This past week the literary world suffered yet another indignity, yet another strike at the wall artists build to keep back the chaos when it was announced that the late Roald Dahl’s books would be getting a reprint sans the original books’ offensive or insensitive words. No longer will Augustus Gloop be called “fat,” or the Witches “ugly.” The organization behind this vile antiseptic of a literary genius is the benign and angelically good folks at Inclusive Minds. Inclusive Minds apparently has been working with Dahl’s publisher, Puffin, since 2020 on re-releasing his work using more inclusive and sensitive language before Dahl’s work is handed over to Netflix, who have purchased rights. The organization is essentially a consulting stable of “sensitivity readers” who work with editors and publishers to consult on manuscripts on matters of things like authenticity or to prevent the promotion of harmful stereotypes about marginalized groups. Oddly, in the group’s “About Us” section, the organization says they “do not edit or rewrite texts” (bold is theirs). Oooohkay. I suppose what they mean by this is that they do not physically edit or rewrite text; they just advise the publisher to do so.
But it’s not just a matter of changing Willy Wonka’s Augustus Gloop from “enormously fat” to “enormous.” Whole sentences have been rewritten to either deliver some inclusive message, or to flatten a detail that might strike the 2023 reader as odd. Take, for example, this passage from “Witches.”
Original: “Don’t be foolish,” my grandmother said. You can’t go round pulling the hair of every lady you meet even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens.”
Changed to: “Don’t be foolish,” my grandmother said. Besides, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”
Thanks for the PSA, Inclusive Minds. I’m curious if, right after that line of text, G.I. Joe steps into the frame and says “Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.”
Want more? From Willy Wonka and his explanation of the Oompa-Loompas.
Original: “So I shipped them all over here. Every man, woman and child in the Oompa-Loompa tribe.”
Changed to: “So they all agreed to come over–each and every Oompa-Loompa.”
Original: “It was easy. I smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them and they all got here safely. They all speak English now.”
Changed to: “They’ve told me they love it here.”
I’m gathering that the good and angelic people at Inclusive Minds thought Wonka’s description of how the Oompa-Loompas arrived at the factory harkened back to the transatlantic slave trade. The context that’s missing here is that the Oompa-Loompas were rescued from Loompaland after suffering in terrible living conditions and being preyed upon by other creatures in the region. Not living as free souls in the land of their ancestors and suddenly thrown into bondage and shipped across an ocean to work under the whip for no pay. There’s just no equivalent and Dahl wasn’t making one. If that was the parallel the Good and Noble Department of Inclusive Minds drew when making their recommendations, then surely the line about speaking English didn’t stand a chance. Clearly we know, now, that learning English when coming to an English-speaking country is a microaggression.
There’s so many people to be mad at; I don’t know who to be mad at. As much as I mock agencies like Inclusive Minds, I can understand the impulse behind its existence. It’s a commendable cause. Most fair-minded people don’t wish to offend anybody, or to inaccurately portray a group of people in our fiction in such a way that promotes dehumanizing stereotypes. A service that can help us better recognize our blind spots so we don’t cross over into that territory could be useful if we seek it out.
But Roald Dahl did not seek out this service. Roald Dahl is dead. Moreover, not only is this a case of mission overreach; it’s willfully conflating actual periods in human history with fictitious creatures from fictitious lands, running from fictitious enemies. Just because you or I might find similarities between the Oompa-Loompas and African slaves, doesn’t mean Dahl intended that to be the case. It’s hard to be mad at an organization that makes no attempt to hide its core mission. It was up to Puffin, Dahl’s publisher, to say thanks, but no thanks, and they didn’t do that.
Then there’s room to be mad at Maris Kreizman. Kreizman is a writer and influential Twitter personality, with more than 75,000 followers. A contributor to The New York Times and LitHub, she has a book coming out from Ecco Books in 2024. Her reaction to the bowdlerizing of Roald Dahl’s work mimicked my own.
“NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS” she tweeted in all caps, while sharing The Guardian’s coverage of the controversy.
Actually, Maris, someone did ask for this. YOU asked for this. Kreizman’s history of censoriousness when it comes to literature is well documented, gratefully, by Kreizman herself. In a Twitter thread posted last July, Kreizman responded to this opinion piece by Pamela Paul, a former NY Times Book Review editor. Paul has recently come under new fire for her recent piece in defense of author JK Rowling, whom many believe is a transphobe.
In the July 2022 piece that drew Kreizman’s ire, Paul argued that there’s a new form of book banning underway and it’s coming from the left. Similar to how conservatives have gotten many books banned from school libraries (and continue to do so), a certain subset of progressives have put enormous pressure on publishers, reviewers, booksellers and reading venues to “not platform” books by writers they deem harmful to society. In the Twitter thread, Kreizman called attention to one book that argues against publishing “white supremacists, fascists, misogynists and other dangerous ideologues.” She then goes on to provide links to articles about people who presumably fall into one or more of those categories: Woody Allen, Abigail Shrier, Jeanine Cummins, Michael Cohen, Alan Dershowitz, Bret Stephens, (I’ll leave space here so Kreizman can add some more as we move forward) You can read the whole thread here. She supported employees at Hatchette who threatened a walk-out if they published Woody Allen’s memoir, “Apropos of Nothing.” She signal-boosted a hit piece in Vanity Fair about Skyhorse Publishing, one of the few houses out there that will publish contrarian or controversial writers or books that challenge well-worn progressive narratives. And she embedded an article in support of…wait for it…sensitivity readers.
Even in the Dahl tweet, expressing her disdain for the changes to Dahl’s work, she added this aside: “In this context, sensitivity readers are a liberal joke. Ridiculous! But for present day authors looking to write thoughtfully about experiences different from their own, sensitivity readers are key.”
Actually, they’re not key. Most writers go through some form of formal or informal workshopping process while they’re writing their books. Sometimes it takes the form of a structured class offered at a university, and sometimes it’s just a handful of passionate, published and unpublished writers supporting one another and offering feedback. This is all before the writer gets an agent, who also offers editorial suggestions. Then the editors weigh in. The point is, there are multiple layers in which extra pairs of eyes off their insight into a work in progress.
Very often when an author writes about a subject matter, or demographic population outside their own, they individually seek out a friend or fellow writer who shares that demographic to look it over. Some might argue that this is what a sensitivity reader is, but there’s a difference. The writer is asking someone they’re comfortable with, and they might not even ask the reader to look for anything in particular. The friend is there to read the book and offer their insight about its authenticity, pointing out where something might be inaccurate or perhaps, yes, offensive. This is different from a paid consultant for a publishing house tasked with looking for offensive phrases or situations. God shield I from being a cynic, but I’m not sure it’s a healthy environment to have someone reading a book for offensive material, when that person’s livelihood depends on finding offensive material. To put it more simply, those who go looking for offense will find it every time.
What happened this week with Roald Dahl’s work is a direct consequence of the kind of thinking Kreizman and her ilk promote. Some faucets are hard to turn off. I’m sorry, but you can’t spend years arguing that book publishers and newspapers should deny coverage or platform certain ideas because you deem them “harmful” or “fascist” or “white supremacist;” you can’t argue in support of sensitivity readers, and support employee walkouts over an artist’s expressions; you can’t sign open letters to newspapers imploring them to shut their doors to multifaceted coverage of trans issues, and then feign shock when the spirit that guides those things hits closer to home than you would have liked.
Roald Dahl’s canonical work has been bowdlerized for future generations. Who asked for this? We did. When we allowed these cultural forces to run roughshod over art.