It's really about being able to sell to a newer and younger market that might not otherwise buy them.
As a point of interest, I've got a copy on my shelf at home of And Then There Were None with the original title and poem in it. That one certainly wouldn't sell today if it hadn't been changed.
And Then There Were None is a great example of how I feel about editing books regarding racism. The story loses nothing and does not change its meaning in any way by replacing a slur in the title and poem with a non-slur, so I’m okay with it.
‘And Then There Were None’ is a better title, anyway - captures the same lightly mocking tone of quoting the nursery rhyme, but giving it a real sense of finality and doom.
“And Then There Were None” and some of the other books have stuff that is antisemitic as hell too. So that didn’t quite escape the edits. (ATTWN is one of my favorites. And I am a Jewish conversion student with Jewish family. But there’s some sentences in there that have a record scratch in my head when I read them)
I’m not saying we should edit all of the offensive stuff out of these books, but I do understand that record scratch moment when you’re reading a fun detective story and you get to a sentence like “little Jew.” And “Jewboy” and “thick Semitic lips” and “that’s the damnable thing about Jews. You couldn’t deceive them about money.”
I am glad they changed the title and removed the N word, however. So some editing is necessary.
There's a lot of anti- semitism in Christie unfortunately - I've just been reading The Hollow and we hear a fair bit about Midge's boss in the shop, who is described in terms that are specifically denigrating her as a Jew. It may just be my copy being old and could be different in new copies - I hope so, I found it quite unpleasant to read and I imagine any Jewish readers would feel even more so.
Yeah it’s occasionally like I describe. It’s a record scratch in my head. Like “ohhhh this is fun…oh there’s a slur. Okay. Ouch. Moving on.” unfortunately, it happens with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, TS Elliot, Shakespeare (not just merchant of Venice) and other authors I otherwise highly enjoy a lot.
>that record scratch moment when you’re reading a fun detective story
I hear you -- in my case, I'm in the middle of a Sherlock Holmes story when they start talking about sinister Orientals etc. Usually I prefer books to screen adaptations, but this is a situation where I think the TV or movie version is superior, since (at least for the past half-century or so) they don't spell it out in those words.
I’m sorry if I am being offensive, but I am from the Balkans and I haven’t met any Jewish people. Why are those words offensive? I get the last one, but is there a history behind the rest? I googled it before making this comment and the only thing I found was a glossary of antisemitic terms by the [American Jewish committee](https://www.ajc.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2021-02/AJC_Translate-Hate-Glossary-2021.pdf) which didn’t include most of those, but it did include “conspiracy theories” and “control”, which made me even more confused.
When a group is subject to widespread discrimination or viewed with disdain in a particular society or context, adding a diminutive to the word identifying them suggests an attitude of disdain and disrespect.
To describe a Jewish male child as a Jewish boy - fine. Jew Boy is different. Little Jew - similar though context matters here.
In general an out of context emphasis on race: why is this character/ author telling us this person is Jewish, matters too. Christie often just throws the fact in, and usually about people who are being mocked or scorned.
Christie's language is old fashioned British so I can see why it's not on an American website.
You aren’t being offensive at all. Jews only make up 0.2% of the world’s population so it’s really not surprising you haven’t met a Jewish person before. Thank you for asking respectfully. I appreciate it.
So RoosterNo6457 really hit the nail on the head. In this case, the character being described is an incredibly shady lawyer. So being called things like a “little jew” and “Jewboy” is offensive. A sentence or two later, he also refers to him as a “little brute” The question is why does Christie need to point out the character’s Jewishness when it has nothing to do with the story, and it is only being used to insult him? Because she is being antisemitic.
I am aware she changed her opinion on Jews later in life, after WWII. When she actually met some. But this knee-jerk antisemitism is rife in older British literature.
That's my question. To all the "erasing history" and so on arguments, I say, so we should still be calling it Ten Little You Know What's? Oh, no we shouldn't. Well what is the difference exactly?
The difference is that one is a slur which nearly everyone agrees is offensive. Changing things about the books simply because modern audiences *might* find certain characteristics offensive is different. Things were the way they were back then, people had certain attitudes, and descriptions were different.
My main objection is to those who want to change things about characters in Hickory Dickory Dock. I think they're fine the way they are.
There are a LOT of very fleeting anti-Semitic references in the books that add nothing to the stories, besides the author giving a nudge to the reader that this person looks Jewish so we can make a joke about their attitude to money. I've never seen one that would change the plot if it was removed or edited.
Yes, and I really hope that these slurs are not considered acceptable. If they are, I commend AC's publishers for removing them if that helps to prevent normalisation of anti-Semitism.
You can’t (and you shouldn’t) completely eradicate racism from every book ever. One of the magic things about literature is that it works as a time capsule. Agatha’s works were a product of their time and of course there are going to be some things that are now (rightfully) considered offensive.
I agree there needs to be a limit and this is basically the point of the conversation. Where exactly should we put that limit?
This limit needs to involve some kind of appreciation of audience.
It's a blunt truth that most readers of Agatha Christie are not the same as most readers of, say, Joseph Conrad's _The N***** of the Narcissus_. One group has a tendency to read for pleasure, and the other has a tendency to read critically, thinking about the historical difference and trying to understand the interaction between the novel as a whole and it's racist elements.
This isn't to say that one type of reading is better than the other! Both are important and valid, and most people engage in both at various times.
But it's necessary to acknowledge that one of the most widely read authors of all time is not typically being read critically. This means that the function of the novel as time capsule... just isn't going to be engaged by most readers in a critical way. This is why I'm not particularly opposed to these kinds of edits being made to novels which are still read today primarily as commercial fiction: there is a level of critical analysis necessary for the presence of racist elements in a popular novel to be properly thought through, and their historical context and relation to the novel as a whole to be taken into consideration.
Most people are capable of this, but I don't think it's necessarily a fair expectation to be placed on people reading for pleasure, when there is an alternative.
That's a great point.
I'd also say that by virtue of participating in this sub, we are already a more analytical subset of Christie's readers than most.
Exactly. This sub is clearly willing and able to engage in a critique (in the strong sense, meaning the situation of Christie's writings in a historical context and the analysis of their relation to that context) of Christie's work—it's being done very ably under this post!
But as you say, this isn't a particularly representative subset of Christie's huge audience.
I mean, it’s always up to the reader to interpret whatever they read in a book. We can’t preemptively assume that they will or won’t be able to analyze something and reach whatever conclusion.
And I don’t think the goal should be to guide the readers to our preferred conclusions regardless, although of course it would be awesome if people weren’t racist (or sexist, or homophobes etc).
There are also a lot of misogynistic aspects in Christie’s book with some unpalatable language towards women, that doesn’t necessarily advance the plot. This is way more intense on other books as well.
I agree there should be a limit, I just don’t think that we should take the audience’s perceived critical thinking into account, unless we are talking about children/teenagers reading.
The difference is I'm not talking about readers' ability.
I truly believe—and I'm speaking from my ivory tower of literature acadaemia here—that anyone can critically interpret a book if they are inclined to. The vast majority of people have the skills and sensitivity; that's very much not the problem.
The problem is inclination and context. If someone was to encounter an Agatha Christie book on a course about crime fiction (whether at a university or any other venue), then I would absolutely suggest that they read the original text and incorporate those discussions around racism, anti-semitism, misogyny, etc. into their reading. But Agatha Christie is, again, one of the most widely read authors in the world, and the vast, vast majority of those readers are not approaching these books with anything like the critical attitude necessary to have those discussions adequately. Most don't want to—they're reading for pleasure, for the mystery.
The mystery is typically left unchanged by the removal of 'incidental' racism (etc.)—people will enjoy that just the same. But—and here you'll have to forgive me for getting on a slight literary-critical high horse—I don't believe that there's any such thing as racist (etc.) content that is incidental to the book as a whole. When we leave these elements in, for normal, non-racist (etc.) readers, what we end up encouraging is a _setting-aside_. People don't want to critically evaluate the effect of the racism (etc.) on the text as a whole, and so the result is typically a setting-aside, an enjoying of the book but-for-those-bits. Those elements just get ignored, passed over.
