UK - US editions

[davewitley]

I'm about three weeks behind on the main list - the epistolatory 
style there has recently become *very* discursive - but I have 
skimmed the above thread and think I get the gist.

I have not got the US editions, but I think it adds to the fun that 
the books were altered for a US audience.  Pippin or somebody pointed 
out a few weeks ago the marketing (as opposed to ease-of-reading) 
reasons for it.

Having a variant text gives us a richer structure, IMO.  We wouldn't 
know Dean Thomas is black without the US version.  We wouldn't have 
had the discussion about the meaning of the 'one more death' comment 
at the beginning of GOF.

Because, as I understand it, JKR was privy to the changes and in some 
sense agreed them, they are canon.  Some of them may be flints, but 
that's what having different versions is all about.

Anyone who has read, say, JRR Tolkien's Unfinished Tales will know 
what I am talking about:  Christopher Tolkien had to struggle with 
alternative incompatible versions of the same stories to synthesise 
something that was more or less coherent.

In theory, all the Americanisations give us potential new insights 
into the 'original' text - that 'jumper' is changed to 'sweater' 
rather than some other word may tell us something.

I also like the fact that the majority of list members have 
the 'derivative' text - it gives a suitable mystique to us Brits (and 
Ozzies and Canadians) who are the anointed interpreters of the 
original.

David, hoping that the Greek translation was *properly* done: ie by 
locking 70 scholars in 70 separate rooms so that they all 
miraculously come up with idendical translations, which can then be 
used to shed light on the original Aramaic, I mean, er...