[HPFGU-OTChatter] Editing literature to conform to current custom

[Amanda Geist]

Elkins the ever-gracious said

> This is a potentially inflammatory topic, but I really
> did feel the need to respond.  If people wish to follow
> up, please let us all try to remain civil.

But of course. I wasn't trying to inflame. I never am, I just seem to have a
talent for it....

> In a discussion on the main list about the insertion of
> Dean Thomas in the sorting ceremony of the first book,
> Amanda wrote:
>
> > But I must throw to you my personal least-favorite
> > literature change, from the Just So Stories by Kipling,
> > from "How the Leopard Got His Spots." After the Ethiopian
> > has changed his skin to black, and then dotted the leopard
> > all over with his fingertips (nicely explaining the little
> > rosettes of dots), and the leopard asks why the Ethiopian
> > doesn't go for spots too, what Kipling originally wrote was,
> > "Plain black's best for a nigger." In every single copy I
> > have seen that was printed within, say, the last 20 years
> > (at least), this has been changed to remove "nigger."
>
> That's your *least* favorite editorial change in the history
> of all literature, Amanda?  Really?

How to put this. It's the most blatant. I am not fond of the little
"clarifications" that have crept into the Chronicles of Narnia, or their
reordering, either, for another example, but they were not done for
political correctness, which is a Button Of Mine.

> > This alteration offends me because it changes the words the
> > author chose.
>
> One thing to keep in mind about "Just So Stories" is that
> it is a children's book.  It was written for children (as
> well as for adults), and it is read by children (as well as
> by adults).  Many of the currently available editions of
> this book are marketted specifically for children.

So revisionism is okay for children's books. Just children's books? How
young a child? Where do you draw the line? At what age of intended audience
does the author's work get to stand unaltered? Shall we "revise" Huckleberry
Finn, too, because young readers read that? It just seems to me that once
you start changing the past to fit the present, you have begun the long slow
slide to the Ministry of Truth (or whichever it was, it's been a long time
since I waded through 1984).

Ban things if you must, but ban the true words the author wrote; leave them
their integrity. Kipling's name is on words he did not write. C.S. Lewis',
as well. The changes are small, in the case of Lewis, probably vanishingly
so. But the point is, I don't think any changes to an author's work are
acceptable if made by other than the author; they are the only ones who are
(sorry) authorized to do so.

> One of the things to consider about young readers is that
> they do not have the historical knowledge that adults do.
> If they learn vocabulary from a book, they are likely to
> believe that it is acceptable vocabulary for use in their
> everyday lives.  "Nigger" is *not* an acceptable term in
> most circles of contemporary English-speaking society, for
> reasons that younger readers might well not yet have the
> background or the knowledge to appreciate.

<snip the rest of excellent argument that young minds cannot appreciate
historical changes in social acceptability of words, and parents may not be
involved in their reading>

You make a good point. But there are many, many things children read--we
either can try to sanitize them all, or we can let children learn from their
reading, as they are learning from the rest of the world around them, that
some things are acceptable and some are not. They may have to make some
mistakes to learn that. Mistakes are part of growing up, part of how you
learn, part of being alive.

If you had control over the information sources available to children's
minds, I might yield to your argument. But children do not only read
children's books. I might agree to revision, if this were the only channel
feeding bad vocabulary into a young mind. It is not.

I stood back and let my children risk falling, when the danger was not
tremendous, so that they could learn to balance. I stand and watch them ride
bikes and know they could take a tumble. I let them climb trees and know
they could fall. I will let them read books, unedited, and know they can
draw their own conclusions. Growing up is a complicated business, and I
don't think "cleaning up" literature is going to make things easier on
children in the long run, *not easier enough to justify the precedent it
sets.*

> Now, Kipling wasn't exactly a PC sort of fellow even in his own
> day, but I really don't think that his use of the word there was
> intended to be offensive.  I don't really believe that the author's
> intent there was to use an extremely derogatory term with the weight
> of generations of enslavement, colonialism and oppression behind it
> just to make some aesthetic or philosophical point.  That is really
> not how I, at any rate, read the authorial intent behind the use
> of the word in the passage you cited.
>
> So I'm afraid that I can't quite see the editorial change as
> "pandering."  It is not pandering.  It is a form of translation
> designed to keep the book accessable to readers who lack an adult's
> understanding of history and usage (ie, children) without leading
> those readers astray as to what constitutes acceptable or polite
> usage in the time and place in which *they* are living.

You have a point. But I still do not believe it is anybody's business,
except the author, to decide *what* the author's intent was. I believe
"nigger" was a term applied to anyone of color at that time in history.
Little Black Sambo is about a little Indian (as in India) boy. Yes, Kipling
no doubt was using a then-innocuous term, which has now become
not-innocuous. But that was what he wrote. Let it stand. Otherwise you set a
dangerous precedent. Other equally reasonable changes to other works suggest
themselves to ease understanding or to avoid offense, and as I said, we
begin our march to Orwellian editing.

What if, 100 years from now, the term "wizard" took on negative connotations
and some publisher decided that children would be traumatized by having to
read it and possibly add it to their vocabulary, and revisited the Harry
Potter books? It is a similar scenario.

--Amanda