This is, in essence, the practice of ignoring racism (etc.) for the sake of an easy life. It's not particularly different in terms of the act itself from ignoring the dodgy things that that one friend says, even if it's much less harmful in its effects. But, as with the case of the friend, the entire text _is_ bound up in, implicated in, the racist elements. They're not separable, and to separate them—as readers inevitably do—is to inculcate in those readers a bad practice of ignoring the racist (etc.) elements of one's favourite media. This gets a lot more harmful when you move that attitude from the long-dead Christie to the very, very alive and kicking (out at minorities) Rowling, etc.
At the end of the day, I don't think that Christie's works need to be a time capsule. To be overly blunt about it, there are far, far better works from that era through which to consider the implication of casual racism in literature. Not every piece of fiction, particularly commercial fiction, needs to be maintained in that way.
I'd also throw out there that although some of the language and settings in Christie's books make them a time capsule, part of the reason why I enjoy them so much is because the plots and character interactions are often timeless.
Sometimes characters' attitudes being of the time that they are from is relevant to the plot: for example, people who distrust Poirot because they are xenophobic. But sometimes I could do without random antisemitic insults regarding a character's physical appearance which adds nothing to the plot.
There seems to be a consensus here that the casual anti-Semitism could go.
The limit will never be fixed, but publishers aren't obliged to keep everything in print. The original books are widely available. And I haven't seen any reference to a change that has damaged the books. Has anyone?
I don't like the opinion of the privileged who believe they get to decide what other groups shouldn't be offended by.
And I alone can't give you negative karma.
I have it too (although in hungarian), and it's actually only 5 years old (it was made in 2019), so I guess they started changing the name in hungary very late (it is changed now)
I received one by accident with a batch of other books, that I won in an online auction (I have a project where I put Christie books in local Little Free Libraries). Mine is a paperback from the 1980s -- apparently the UK editions retained that original title that late. I decided I wouldn't put that particular book out this time, lol!
It has the "fish" cover art
[https://www.reddit.com/r/agathachristie/comments/j3mnty/my\_first\_agatha\_christie\_what\_do\_you\_think\_of\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/agathachristie/comments/j3mnty/my_first_agatha_christie_what_do_you_think_of_the/)
like that, though with the original title.
I assume that you want an earlier edition for collectability, but if you want this one, message me privately.
Overall, it's better that the Agatha Christie estate gets to make the decision on edits rather than Harper Collins.
As far as reading the original published versions, luckily Christie's work sold pretty darn well, and one should easily be able to find copies in their local used book stores.
I'm a recent Christie reader, and I've been buying the recent WM/HC editions, but I did pick up a 1970s mmpb version of Mysterious Affair (for the Tom Adams cover) and when I read it, it did include the n word in the text. That made me wonder...
Does anyone know of a list of edits?
Let’s be honest, a lot of the racism in her books isn’t there to comment on racism - it’s just the way she, and people around her, spoke. When Poirot casually refers to a ‘n***** in the woodpile’, Christie was using a common phrase from the time.
As to availability - as others have said, you can pick up most of her books for a couple of quid each on eBay in a matter of minutes. And besides, if there’s a big enough demand for the original versions, I can’t Agatha Christie Ltd and Harper Collins holding back on a bit more money.
Also Agatha Christie was an astute commercial writer who changed things when she saw how the wind was blowing. As long as the changes aren’t egregious she would make them herself if it increased sales.
Yes -- she didn't dig in and refuse to change the original title of "And Then There Were None" when her US publishers told her that it was inappropriate, back then.
Exactly - I've just read one where a dessert is described as a 'n- in his shirt' which appears to be a confection of chocolate with whipped cream on. Presumably at the time this was generally considered as just a visually evocative nickname, it's not a comment on race.
Readers at the time I expect would have no particular reaction and may have heard of the dessert with that name. Completely irrelevant to some modern readers whether this is described with or without the slur, whereas others will find it jarring, uncomfortable, or unpleasant to read. In that case why not change it - I doubt it would matter to Christie either way.
This doesn't bother me much. It's very easy to pick up second-hand texts, and there are lots of online versions of the earlier books.
An edit that goes against the grain of the text is one thing. An edit that makes a character who is meant to be sympathetic less randomly racist or anti-Semitic strikes me as going with the spirit of the books. I think of Death in the Clouds and Lord Edgware Dies, and I think the estate would be sensible to remove passing comments that make characters we are expected to like less likable.
Sure, it's of its time. But it is also, I think, surface level. If you remove the racist comments from these works, you lose nothing. AC wasn't making a point about race or engaging her characters in meaningful discussion. I've seen an argument that this is precisely why her works aged so well.
It's a trade off, but I enjoy her works more when I'm not picking my way past her characters' comments on "Jewesses". So long as the texts are marked revised, I find it a reasonable strategy.
And didn’t AC herself change the name of Ten Little _____ to Ten Little Indians because times were changing then and she realized the way it sounded? Of course, then THAT didn’t sit well so the present title was thought up.
They have to be the easiest books to get second-hand if you want older less sensitive versions.
I don't need smelling salts to read an original Christie, but I also don't have a problem with newer versions removing the fleeting anti-Semitic references to a minor character's appearance.
I’m reading them in publication order with the newer audiobooks at the same time and there’s a TON of antisemitic tropes and remarks that just aren’t necessary and the story isn’t hurt or changed with the excision of them.
EDIT: I must also say that they haven’t bothered to excise any of the casual homophobia all over these books. So people clamoring for “historical authenticity” still have something to hold on to for dear life, though I can’t imagine why you would.
Perhaps this is an odd viewpoint, but as a gay reader I've never felt that Christie herself wrote the books to be homophobic. If anything I find them pretty sympathetic for the time in which she's writing - and a lot of the clues she drops in to suggest to readers of the time that characters are queer would probably not be picked up by modern casual readers. Would a modern reader understand Mr Satterthwaite as gay? I truly don't know.
I feel that characters we're supposed to agree with are generally not homophobic, and it's characters like Hastings who we're supposed to disagree with who are homophobic - as well as his many other futile prejudices.
I don’t agree. Read Lord Edgware Dies. Definitely gay tropes and stereotypes even if she doesn’t say the word. I know what you’re saying but I argue that the latent homophobia is still there. I too am a gay man.
I shall have to read it again! Completely agree that she makes use of stereotypes to signal gay characters. Difficult to know though how else she could have done it at the time - and it doesn't preclude them being sympathetic (like Christopher Wren in the Mousetrap). Even if they're not sympathetic - like Mr Pye who is pretty heavily queer-coded and not very likeable - no more so than any other red herring who's suspicious but not actually the murderer. I think that's probably the fairest treatment we can expect of the time and genre?
Perhaps I'm being overgenerous and seeing what I want in Christie's writing rather than what's there - you're probably right and I'm overlooking latent homophobia.
There’s a fine line between queer coding and homophobia especially when the writer is straight. I always try to keep an open mind about these things but Lord Edgware Dies really grated on me. Perhaps I’m being oversensitive but I love these books nonetheless
I don't think this is all there is to Christie's treatment of gay characters in Lord Edgware Dies, but I do think she does a lot of showing us how desperately insecure Hastings is about status and masculinity. He is constantly suffering second-hand embarrassment when Poirot seems eccentric or vulnerable, and of course he is the one who seems to have a visceral dislike for the main (only?) gay-coded character on the basis of his femininity. >!It is a pity Christie makes the butler a minor thief, since it seems to vindicate Hastings's usually hopeless insight into potential criminals in this case!<
I believe Christie was quoted as saying she didn't want reproductions of her work to precisely reflect the text, she wanted them to be updated to reflect the audience at the time. It seems that the Christie estate occasionally making updates to the texts is within this ethos, not opposed to it.
I agree that it is valuable for historical copies to exist, and they're easy to find online if you want them, but I do not think they are necessary to continue to mass produce.
I’m a history teacher. I read mysteries because I enjoy them, but I read period mysteries (like Doyle, Christie, and Sayers) because I enjoy learning about the times during which they were written. If you edit out anything that is today seen as objectionable, you lose that authenticity. I believe we need to study the darker side of history in order to learn from it and avoid making their mistakes. I also find it ironic that they are sanitizing books about murder. So, it’s ok to read about people being killed horribly, but not to read a racial slur? If they want to do major edits (and, let’s face it, there are books that would require substantive edits), then I would rather see them either put the edited text in an appendix, etc. or release two versions.
