Once upon a time, one of the reasons we valued literature is that it broadened our horizons. It was a window into a different time and place, a different culture, etc. That is rapidly becoming wrongthink.
P.G. Wodehouse now joins Dr. Seuss, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl ... and how many others? So far.
Buy physical media, folks, classic movies as well as books.
I actually have a constructive suggestion to make. Any of you who know a congresscritter or two, please pass it along. It would require legislation, but we should require two things:
(1) Any publisher who censors an original work should be required to state this prominently, in large type, on the cover of any book so altered, or at the beginning and end of all movies. A tiny disclaimer buried in the fineprint or deep in the movie credits isn't enough. And the public notification should provide the address to a website on which, by law, the entity altering the original would be required to maintain a fully indexed, side-by-side comparison of all changes.
(2) Secondly, and even more importantly because it would be automatic and self-enforcing, we should then immediately end all copyright protections for all works of literature as well as all movies that have been bowdlerized by the current copyright owners. Their copyright would be deemed to extend only to their current censored version. They would be deemed to have abandoned the rights to the original, which would enter into the public domain.
Were this to happen, I'd love to become a shareholder of Samizdat Publications, a firm dedicated to republishing the uncensored originals.
People who can’t even construct a coherent sentence are no in charge of all literature.
Such hubris will not work out well for them.
Fahrenheit 451
So proud of their work they won’t even identify what changes they have made.
During WWII the government would print books for the GIs and cut out the "dull bits" and other things that they might not want them reading about. They were the Reader's Digest Condensed version.
The problem was that the guys came back and discovered that the hardbacks had a lot more story. This led to a drop in paperback sales. So the publishing companies learned to put the disclaimer "This book contains the complete text of the original hard cover edition. NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED"
👍
And people wonder why I purchase old, first editions at book fairs rather than just downloading to a Nook.
The originals are all on Gutenberg for free :)
I wonder if this is just a way to try to get them all under copyright again?
I got a set collection of PG Wodehouse last year as a gift.
So glad I got it before the woke arseholes got their hands on it.
I wish the article had some examples of the changes
They’d better not mess with my gal Honoria Glossop.
Hey they changed The Bobbsey Twins a few years ago ...
No more Honey Lamb etc
I read many of those books as a child in the 50’s and theyre not the same now ...
I bet Enid Bryant’s Famous Five and Secret Seven are different to now ...
bkmk
Mr. Mercat and I love Jeeves and Wooster.
Modern day Nazi book burning.
And they call us the fascists.
We’re becoming to stupid to exist.
Is this Fahrenheit 451 or 1984?
The left are the Taliban of western nations.
Erase anything they does not meet their world view.
Shakespeare and the Bible are next. Seriously.
PG Wodehouse was indisputably the funniest writer of the English language. Censorship is a cowardly, disgusting tactic of shallow and talentless people. Leave Bertie, Jeeves, Lord Elmsworth and the Blandings gang the hell alone!
Recently bought early 1900 copies of the Little Black Mambo series. Read those as a kid in school. They are classical literature and should be preserved in their original format. Bought early Warner Bros Bugs Bunny DVDs as well. Get copies of History of the World Part I, it will be on the censored list soon.