Episode 27: "America This Week," with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn

And done. In the case of this Roald Dahl book, we're going to discuss and just generally demolishing your intention as a writer. You know, it's not like we're in this for the money. We do this chiefly, I think to, you know, erect little monuments to our own ideas and our own thinking and style, points of view and points of view. And then to have some.

You know, undergraduate in sensitivity studies or whatever the training is for. This come in and blast away is to me surely the equivalent of vandalism, maybe something worse, actually. I mean, sacrilege.

Roald Dahl Books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive. Augustus Gloop Now quote enormous instead of quote fat, Mrs Twit no longer quote ugly and Oompa loompas are gender neutral.

This is by somebody, somebody named Hayden Verdon.

And let's just read some of this text. Roald Dahl's children's books for all. For those of you who don't know, Roald Dahl is a British writer who wrote some fairly famous books. I've never been a huge fan of his writing, but I would always have to say that there are. Some of his works are charming and they've turned into some pretty good movies, like Charlie, you know, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. But anyway, his books are being tweaked a little bit in new versions.

So here's the text from The Guardian. Roald Dahl's children's books are being rewritten to remove language deemed offensive by the publisher. Puffin Puffin has hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author's text to make sure the books quote can continue to be enjoyed by all. Today, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl's work, edits have been made to descriptions of characters, physical appearances. The word fat has been cut from every new edition of relevant books, while the word ugly has also been culled, the Daily Telegraph reported. Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And if you don't recall, this is the Hefty Boy, the Fat Boy from. I believe Germany, is that right?

And it's a great name, Augustus Gloop. I actually stole that once I described in a sports piece.

The then coach of the Cleveland Browns, Eric Mangini as the Augustus Gloop of the N.FL. Because he kind of looked like that. And Jim Rome did a whole thing about Augustus Gloop as a result of that, just because the name is so funny, right? Augustus Gloop is now no longer fat. He's enormous.

There's a family called the Twits. Mrs. Twit is no longer ugly and beastly, but just beastly. Hundreds of changes were made to the original text, and some passages not written by Dahl have been added, but the Royal Dahl Story company said. QuoTe It's not unusual to review the language unquote during a new print run, and any changes were quote small and carefully considered. Walter, you did a tweet. do you have in front of you that tweet with some of those language changes?

Because when I first read that, I almost fell out of my chair at the changes.

And so we're to conclude. I guess that what's distinctive about Augustus Gloop is that he's like a Macy's Day parade balloon, not that, you know, he's fat. Well, the minute you start pulling one thread with literature, you pull apart the whole structure. To. You know, take a guy who's named after, you know. His crappy diet and his gloopiness in general, and make him just large is to, you know, introduce a contradiction, you know, a sort of senseless detail that starts to make the whole thing come apart. Also, what are fairy tales, really? But stories of revolting characters versus charming children, of course.

Right, yeah, I mean, throughout history, fairy tales, which are sort of told from the point of view of the child, whether or not they are specifically told from the point of view, render their impression of adults. And and children see adults as scary, ugly, fat and all sorts of.

And or, to exaggerate it, to the point of, you know, scary absurdity. But so you've just not just destroyed a Roald Dahl story, but you've pulled the basis for fairy tales themselves out from under the whole genre. So so, thanks Puffin, you have a very cute name. But you are in fact a very destructive force for for literature, thought and the unconscious mind in general.

That's that's rant number one, because I've got.

Whoever the Roald Dahl story company is, this corporate entity that has been cobbled together over the grave of the actual author, we should not confuse them with the actual author.

Dahl might have had something different to say about many of these changes. I I suspect he would. He was a cantankerous person. It comes through in his stories. I mean, the misanthropic quality of Roald Dahl is probably the first one you notice if you read a lot of his work.

He didn't particularly love people and in that he was like little children.

It's highly individualistic, you know, very specific, often very vituperative and angry language. But but this specifically the genre that you talk about? With children's fairy tales, I mean, I think most people have forgotten. You got to go back and read the Grimm's fairy tales if you haven't read them recently, they're horrifying.

They would never pass muster in today's climate. They are really deeply disturbing. And that's because it's assumed that this is the way children perceive the world, this is the way they understand they can handle it.

Right, that's.

Right, or, you know, the lonely lady of the of the leaves.

So yeah, yeah, they manage, they manage by pulling this one, you know, pulling this one thread to undermine this whole genre. Not only Roald Dahl's little piece of it, but, you know, again, to come back to this, he can't speak.

And that is something that writers have in common. Because the most ambitious of us hope that if we should be hit by a truck tomorrow. Our work will still be in circulation. And it's our dream that it might be in circulation for a long time, or some piece of it might be. But now it's almost scary to think what might happen to your work if.

You know, almost annually, or maybe semi-annually, or with every edition. A new batch of sensitivity readers who are sure to grow ever more sensitive in ways that change, you know?

Seasonally, are going to get a chance to gnaw on the bone of your work. And the thought that, 100 years from now, should a writer be so lucky that their work lasts that long? It will have been processed by by how many hundred idiots? And come out still with your name.

Who are the people who think that's OK, I don't.

They go out much in general because their sensitivity is such that they might be offended. Walking down the street, they might hear some conversation at the hot dog stand that blows them away. But, you know? But you asked me earlier to cite a couple of specific examples from, Yeah, let's go through the book.