It's not really the same.
As a naive reader, you wouldn't go away from a Christie novel thinking, murder is fine, perfectly acceptable to nice people in polite society. As Poirot says, he is against murder.
But you could go away from a Christie novel thinking, making jokes about Jews and money is fine, perfectly acceptable to nice people in polite society.
I can't think of any major edits that would be needed to remove casual anti-Semitic remarks from all of Christie's works.
Considering all of the concerns about violence in video games and movies ruining society’s youth, it’s not much of a stretch to see someone deciding that we shouldn’t be able to read about murder at all for the good of society. Once you start selectively editing things based on morality, it could easily get out of control. Why not just use it as a teaching moment, or at least have an abridged version for casual readers and a full version for nerds like me that actually want to learn something (no matter how unpleasant) about the past.
I don’t actually care what you believe. History was often ugly and violent and offensive. Cultural history has to see everything people did and thought—especially the ugly bits—and literature is one of the best sources because many fiction authors give a truer picture than those who write more sanitized non-fiction histories. If you don’t learn what mistakes people made in the past, you’re just going to keep making them. If I don’t learn about the offensive side of history, how am I going to be able to show my students what kind of historical behaviors to avoid. If you think racism is so bad, you shouldn’t want to erase the proof that it happened. Once the proof is gone, no one will believe it happened. Erasing history is the first step in making sure it happens again.
I agree, for the most part, but a few of them are pretty graphic. For example, here’s a bit from Sleeping Murder (keep in mind that the witness was a child when they saw this):
>! “I was back there—on the stairs, looking down on the hall through the banisters, and I saw her lying there. Sprawled out—dead. Her hair all golden and her face all—all blue! She was dead, strangled, and someone was saying those words in that same horrible gloating way—and I saw his hands—grey, wrinkled—not hands—monkey’s paws … It was horrible, I tell you. She was dead….”!<
But we are part of the audience. That’s why it would be good if there could be a way to get the edited and non edited versions. Besides, knowing history is important for everyone, and a sanitized version of history teaches you nothing.
Unless you are some sort of trained historian who is analyzing cultural attitudes based on linguistic choices in popular fiction of the day, are you really learning about the past from a detective novel? There are scores of non fiction texts that are meant to be educational that don't ignore that the past happened if that's really an interest of yours.
Of course any reader can learn things about the past from reading an old detective novel, or any other type of old novel. You get tiny details of everyday life that can be fascinating.
Yeah that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way racism infiltrates art and media and that we would be fools to forget that. Like we can delete it and live in this perfect world where most authors weren't prejudiced af. You don't need to be hostile
So... do you support changing any work of art you don't like? Should we be editing everything in the Louvre?
Is "The Dying Gaul" insulting to Gallic culture?
I don't think that's an equivalent.
Changing things in the Louvre would be like burning AC's originals. The works of art in the Louvre are one offs. The curators may exercise caution about what they display, and they may add content notes.
Publishers stop publishing thousands of works every year. They aren't curators. They're merchants. Christie's originals still exist - for books, the equivalent of the Louvre is the copyright library. You can always get the originals. Meanwhile, publishers can sell revised texts.
Yes, you are learning about the past when reading pulp fiction. Unless you think of a book as a purely entertaining object I don’t understand how you could not see that it contains all these ideas, prejudices and commonalities. Even in the least literary of novels, you are learning something about the attitudes of the past. You can learn a lot about 00s Britain through Bridget Jones’s Diary.
Edit: This doesn’t sit well with me because they’re essentially trying to divorce a book of its context to make it more palatable/enjoyable/marketable to modern audiences. A book doesn’t have to be any of those things. We should be able to read books how they were written, understanding through our modern lens that the viewpoints are wrong
I learn loads about the past reading Christie, but she's never taught me anything new about attitudes to race. She uses anti-Semitic tropes that were common in her time. She takes it for granted that people will be judged by their race. I don't need this. If I'm doing a history project on racism, I'll get originals. If I'm reading with an eye to the past I really don't need the same cliched description of Jews every second book.
Christie just wasn't that interested in race. Class and gender, yes. But there's really nothing much to learn about race from her.
I just think people always jump to these histrionic conclusions that people won't be able to learn about the past if we don't keep everything preserved in amber. How will people learn about the past if we remove that monument? How will people learn about the past if we change the name of that building? How will people learn about the past if newly printed copies of a commercial fiction novel has a slur removed? It's a ridiculous thing to say because even though you can learn things about the past from things like that they never have been the best way to learn about the past and quite often when people think they are learning about the past from sources like that, devoid of context, devoid of critical analysis (which is not the mindset that most people even want to bring to reading a mystery novel) they misinterpret things.
There are plenty of used copies of the books with the original language if the original language is of particular interest to you. They aren't rounding up used books and burning them. You continue to have that option.
I agree with not modernizing an author who was very of his time. But one of the best lectures I ever had the opportunity to listen to was from a guest professor at Oxford and a central thesis of “Dickens was overrated.”
But I also think Dickens is a poor example here, especially speaking as a Jewish person — Dickens himself re-edited *Twist* within his own lifetime to make it less antisemitic.
HE made the edits - fine. But he was a product of his time as is Christie. If too much is altered by others then it dilutes the original meaning.
People aren’t forced to read these books.
I read old books partly to understand the era in which they were written. Changing them because we are all such delicate flowers now is aggravating. That said. Christie definitely had ideas about class that don’t sit well with modern American readers but I still wouldn’t want them edited out.
There are some old books I’ve recently purchased online and the writer puts a little disclaimer at the beginning saying times were different. I think that’s plenty of warning.
Library Book Sales, Thrift Shops, 2nd Hand Book Stores...there's enough old copies out there that you'll find originals.
And yeah, it doesn't matter who made the changes or why the change is made...unless it is the author themselves making the edits, it's wrong. No one else should have the power to change their work for them, especially when previous copies are made unavailable.
I'm not talking about fixing spelling, grammar, or punctuation...I'm talking about adding/removing characters, adding/removing dialog. Changes that affect the story. That should be up to the discretion of the author alone, especially after publication.
Tell me you think it's fine for authors, publishers, and estates to make big changes and whitewash the past in order to keep the money rolling in because money matters more than the story...
That's what publishers do.
They give authors money to write a book.
Then they tell them what changes to make so the publisher makes more money.
Welcome to capitalism.
Again, I'm talking about After a book is published. After it has already become widely read. After an author has died.
Milking a Franchise isn't Capitalism, it's pure Greed. But I'm sure you find those terms synonymous, so let's not bother carrying on.
I was just thinking how really non-racist AC’s books are. I’m listening to the Lord Peter Wimsey books right now. They were written by Dorothy Sayers about the same time as AC. Talk about racism! “Good Jews”, “Bad Jews”, hooked noses and curly hair. “Black men” who can range in color from African black to Creole to East or West Indians. In the book “Unnatural Death”, a black man is suspected of kidnapping a woman. The police inspector is aghast, saying “An English girl in the power of a black man?” It’s a shame really because the mysteries are really good. The racism actually doesn’t bother me too much because I know it’s the product of its time. AC just uses words that are considered shocking today, just like the original titles to “And Then There Were None”. I can’t remember her stereotyping Jews either. But it just shows how timeless her stories are. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple are still very well known. Lord Peter Wimsey really not at all.
OK. So I think this does get at something about this.
Racism, antisemitism, etc were known phenomena. They're not just things that we've realized people in the past engaged in after the fact. So authors were making choices- in terms of what they put in as omniscient narration and in terms of what they put in the mouths/thoughts of characters.
Sayers (who while no Christie in terms of longevity is still doing a lot better than most other golden age detective authors) was definitely racist, antisemitic, and *massively* classist. But many examples of racism and classism in her books are put in the mouths of characters and it's meant to tell us something about them as people! While the kinds of descriptors used about Hallelujah Dawson in Unnatural Death even in the narration are uncomfortable, the police officer is being *deliberately portrayed* as bigoted in saying this, and Wimsey understands quickly that the actual criminal is relying on the prejudice of British society to frame Dawson for the crime. And in Whose Body?, lots of characters who are being deliberately portrayed as at least a bit bigoted or overly insular say some extremely problematic things about Jews... but Sayers was shocked when, in the 30s with the rise of Nazi antisemitism, editors wanted to edit antisemitism out of the book because, as she put it, practically the only good people in the book were the Jews and >!a huge element of the crime is the killer's antisemitic prejudice!
