it was clear to me - as a child for all but the Depp - that he wasn't writing only for children. He didn't hide the ball.
The movies, if they are at all faithful to the book, creeped me out, even as I marveled at the factory. As a little kid watching the Wilder version, I figured the factory was Hell. (I hadn't been introduced to Purgatory yet.)
That's very on the nose.
He knew exactly who he was dealing with.
I honestly can't fathom the hubris it takes to change what an author wrote without their permission. Or to demand that words be changed to assuage some groups feelings.
It's almost as if the editors saw this interview and went "challenge accepted."
"I expected this, but not so soon."
‘She whips a pistol from her knickers’
Good Lord. If he had any idea where wokeness would lead us he would've never written that sentence.
I was wondering how many writers have done this?
Most probably took it for granted that this would not be done?
Hitchens?
The author speaks!
Money speaks louder.
The woke shriek.
Well, Dahl will do as he claimed- they won't get another word from him. Like I wrote the other day- his family sold the rights to Dahl's work, and the buyer gets to do as they wish with them. Same for Stine, I suppose, but maybe he stills retains his.
Witch hunts, warlock trials, baby planning and burning books through death by a dozen scalpings.
Changing a dead author's prose seems trashy. I can see why Dahl was upset at thought. He had to constantly battle his philistine, money grubbing, dumbo Publishers when he was alive. He got the words he wished, and now they're being changed. But not for $, but for some weird Leftwing desire to vandalize a great man's words.
He hated the film "Willie Wonka and Chocolate factory" too. But he couldn't do much about that.
Bacon? Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon? Hmm...
Like I said yesterday... You don't like what Dahl or Fleming had to say? Don't hijack their works to say what you'd prefer they said, write your own stuff and make it better than theirs. If you can't do that, wellllllll... That speaks for itself.
Rewriting authors smacks of creative vampirism, or a form of zombification. If they'd have meant to say those things, then they would have. Putting words in their mouths distorts what they had to say, disconnects it from the milieu they lived in, and when you think about it, solidly discredits anything negative you might have to say about their actual opinions.
I mean, OK: Roald Dahl is a hateful racist misogynist, right? So... If you expurgate his works, what exactly is your evidence for that, again? I mean... Don't you want to discredit his ideas, his words? How do you do that if you remove all the objectionable bits, and where, exactly, do you start and stop?
"trust me", said the ass to the crocodile
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