And here's one that I found particularly interesting. Because it's not just an attempt to refashion language, it actually involves the cancellation of other writers within the text. A sort of Russian nesting doll censorship attempt, in which not not only do they censor the writer at hand, but they censor writers who that writer refers to. So, in the first edition of this book, or the 2001 edition, excuse me, there is a sentence. She went on Olden Day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad, she went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard.

Now, 21 years later, and 21 years wiser, society has, or the Sensitivity Department has decided to render that sentence. She went to 19th century estates with Jane Austen, she went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway, they left that part, and California with John Steinbeck.

She went on Olden day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. OK, so they switch genders there, and we have Jane Austen instead. For some reason, the Joseph Conrad world of sort of colonial exploration and sea adventuring is deemed.

You know, inferior to the world of 19th century estates, the places that actually ran the colonial experiment. But let's leave that out.

I mean, they also celebrate it, and in some ways they they make it mythology, but it's not exactly a an unvarnished portrait of the virtues of colonialism. I mean, it's really dark. Conrad's book, I wouldn't, I wouldn't.

The the the Imperialist project and what it means, you know, where it clashes with the human instinct. And and whether you can still be a person and a conqueror, you know, at the same time. I mean, these are, these are profound, ugly questions.

And now I love Jane Austen. I love Jane Austen. I loved her books growing up. I think she's a she's a brilliantly witty, economical writer.

I was an incredible fan of all of her books, like Persuasion was one of my one of the my favorite books growing up. And but those books are about manners. And yes, they're, they're. They're critical of a lot of things, including like the misogyny, gender structure, prejudice, all that.

It's far less condemnatory of that world than Conrad is. So, unless it's just to switch out one male author for a female one, I'm missing what the point is here. Well, absolutely, I second you.

Rather, rather quiet, dry, and, finally, passive rendering of the world of the British country. Gentlemen and gentlemen, you know, no revolutions will ever be fought. With Jane Austen novels in hand, I promise you that, you know, Conrad's the exact opposite, I mean.

And maybe, but maybe that's why he got thrown out, maybe in a weird way. If you read Conrad, you become a little too savvy to stuff that's going on now in a way that is inconvenient to the sensitivity complex. I'm not sure, but let's go to the second point.

They left in going to Africa with Ernest Hemingway. OK, if I, if I was one of the commissars of sensitivity and they put a gun to my head. And I had to sacrifice all my principles and go and do this job. The one that I would have changed was going to Hemingway, going to Africa with Ernest Hemingway, you know, for a couple of reasons, for a few reasons. Now I know descendants of Ernest Hemingway and love them, and I'm a Hemingway fan in all sorts of ways. But the guy was killing elephants for mere machismo.

He, I don't think, ever really had a character in his stories of Africa who was Black, who had any significance to the story. I may be wrong, Hemingway Mavens can can correct me on that. And except for the very end of his life, where he suddenly fancied himself.

Black or a native African? Which sort of happened? He kind of had a weird, delusional phase in which those elephants, well, he went back around and he would hunt naked with a spear and things like this, you know, but. But in any case, why did they leave in the one person who? If I'm going to role play as a sensitivity reader, I would have taken out? It's a mystery.

Someone who commented on this little brouhaha said Well, Hemingway was a known left wing believer, you know, he fought against Franco, he was friends with the Cuban revolutionaries, at least until they took over his estate. And maybe he scored enough points during his life to, you know, be forever grandfathered into the sensitivity revolution. But it's.

It's a total, but he's.

You know, here's the here's the guy who gave us grace under pressure. And just sort of being a quiet, deadly man as the apotheosis of human.

You know, here's the Here's the guy who I don't know trade over and over violence as some sort of purifying ritual, right? And well, you know, the old man in the sea, as as the kind of quintessential, stoic male individualist of agony that makes you worth something.

And so, so, yeah, like I say, Old Testament won in terms of anti-woke Ernest Hemingway, too. And yet the Roald Dahl story company couldn't take him out, but could dispense with Conrad.

You know if the point of this sentence was to list big adventures, which it is if if you look the left column? These are all kind of exotic, adventurous places for a Roald Dahl reading British kid.

They are all colonial places, too.

And yet, when you get to the states with Jane Austen, sorry, boring, not an adventure.

Africa with Ernest Hemingway still an adventure, California with John Steinbeck. What going to, you know, adventure among migrant great pickers. I'm sorry, but that's just not something that fires the child's imagination, exactly, not that the child has any idea what any of these people are talking about. This is right.

But the.

But California with John Steinbeck is just anticlimactic. It's like saying, you know, New York with Tom Wolfe or something.

It's very likely the child's already in California, you know?

Kind of what happens to European civilization, like the people who come from that world as they drift further and further away from all the the the things that make life comfortable for that sort of person in within the structure of like, their colonial lives. Like they go past the the mountain range, that that defines the edge of the British empire, and they go out into the wilds. And they and they meet these people who don't care that they're British, right? You know what I'm saying, like, that was that story.

Was, you know, an interacting story about how, you know you can't? You can't assume that your life, like all the things that the assumptions that you bring to your daily routine, are going to stay the same when you travel. I mean, they're going to, and same with Conrad, right? Obviously, the farther you go upriver, the more, the more the equation changes.

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