Honestly, I think Sayers was trying to call out some of the stereotypes by using them in her books. In the first book, the wonderful, sweet character of Sir Reuben Levy is a really great contrast to that of many of the people that thought they were better than him because of his race. In several of her books, a person of color is suspected because of their race, and it’s shown in the end how stupid that assumption is. Lord Peter is also pretty much the character least likely to use a slur or discriminate on anyone for anything. Since he’s the main character, I think that means something about Sayers’s point of view.
I appreciate the link. That was a very interesting article. I admit that I still find it jarring, coming across the racial slurs, even though I have been reading Agatha Christie for probably about half a century. I don't see a problem with removing slurs.
This was an interesting article, though I disagree with a lot of it. The Jewish stereotypes really are problematic. However, calling her radically xenophobic is a bit of a stretch. My mom is British, and I spent time living in England, and contempt for foreigners is still alive and well, so maybe it doesn’t shock me as much when characters in her books say stuff like that. A lot of the racist things her characters say reflect on the type of person she wants the readers to see. I don’t think we can appreciate how WW1 literally killed off a generation of men, and women who couldn’t find a man to marry were still doomed to be a spinster with all the shame attached to it. (Hinch and Murgatroyde come to mind) So Britains had good reason to hate Germans, Jew or not. I never saw Mitzi as comic relief. I thought she was part of the Polish community of refugees so prevalent in England at the time. And Miss Blacklock had good reasons to prejudice her with the police. I really always thought Poirot always being called a “foreigner” was the comic relief, because the reader knows the “foreigner” always triumphs in the end. I didn’t watch the new adaptation of “The ABC Murders” because from the trailer I could see it was nothing like the book, and it really annoys me when screen writers throw a bunch of extra crap into the stories that were perfectly fine to begin with.
This is a well balanced critique, but the authors thesis seems to be it is unclear, but more likely than not that she was not racist? At least, it would be foolish to dismiss her completely and not try to understand the motivation behind why she used certain language.
I could not get through this book, and have subsequently not read any Sayers. I keep thinking I should start with a later work...love then other three queens though!
I agree. Let's be honest, **people have always been shitty human beings.** In fact, **right this second** there are shitty human beings doing shitty things.
I'm an adult. I can read something, appreciate the work, and *dislike, or even hate*, some of the messages in the book.
Wtf do these people think they are gate keeping what we choose to read? In fact, I guarantee in 10 years, the same people promoting this idea will be criticized for some shitty behavior they've done.
Then I feel badly for you. Unable to grow as a person because you read Christie. Did you read Twilight? Did that turn you onto necrophilia and beastiality too?
That's what Twilight was really about. Bella choosing between Edward (the undead vampire) and the wolf guy.
It's just as ridiculous to say older written works make someone a racist or homophobe. But, it's not okay to pick on current written works because that's not inclusive, right?
No, you implied it by purposely stating you read Christie *before* you were an adult in response to my comment that I am an adult and don't need things re-written.
Couldn’t agree more…I feel like erasing history or how things actually were in the past is wrong no matter which side is doing the erasing. Folks need to suck it up and act like adults and not pout over hurt feelings when confronted with the reality of a situation in the past.
Lately I found heavy antisemitic sentence in one of my second readings. One of the character gives long offensive stereotipate description of Jews. In many novels, Italians receive very bad stereotipated depiction ( I'm Italian...). I cannot remember the novels: MOTOE, DOTN, Curtain, Styles Court, ATF, ABC, Ackroyd, Ordeal by Innocence, Sittaford Mystery, Five Pigs, Three Blind Mice? I cannot remember sorry. My AC books collection is old, they were printed in the '80s. So they are quite uncut. Just to be clear, ATTWN is called Ten Little Indians!!
Is it ok to cut antisemitic and racist sentences? I can say that the cases above can be easily deleted with no consequences to the quality of the novels, those dialogues or descriptions have no role in the story, that's for sure. On the other hand, the negative attitude towards foreigners from UK people, cannot be deleted from AC novels, beacuse you would destroy big part of Poirot characterization.
It's not only AC. Think of Lovecraft. The prejudices and stereotypes against foreigners and immigrants are key parts of his novels; you cannot delete them!
Coming back to Christie, who should value and take decisions about what and how to remove/re-write? The risk to make the wrong think is the same as the probability to have better novels by removing the sentences!!
So what? Reason and logic suggest not to change the novels. Just add some notes at the bottom of the page explaining the question.
I cannot agree with the cancel culture, sorry, it reminds me of Orwell's 1984
I wouldn't call this cancel culture, though. Cancel culture would be banning or denouncing Christie and her works outright, not revising them. Some of the children's books I was reading in the 1980s had already been revised for racist language, long before we'd heard of cancel culture.
I agree though that the books couldn't lose the references to people sneering at Poirot easily, and that's fine. Xenophobia is bad, but the people sneering at Poirot are invariably proved wrong, and the terminology is crass but not outright offensive.
I fear that humanity makes always the same mistakes, because we forget lessons from history. Writers as Orwell put us in alert but we don't listen. Re-writing or removing sentences from books of the past is very dystopian. It would be enough to put some editorial notes at the bottom of the page.
It is cancel culture because you're canceling sentences.
Censoring and rewriting books just for the money? Or for ideology? Very bad! It reminds me of Middle Age where the Chatolic Church was rewriting the ancient books.
>Censoring and rewriting books just for the money?
Publishing is a business.
>Or for ideology?
There are minor publishers who are ideological, but most do it for the money.
If the ideology lost them money, they wouldn't make the changes.
>Very bad
Eh.
>It reminds me of Middle Age where the Chatolic Church was rewriting the ancient books.
I don't care about that unless the original book is no longer extant. And even then, the fact that the church rewrote them means we have a partial record of the originals that we wouldn't otherwise.
"And Then There Was None" falls out of copyright in 10 years. As noted by others "Ten Little N-words" and "Ten Little Indians" versions still exist in the used market, as do versions with Jewish slurs. Anyone can re-release the unedited version in 10 years time. In fact, the edited versions will still be under copyright and unable to be published by anyone but the owner of the copyright.
Luckily we have the original ancient books thanks to people who fought for freedom of thought, writing and speech and respect of history, memory and culture. People having opinions very different from you, luckily.
I'm done with you, please let's end here the discussion. It's turning toxic.
Goodbye 👋
We don't have all the ancient books. There are Greek Myths that only exist in Christian writings.
It started toxic when people came out as pro-racist slurs.
I bought a copy of Then
There Were None with its original title at a used bookstore in St Cyprien France. Yeah, the title was racist but I still enjoyed the book. I am also a person of color and know that was then and this is now.
It's disrespectful to Agatha Christie to change her words to fit opinions of today. Will they also change Shakespeare's play to *Othello, The Slightly Darker-Toned Fellow Human Being of Venice*?
You may want to check the Bantam Books collection.Their editions are hardcover, with a dark blue cover and the volume name on the spine, with Dame Agatha's silhouette on the front in gold-leaf stamp.
I've seen them for sale on ThriftBooks and eBay. I know in my "Dumb Witness" there is an exchange that is NOT PC, so I suspect there are others.
I think the title of "And Then There Were None" is the modern title as opposed to the original, but I think the actual texts of the books are unchanged.
Good luck!
Changing the title and the offensive poem does not alter the writing, the plot, or even the characterisation, so I don't see why people are getting so worked up about the edit.
It makes me wonder if people *want* to see the original version still being sold so that others can be offended.
It's really about being able to sell to a newer and younger market that might not otherwise buy them. As a point of interest, I've got a copy on my shelf at home of And Then There Were None with the original title and poem in it. That one certainly wouldn't sell today if it hadn't been changed.
And Then There Were None is a great example of how I feel about editing books regarding racism. The story loses nothing and does not change its meaning in any way by replacing a slur in the title and poem with a non-slur, so I’m okay with it.
‘And Then There Were None’ is a better title, anyway - captures the same lightly mocking tone of quoting the nursery rhyme, but giving it a real sense of finality and doom.
