Posted on 05/03/2023 2:25:28 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
Ian Fleming (James Bond) is among the writers undergoing posthumous editing for content unsuitable for today’s readers.
As he is dead, he has no choice in the matter.
We are all familiar with book banning and book burning. Can anything be worse? Yes, changing a writer’s intent, dead or alive, through sensitivity editing.
Some writers, nowadays, agree to go along to get along.
That’s too bad.
True writers value each word they write.
Hemingway spoke of the search for the “perfect sentence,” and quite often he clicked, if he can be forgiven for his mistreatment of Robert Cohn in “The Sun Also Rises.”
Often enough, a single word makes all the difference. There was consternation over Rhett Butler’s exit line in “Gone with the Wind.”
In the end, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” was kept as written, over “give a darn,” which had been offered to please the censors.
Imagine our cultural and literary loss had Margaret Mitchell or the producers relented for the sake of placating the guardians of “good taste.”
The effect would have been bloody murder in terms of our Literature.
A single word, kept true, and it’s a different world…a world we truly live in, warts and all.
.....
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
In answer to Englehard's question, here's the perfect sentence: No.
Some stories are archetypal, hitting on eternal themes that repeat forever with evolving variations, sometimes for the better, sometimes lamentably. All love stories have to have friction, some reason why love is frustrated. If all they do is live happily ever after, it's boring. Romeo and Juliet represents love despite the ultimate friction, two lovers from two feuding clans, at each others' throats. They are destroyed by the feud, but not before they are briefly united. So love triumphed, but the lovers die tragically. Same story is reincarnated in West Side Story, and in Huckleberry Finn in the conflict between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdson, which might also have been influenced by the conflict between the Hatfields and the McCoys. But not all love stories are Romeo and Juliet. For example, in Troilus and Cresida, the girl switches sides and starts shtupping a Greek, and Troilus forgets her, except to seek revenge against her new paramour. Love loses, the story becomes trivial, and consequently was "never clapper-clawed by the multitude". It was a flop.
But back to Sun Also Rise and Richard Cohen and the anti-Semitic slurs. It's not a universal story. It's about Ernest Hemingway's ex-pat years after being catastrophically wounded in the Great War. Nothing universal or recurring about that. So the players happen to be anti-Semitic, and the object of their anti-Semitism happens to be an unsympathetic person, a whiny, inconsequential fellow who's obsessed with a shiksa who was only amusing herself by sleeping with him. OK. That's what Hemingway saw, and he didn't candy coat it. That ought to be respected and preserved as is, especially because it takes place right before the real-life, horrific anti-Semitism that Hitler brought into being. 'til then, at least in early 20th Century Western Europe, anti-Semitism was mostly casual snobbery, not anything murderous.
If you let the Wokesters touch Hemingway's Sun Also Rises, or the similar anti-Semitism in George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, that historical record of society as it was at that point in time in that region, is lost for good. It would be a crime against memory.
Thoughtful post. Thank you.
Is anyone surprised by this?
Just like blacks who hide behind slavery.
Don’t change a damn thing. Seriously, people need to come to grips with history.
No book should EVER be rewritten. If it offends you, don’t read it. I am appalled that publishing companies would even think of doing this.
No. Why would anyone think it’s OK to go back and sanitize literature? Like in 1984.
Or Fahrenheit 451.
“Why would anyone think it’s OK to go back and sanitize literature? Like in 1984.”
In case you haven’t noticed, about half of society thinks “1984” is an instruction manual.
To meld “Jaws” with Orwell, we’re gonna need a bigger memory hole.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Today’s elite are so arrogant that they believe they are morally superior to prior generations. They haven’t a clue. They just redefine morale decadence to support their preferences.
Never?
Snow White, before it became a children’s story, had prince fancy pants screwing Snow White while she lay comatose and siring two children. Both a medical impossibility, and a movie role tailor-made for Bill Cosby. Yuck.
The Oliver! musical was an improvement on the book in many ways, though not a true depiction of Victorian England. It was a good trade-off, though.
The Disney Beauty and the Beast’s introduction of Gaston as a villain was a vast improvement over Belle’s conceited, pampered sisters. He’s the very epitome of the Prince before he was turned into the Beast, narcissistic, overbearing, obsessed with his appearance, and he nearly kills the Beast, but for Belle showing up and saving him from the brink of death with her tears. It’s a much more solid story, despite the singing and dancing furniture.
“Ian Fleming (James Bond) is among the writers undergoing posthumous editing for content unsuitable for today’s readers.”
So books in many el/hi schools describe in detail oral sex and gay sex episodes and that’s AOK but books like this offend adults??? The Wimp Virus seem infected the majority of the Earth’s young population.
The works of two of my favorite modern authors, George MacDonald Fraser and Dan Jenkins, are probably in peril here.
"Of course!"
"I am Plato's Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus."
"How do you do?" said Mr. Simmons.
"Hello," said Montag.
"I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."
Everyone laughed quietly.
"It can't be," said Montag.
"It is," replied Granger, smiling.
They should read some Agatha Christie. We can never totally know a writers mind set when they write.
“As he is dead, he has no choice in the matter.”
His estate and literary executor do.
The town elders did do a double-think to deny the existence of the shark, repeated in all the sequels, which became characteristic of 1970s disaster movies. But other than that, how could Jaws and Orwell be melded?
No fairy tale should ever be bowdlerized much less disneyfied. The original tales, as recorded by the likes of the Brothers Grimm were often, well ... quite grim.
Not after the copyright expires, 50 years after the death of the author.
No
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