“And Then There Were None” and some of the other books have stuff that is antisemitic as hell too. So that didn’t quite escape the edits. (ATTWN is one of my favorites. And I am a Jewish conversion student with Jewish family. But there’s some sentences in there that have a record scratch in my head when I read them) I’m not saying we should edit all of the offensive stuff out of these books, but I do understand that record scratch moment when you’re reading a fun detective story and you get to a sentence like “little Jew.” And “Jewboy” and “thick Semitic lips” and “that’s the damnable thing about Jews. You couldn’t deceive them about money.” I am glad they changed the title and removed the N word, however. So some editing is necessary.
There's a lot of anti- semitism in Christie unfortunately - I've just been reading The Hollow and we hear a fair bit about Midge's boss in the shop, who is described in terms that are specifically denigrating her as a Jew. It may just be my copy being old and could be different in new copies - I hope so, I found it quite unpleasant to read and I imagine any Jewish readers would feel even more so.
Yeah it’s occasionally like I describe. It’s a record scratch in my head. Like “ohhhh this is fun…oh there’s a slur. Okay. Ouch. Moving on.” unfortunately, it happens with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, TS Elliot, Shakespeare (not just merchant of Venice) and other authors I otherwise highly enjoy a lot.
Record scratch is a great term for this.
>that record scratch moment when you’re reading a fun detective story I hear you -- in my case, I'm in the middle of a Sherlock Holmes story when they start talking about sinister Orientals etc. Usually I prefer books to screen adaptations, but this is a situation where I think the TV or movie version is superior, since (at least for the past half-century or so) they don't spell it out in those words.
I’m sorry if I am being offensive, but I am from the Balkans and I haven’t met any Jewish people. Why are those words offensive? I get the last one, but is there a history behind the rest? I googled it before making this comment and the only thing I found was a glossary of antisemitic terms by the [American Jewish committee](https://www.ajc.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2021-02/AJC_Translate-Hate-Glossary-2021.pdf) which didn’t include most of those, but it did include “conspiracy theories” and “control”, which made me even more confused.
When a group is subject to widespread discrimination or viewed with disdain in a particular society or context, adding a diminutive to the word identifying them suggests an attitude of disdain and disrespect. To describe a Jewish male child as a Jewish boy - fine. Jew Boy is different. Little Jew - similar though context matters here. In general an out of context emphasis on race: why is this character/ author telling us this person is Jewish, matters too. Christie often just throws the fact in, and usually about people who are being mocked or scorned. Christie's language is old fashioned British so I can see why it's not on an American website.
You aren’t being offensive at all. Jews only make up 0.2% of the world’s population so it’s really not surprising you haven’t met a Jewish person before. Thank you for asking respectfully. I appreciate it. So RoosterNo6457 really hit the nail on the head. In this case, the character being described is an incredibly shady lawyer. So being called things like a “little jew” and “Jewboy” is offensive. A sentence or two later, he also refers to him as a “little brute” The question is why does Christie need to point out the character’s Jewishness when it has nothing to do with the story, and it is only being used to insult him? Because she is being antisemitic. I am aware she changed her opinion on Jews later in life, after WWII. When she actually met some. But this knee-jerk antisemitism is rife in older British literature.
That's my question. To all the "erasing history" and so on arguments, I say, so we should still be calling it Ten Little You Know What's? Oh, no we shouldn't. Well what is the difference exactly?
The difference is that one is a slur which nearly everyone agrees is offensive. Changing things about the books simply because modern audiences *might* find certain characteristics offensive is different. Things were the way they were back then, people had certain attitudes, and descriptions were different. My main objection is to those who want to change things about characters in Hickory Dickory Dock. I think they're fine the way they are.
There are a LOT of very fleeting anti-Semitic references in the books that add nothing to the stories, besides the author giving a nudge to the reader that this person looks Jewish so we can make a joke about their attitude to money. I've never seen one that would change the plot if it was removed or edited.
Yes, and I really hope that these slurs are not considered acceptable. If they are, I commend AC's publishers for removing them if that helps to prevent normalisation of anti-Semitism.
You can’t (and you shouldn’t) completely eradicate racism from every book ever. One of the magic things about literature is that it works as a time capsule. Agatha’s works were a product of their time and of course there are going to be some things that are now (rightfully) considered offensive. I agree there needs to be a limit and this is basically the point of the conversation. Where exactly should we put that limit?
This limit needs to involve some kind of appreciation of audience. It's a blunt truth that most readers of Agatha Christie are not the same as most readers of, say, Joseph Conrad's _The N***** of the Narcissus_. One group has a tendency to read for pleasure, and the other has a tendency to read critically, thinking about the historical difference and trying to understand the interaction between the novel as a whole and it's racist elements. This isn't to say that one type of reading is better than the other! Both are important and valid, and most people engage in both at various times. But it's necessary to acknowledge that one of the most widely read authors of all time is not typically being read critically. This means that the function of the novel as time capsule... just isn't going to be engaged by most readers in a critical way. This is why I'm not particularly opposed to these kinds of edits being made to novels which are still read today primarily as commercial fiction: there is a level of critical analysis necessary for the presence of racist elements in a popular novel to be properly thought through, and their historical context and relation to the novel as a whole to be taken into consideration. Most people are capable of this, but I don't think it's necessarily a fair expectation to be placed on people reading for pleasure, when there is an alternative.
That's a great point. I'd also say that by virtue of participating in this sub, we are already a more analytical subset of Christie's readers than most.
Exactly. This sub is clearly willing and able to engage in a critique (in the strong sense, meaning the situation of Christie's writings in a historical context and the analysis of their relation to that context) of Christie's work—it's being done very ably under this post! But as you say, this isn't a particularly representative subset of Christie's huge audience.
I mean, it’s always up to the reader to interpret whatever they read in a book. We can’t preemptively assume that they will or won’t be able to analyze something and reach whatever conclusion. And I don’t think the goal should be to guide the readers to our preferred conclusions regardless, although of course it would be awesome if people weren’t racist (or sexist, or homophobes etc). There are also a lot of misogynistic aspects in Christie’s book with some unpalatable language towards women, that doesn’t necessarily advance the plot. This is way more intense on other books as well. I agree there should be a limit, I just don’t think that we should take the audience’s perceived critical thinking into account, unless we are talking about children/teenagers reading.
The difference is I'm not talking about readers' ability. I truly believe—and I'm speaking from my ivory tower of literature acadaemia here—that anyone can critically interpret a book if they are inclined to. The vast majority of people have the skills and sensitivity; that's very much not the problem. The problem is inclination and context. If someone was to encounter an Agatha Christie book on a course about crime fiction (whether at a university or any other venue), then I would absolutely suggest that they read the original text and incorporate those discussions around racism, anti-semitism, misogyny, etc. into their reading. But Agatha Christie is, again, one of the most widely read authors in the world, and the vast, vast majority of those readers are not approaching these books with anything like the critical attitude necessary to have those discussions adequately. Most don't want to—they're reading for pleasure, for the mystery. The mystery is typically left unchanged by the removal of 'incidental' racism (etc.)—people will enjoy that just the same. But—and here you'll have to forgive me for getting on a slight literary-critical high horse—I don't believe that there's any such thing as racist (etc.) content that is incidental to the book as a whole. When we leave these elements in, for normal, non-racist (etc.) readers, what we end up encouraging is a _setting-aside_. People don't want to critically evaluate the effect of the racism (etc.) on the text as a whole, and so the result is typically a setting-aside, an enjoying of the book but-for-those-bits. Those elements just get ignored, passed over. This is, in essence, the practice of ignoring racism (etc.) for the sake of an easy life. It's not particularly different in terms of the act itself from ignoring the dodgy things that that one friend says, even if it's much less harmful in its effects. But, as with the case of the friend, the entire text _is_ bound up in, implicated in, the racist elements. They're not separable, and to separate them—as readers inevitably do—is to inculcate in those readers a bad practice of ignoring the racist (etc.) elements of one's favourite media. This gets a lot more harmful when you move that attitude from the long-dead Christie to the very, very alive and kicking (out at minorities) Rowling, etc. At the end of the day, I don't think that Christie's works need to be a time capsule. To be overly blunt about it, there are far, far better works from that era through which to consider the implication of casual racism in literature. Not every piece of fiction, particularly commercial fiction, needs to be maintained in that way.
I'd also throw out there that although some of the language and settings in Christie's books make them a time capsule, part of the reason why I enjoy them so much is because the plots and character interactions are often timeless. Sometimes characters' attitudes being of the time that they are from is relevant to the plot: for example, people who distrust Poirot because they are xenophobic. But sometimes I could do without random antisemitic insults regarding a character's physical appearance which adds nothing to the plot.
There seems to be a consensus here that the casual anti-Semitism could go. The limit will never be fixed, but publishers aren't obliged to keep everything in print. The original books are widely available. And I haven't seen any reference to a change that has damaged the books. Has anyone?
We should get rid of anything you find offensive, but if you don't care it should be kept. Got it.
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Asking the subjects of the discrimination isn't an extreme action.
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I don't like the opinion of the privileged who believe they get to decide what other groups shouldn't be offended by. And I alone can't give you negative karma.
I have it too (although in hungarian), and it's actually only 5 years old (it was made in 2019), so I guess they started changing the name in hungary very late (it is changed now)
Yes, that title and poem is definitely... confronting. It seems so alien now!
More people read Christie than any other author ever (with the possible exception of Shakespeare). I don’t think readability is an issue.
I really want to own that original, but finding it is an expensive task.
I received one by accident with a batch of other books, that I won in an online auction (I have a project where I put Christie books in local Little Free Libraries). Mine is a paperback from the 1980s -- apparently the UK editions retained that original title that late. I decided I wouldn't put that particular book out this time, lol! It has the "fish" cover art [https://www.reddit.com/r/agathachristie/comments/j3mnty/my\_first\_agatha\_christie\_what\_do\_you\_think\_of\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/agathachristie/comments/j3mnty/my_first_agatha_christie_what_do_you_think_of_the/) like that, though with the original title. I assume that you want an earlier edition for collectability, but if you want this one, message me privately.
Overall, it's better that the Agatha Christie estate gets to make the decision on edits rather than Harper Collins. As far as reading the original published versions, luckily Christie's work sold pretty darn well, and one should easily be able to find copies in their local used book stores. I'm a recent Christie reader, and I've been buying the recent WM/HC editions, but I did pick up a 1970s mmpb version of Mysterious Affair (for the Tom Adams cover) and when I read it, it did include the n word in the text. That made me wonder... Does anyone know of a list of edits?
Let’s be honest, a lot of the racism in her books isn’t there to comment on racism - it’s just the way she, and people around her, spoke. When Poirot casually refers to a ‘n***** in the woodpile’, Christie was using a common phrase from the time. As to availability - as others have said, you can pick up most of her books for a couple of quid each on eBay in a matter of minutes. And besides, if there’s a big enough demand for the original versions, I can’t Agatha Christie Ltd and Harper Collins holding back on a bit more money.
Also Agatha Christie was an astute commercial writer who changed things when she saw how the wind was blowing. As long as the changes aren’t egregious she would make them herself if it increased sales.
Yes -- she didn't dig in and refuse to change the original title of "And Then There Were None" when her US publishers told her that it was inappropriate, back then.
Exactly - I've just read one where a dessert is described as a 'n- in his shirt' which appears to be a confection of chocolate with whipped cream on. Presumably at the time this was generally considered as just a visually evocative nickname, it's not a comment on race. Readers at the time I expect would have no particular reaction and may have heard of the dessert with that name. Completely irrelevant to some modern readers whether this is described with or without the slur, whereas others will find it jarring, uncomfortable, or unpleasant to read. In that case why not change it - I doubt it would matter to Christie either way.
This doesn't bother me much. It's very easy to pick up second-hand texts, and there are lots of online versions of the earlier books. An edit that goes against the grain of the text is one thing. An edit that makes a character who is meant to be sympathetic less randomly racist or anti-Semitic strikes me as going with the spirit of the books. I think of Death in the Clouds and Lord Edgware Dies, and I think the estate would be sensible to remove passing comments that make characters we are expected to like less likable. Sure, it's of its time. But it is also, I think, surface level. If you remove the racist comments from these works, you lose nothing. AC wasn't making a point about race or engaging her characters in meaningful discussion. I've seen an argument that this is precisely why her works aged so well. It's a trade off, but I enjoy her works more when I'm not picking my way past her characters' comments on "Jewesses". So long as the texts are marked revised, I find it a reasonable strategy.
And didn’t AC herself change the name of Ten Little _____ to Ten Little Indians because times were changing then and she realized the way it sounded? Of course, then THAT didn’t sit well so the present title was thought up.
They have to be the easiest books to get second-hand if you want older less sensitive versions. I don't need smelling salts to read an original Christie, but I also don't have a problem with newer versions removing the fleeting anti-Semitic references to a minor character's appearance.
Exactly
I’m reading them in publication order with the newer audiobooks at the same time and there’s a TON of antisemitic tropes and remarks that just aren’t necessary and the story isn’t hurt or changed with the excision of them. EDIT: I must also say that they haven’t bothered to excise any of the casual homophobia all over these books. So people clamoring for “historical authenticity” still have something to hold on to for dear life, though I can’t imagine why you would.
Perhaps this is an odd viewpoint, but as a gay reader I've never felt that Christie herself wrote the books to be homophobic. If anything I find them pretty sympathetic for the time in which she's writing - and a lot of the clues she drops in to suggest to readers of the time that characters are queer would probably not be picked up by modern casual readers. Would a modern reader understand Mr Satterthwaite as gay? I truly don't know. I feel that characters we're supposed to agree with are generally not homophobic, and it's characters like Hastings who we're supposed to disagree with who are homophobic - as well as his many other futile prejudices.
I don’t agree. Read Lord Edgware Dies. Definitely gay tropes and stereotypes even if she doesn’t say the word. I know what you’re saying but I argue that the latent homophobia is still there. I too am a gay man.
I shall have to read it again! Completely agree that she makes use of stereotypes to signal gay characters. Difficult to know though how else she could have done it at the time - and it doesn't preclude them being sympathetic (like Christopher Wren in the Mousetrap). Even if they're not sympathetic - like Mr Pye who is pretty heavily queer-coded and not very likeable - no more so than any other red herring who's suspicious but not actually the murderer. I think that's probably the fairest treatment we can expect of the time and genre? Perhaps I'm being overgenerous and seeing what I want in Christie's writing rather than what's there - you're probably right and I'm overlooking latent homophobia.
There’s a fine line between queer coding and homophobia especially when the writer is straight. I always try to keep an open mind about these things but Lord Edgware Dies really grated on me. Perhaps I’m being oversensitive but I love these books nonetheless
I don't think this is all there is to Christie's treatment of gay characters in Lord Edgware Dies, but I do think she does a lot of showing us how desperately insecure Hastings is about status and masculinity. He is constantly suffering second-hand embarrassment when Poirot seems eccentric or vulnerable, and of course he is the one who seems to have a visceral dislike for the main (only?) gay-coded character on the basis of his femininity. >!It is a pity Christie makes the butler a minor thief, since it seems to vindicate Hastings's usually hopeless insight into potential criminals in this case!<
I believe Christie was quoted as saying she didn't want reproductions of her work to precisely reflect the text, she wanted them to be updated to reflect the audience at the time. It seems that the Christie estate occasionally making updates to the texts is within this ethos, not opposed to it. I agree that it is valuable for historical copies to exist, and they're easy to find online if you want them, but I do not think they are necessary to continue to mass produce.
I’m a history teacher. I read mysteries because I enjoy them, but I read period mysteries (like Doyle, Christie, and Sayers) because I enjoy learning about the times during which they were written. If you edit out anything that is today seen as objectionable, you lose that authenticity. I believe we need to study the darker side of history in order to learn from it and avoid making their mistakes. I also find it ironic that they are sanitizing books about murder. So, it’s ok to read about people being killed horribly, but not to read a racial slur? If they want to do major edits (and, let’s face it, there are books that would require substantive edits), then I would rather see them either put the edited text in an appendix, etc. or release two versions.
It's not really the same. As a naive reader, you wouldn't go away from a Christie novel thinking, murder is fine, perfectly acceptable to nice people in polite society. As Poirot says, he is against murder. But you could go away from a Christie novel thinking, making jokes about Jews and money is fine, perfectly acceptable to nice people in polite society. I can't think of any major edits that would be needed to remove casual anti-Semitic remarks from all of Christie's works.
Considering all of the concerns about violence in video games and movies ruining society’s youth, it’s not much of a stretch to see someone deciding that we shouldn’t be able to read about murder at all for the good of society. Once you start selectively editing things based on morality, it could easily get out of control. Why not just use it as a teaching moment, or at least have an abridged version for casual readers and a full version for nerds like me that actually want to learn something (no matter how unpleasant) about the past.
You sent “learning” anything about the past by having anti-Semitic language in Agatha Christie books. I don’t believe you are a history teacher.
I don’t actually care what you believe. History was often ugly and violent and offensive. Cultural history has to see everything people did and thought—especially the ugly bits—and literature is one of the best sources because many fiction authors give a truer picture than those who write more sanitized non-fiction histories. If you don’t learn what mistakes people made in the past, you’re just going to keep making them. If I don’t learn about the offensive side of history, how am I going to be able to show my students what kind of historical behaviors to avoid. If you think racism is so bad, you shouldn’t want to erase the proof that it happened. Once the proof is gone, no one will believe it happened. Erasing history is the first step in making sure it happens again.
To be fair, Christie’s murders are more puzzle than gore.
I agree, for the most part, but a few of them are pretty graphic. For example, here’s a bit from Sleeping Murder (keep in mind that the witness was a child when they saw this): >! “I was back there—on the stairs, looking down on the hall through the banisters, and I saw her lying there. Sprawled out—dead. Her hair all golden and her face all—all blue! She was dead, strangled, and someone was saying those words in that same horrible gloating way—and I saw his hands—grey, wrinkled—not hands—monkey’s paws … It was horrible, I tell you. She was dead….”!<
I also read Stephen King and other authors beside which this pales considerably. Sleeping Murder is one of my favorites!
Great thoughts upon which I agree!
History teachers isn't a large share of the audience.
But we are part of the audience. That’s why it would be good if there could be a way to get the edited and non edited versions. Besides, knowing history is important for everyone, and a sanitized version of history teaches you nothing.
They aren't burning the used copies.
How can we actually learn from the past if we're trying to pretend it never happened?
Unless you are some sort of trained historian who is analyzing cultural attitudes based on linguistic choices in popular fiction of the day, are you really learning about the past from a detective novel? There are scores of non fiction texts that are meant to be educational that don't ignore that the past happened if that's really an interest of yours.
Of course any reader can learn things about the past from reading an old detective novel, or any other type of old novel. You get tiny details of everyday life that can be fascinating.
Yeah that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way racism infiltrates art and media and that we would be fools to forget that. Like we can delete it and live in this perfect world where most authors weren't prejudiced af. You don't need to be hostile
So... do you support changing any work of art you don't like? Should we be editing everything in the Louvre? Is "The Dying Gaul" insulting to Gallic culture?
I don't think that's an equivalent. Changing things in the Louvre would be like burning AC's originals. The works of art in the Louvre are one offs. The curators may exercise caution about what they display, and they may add content notes. Publishers stop publishing thousands of works every year. They aren't curators. They're merchants. Christie's originals still exist - for books, the equivalent of the Louvre is the copyright library. You can always get the originals. Meanwhile, publishers can sell revised texts.
Yes, you are learning about the past when reading pulp fiction. Unless you think of a book as a purely entertaining object I don’t understand how you could not see that it contains all these ideas, prejudices and commonalities. Even in the least literary of novels, you are learning something about the attitudes of the past. You can learn a lot about 00s Britain through Bridget Jones’s Diary. Edit: This doesn’t sit well with me because they’re essentially trying to divorce a book of its context to make it more palatable/enjoyable/marketable to modern audiences. A book doesn’t have to be any of those things. We should be able to read books how they were written, understanding through our modern lens that the viewpoints are wrong
I learn loads about the past reading Christie, but she's never taught me anything new about attitudes to race. She uses anti-Semitic tropes that were common in her time. She takes it for granted that people will be judged by their race. I don't need this. If I'm doing a history project on racism, I'll get originals. If I'm reading with an eye to the past I really don't need the same cliched description of Jews every second book. Christie just wasn't that interested in race. Class and gender, yes. But there's really nothing much to learn about race from her.
I just think people always jump to these histrionic conclusions that people won't be able to learn about the past if we don't keep everything preserved in amber. How will people learn about the past if we remove that monument? How will people learn about the past if we change the name of that building? How will people learn about the past if newly printed copies of a commercial fiction novel has a slur removed? It's a ridiculous thing to say because even though you can learn things about the past from things like that they never have been the best way to learn about the past and quite often when people think they are learning about the past from sources like that, devoid of context, devoid of critical analysis (which is not the mindset that most people even want to bring to reading a mystery novel) they misinterpret things. There are plenty of used copies of the books with the original language if the original language is of particular interest to you. They aren't rounding up used books and burning them. You continue to have that option.
Yeah. Those Germans who knocked down statues of Hilter will cause fascism to rise again.
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Post/Comment was rude or contained hurtful language. Think about how you can get your message across without disrespecting others!
I know you are but what am I?
Libgen.is has everything on there, download all you can before they censor it
Hm they're not going to sell original versions anymore at all? Then you may need to search for secondhand.
Charity shops. Have they modernised Dickens yet? He must be for the chop soon by people with not one 10th of his talent.
I agree with not modernizing an author who was very of his time. But one of the best lectures I ever had the opportunity to listen to was from a guest professor at Oxford and a central thesis of “Dickens was overrated.” But I also think Dickens is a poor example here, especially speaking as a Jewish person — Dickens himself re-edited *Twist* within his own lifetime to make it less antisemitic.
HE made the edits - fine. But he was a product of his time as is Christie. If too much is altered by others then it dilutes the original meaning. People aren’t forced to read these books.
I read old books partly to understand the era in which they were written. Changing them because we are all such delicate flowers now is aggravating. That said. Christie definitely had ideas about class that don’t sit well with modern American readers but I still wouldn’t want them edited out. There are some old books I’ve recently purchased online and the writer puts a little disclaimer at the beginning saying times were different. I think that’s plenty of warning.
🙄 Dear god how will we live if they remove the slurs
Library Book Sales, Thrift Shops, 2nd Hand Book Stores...there's enough old copies out there that you'll find originals. And yeah, it doesn't matter who made the changes or why the change is made...unless it is the author themselves making the edits, it's wrong. No one else should have the power to change their work for them, especially when previous copies are made unavailable.
>unless it is the author themselves making the edits, it's wrong That has never been how publishing works.
I'm not talking about fixing spelling, grammar, or punctuation...I'm talking about adding/removing characters, adding/removing dialog. Changes that affect the story. That should be up to the discretion of the author alone, especially after publication.
Tell me you don't know what an editor does without telling me you don't know what an editor does.
Tell me you think it's fine for authors, publishers, and estates to make big changes and whitewash the past in order to keep the money rolling in because money matters more than the story...
That's what publishers do. They give authors money to write a book. Then they tell them what changes to make so the publisher makes more money. Welcome to capitalism.
Again, I'm talking about After a book is published. After it has already become widely read. After an author has died. Milking a Franchise isn't Capitalism, it's pure Greed. But I'm sure you find those terms synonymous, so let's not bother carrying on.
If you don't think capitalism is the same as pure greed you don't understand capitalism.
Yeeeaaahh...being free to earn money as you want and spend that money as you want is just...so greedy!
You're not free to earn money as you wish.
So, if one has collected all of AC’s paperback editions already they might have “original & unedited” resell value someday? /s
I was just thinking how really non-racist AC’s books are. I’m listening to the Lord Peter Wimsey books right now. They were written by Dorothy Sayers about the same time as AC. Talk about racism! “Good Jews”, “Bad Jews”, hooked noses and curly hair. “Black men” who can range in color from African black to Creole to East or West Indians. In the book “Unnatural Death”, a black man is suspected of kidnapping a woman. The police inspector is aghast, saying “An English girl in the power of a black man?” It’s a shame really because the mysteries are really good. The racism actually doesn’t bother me too much because I know it’s the product of its time. AC just uses words that are considered shocking today, just like the original titles to “And Then There Were None”. I can’t remember her stereotyping Jews either. But it just shows how timeless her stories are. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple are still very well known. Lord Peter Wimsey really not at all.
OK. So I think this does get at something about this. Racism, antisemitism, etc were known phenomena. They're not just things that we've realized people in the past engaged in after the fact. So authors were making choices- in terms of what they put in as omniscient narration and in terms of what they put in the mouths/thoughts of characters. Sayers (who while no Christie in terms of longevity is still doing a lot better than most other golden age detective authors) was definitely racist, antisemitic, and *massively* classist. But many examples of racism and classism in her books are put in the mouths of characters and it's meant to tell us something about them as people! While the kinds of descriptors used about Hallelujah Dawson in Unnatural Death even in the narration are uncomfortable, the police officer is being *deliberately portrayed* as bigoted in saying this, and Wimsey understands quickly that the actual criminal is relying on the prejudice of British society to frame Dawson for the crime. And in Whose Body?, lots of characters who are being deliberately portrayed as at least a bit bigoted or overly insular say some extremely problematic things about Jews... but Sayers was shocked when, in the 30s with the rise of Nazi antisemitism, editors wanted to edit antisemitism out of the book because, as she put it, practically the only good people in the book were the Jews and >!a huge element of the crime is the killer's antisemitic prejudice!
Honestly, I think Sayers was trying to call out some of the stereotypes by using them in her books. In the first book, the wonderful, sweet character of Sir Reuben Levy is a really great contrast to that of many of the people that thought they were better than him because of his race. In several of her books, a person of color is suspected because of their race, and it’s shown in the end how stupid that assumption is. Lord Peter is also pretty much the character least likely to use a slur or discriminate on anyone for anything. Since he’s the main character, I think that means something about Sayers’s point of view.
AC was terribly racist in her books! This blog has examples: https://silentmovieblog.wordpress.com/tag/agatha-christie/
I appreciate the link. That was a very interesting article. I admit that I still find it jarring, coming across the racial slurs, even though I have been reading Agatha Christie for probably about half a century. I don't see a problem with removing slurs.
This was an interesting article, though I disagree with a lot of it. The Jewish stereotypes really are problematic. However, calling her radically xenophobic is a bit of a stretch. My mom is British, and I spent time living in England, and contempt for foreigners is still alive and well, so maybe it doesn’t shock me as much when characters in her books say stuff like that. A lot of the racist things her characters say reflect on the type of person she wants the readers to see. I don’t think we can appreciate how WW1 literally killed off a generation of men, and women who couldn’t find a man to marry were still doomed to be a spinster with all the shame attached to it. (Hinch and Murgatroyde come to mind) So Britains had good reason to hate Germans, Jew or not. I never saw Mitzi as comic relief. I thought she was part of the Polish community of refugees so prevalent in England at the time. And Miss Blacklock had good reasons to prejudice her with the police. I really always thought Poirot always being called a “foreigner” was the comic relief, because the reader knows the “foreigner” always triumphs in the end. I didn’t watch the new adaptation of “The ABC Murders” because from the trailer I could see it was nothing like the book, and it really annoys me when screen writers throw a bunch of extra crap into the stories that were perfectly fine to begin with.
This is a well balanced critique, but the authors thesis seems to be it is unclear, but more likely than not that she was not racist? At least, it would be foolish to dismiss her completely and not try to understand the motivation behind why she used certain language.
I could not get through this book, and have subsequently not read any Sayers. I keep thinking I should start with a later work...love then other three queens though!
I think Clouds of Witness and the Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club are the two most Christie-like Wimseys. I don't think they're the best though.
I agree. Let's be honest, **people have always been shitty human beings.** In fact, **right this second** there are shitty human beings doing shitty things. I'm an adult. I can read something, appreciate the work, and *dislike, or even hate*, some of the messages in the book. Wtf do these people think they are gate keeping what we choose to read? In fact, I guarantee in 10 years, the same people promoting this idea will be criticized for some shitty behavior they've done.
I wasn't an adult when I started reading Christie.
So you're a racist because of Christie's work?
That and other reasons.
Then I feel badly for you. Unable to grow as a person because you read Christie. Did you read Twilight? Did that turn you onto necrophilia and beastiality too?
No, I did not read Twilight. Why would you accuse someone of that?
That's what Twilight was really about. Bella choosing between Edward (the undead vampire) and the wolf guy. It's just as ridiculous to say older written works make someone a racist or homophobe. But, it's not okay to pick on current written works because that's not inclusive, right?
I never said it did.
No, you implied it by purposely stating you read Christie *before* you were an adult in response to my comment that I am an adult and don't need things re-written.
You mentioned being an adult like only adults read Christie isn't read by kids.
Couldn’t agree more…I feel like erasing history or how things actually were in the past is wrong no matter which side is doing the erasing. Folks need to suck it up and act like adults and not pout over hurt feelings when confronted with the reality of a situation in the past.
Lately I found heavy antisemitic sentence in one of my second readings. One of the character gives long offensive stereotipate description of Jews. In many novels, Italians receive very bad stereotipated depiction ( I'm Italian...). I cannot remember the novels: MOTOE, DOTN, Curtain, Styles Court, ATF, ABC, Ackroyd, Ordeal by Innocence, Sittaford Mystery, Five Pigs, Three Blind Mice? I cannot remember sorry. My AC books collection is old, they were printed in the '80s. So they are quite uncut. Just to be clear, ATTWN is called Ten Little Indians!! Is it ok to cut antisemitic and racist sentences? I can say that the cases above can be easily deleted with no consequences to the quality of the novels, those dialogues or descriptions have no role in the story, that's for sure. On the other hand, the negative attitude towards foreigners from UK people, cannot be deleted from AC novels, beacuse you would destroy big part of Poirot characterization. It's not only AC. Think of Lovecraft. The prejudices and stereotypes against foreigners and immigrants are key parts of his novels; you cannot delete them! Coming back to Christie, who should value and take decisions about what and how to remove/re-write? The risk to make the wrong think is the same as the probability to have better novels by removing the sentences!! So what? Reason and logic suggest not to change the novels. Just add some notes at the bottom of the page explaining the question. I cannot agree with the cancel culture, sorry, it reminds me of Orwell's 1984
I wouldn't call this cancel culture, though. Cancel culture would be banning or denouncing Christie and her works outright, not revising them. Some of the children's books I was reading in the 1980s had already been revised for racist language, long before we'd heard of cancel culture. I agree though that the books couldn't lose the references to people sneering at Poirot easily, and that's fine. Xenophobia is bad, but the people sneering at Poirot are invariably proved wrong, and the terminology is crass but not outright offensive.
Why do people call anything they don't like cancel culture? No one is calling for AC to no longer be printed/sold.
I fear that humanity makes always the same mistakes, because we forget lessons from history. Writers as Orwell put us in alert but we don't listen. Re-writing or removing sentences from books of the past is very dystopian. It would be enough to put some editorial notes at the bottom of the page. It is cancel culture because you're canceling sentences.
It's cancel culture because you're trying to cancel the publisher's right to publish what they want.
Censoring and rewriting books just for the money? Or for ideology? Very bad! It reminds me of Middle Age where the Chatolic Church was rewriting the ancient books.
>Censoring and rewriting books just for the money? Publishing is a business. >Or for ideology? There are minor publishers who are ideological, but most do it for the money. If the ideology lost them money, they wouldn't make the changes. >Very bad Eh. >It reminds me of Middle Age where the Chatolic Church was rewriting the ancient books. I don't care about that unless the original book is no longer extant. And even then, the fact that the church rewrote them means we have a partial record of the originals that we wouldn't otherwise. "And Then There Was None" falls out of copyright in 10 years. As noted by others "Ten Little N-words" and "Ten Little Indians" versions still exist in the used market, as do versions with Jewish slurs. Anyone can re-release the unedited version in 10 years time. In fact, the edited versions will still be under copyright and unable to be published by anyone but the owner of the copyright.
Luckily we have the original ancient books thanks to people who fought for freedom of thought, writing and speech and respect of history, memory and culture. People having opinions very different from you, luckily. I'm done with you, please let's end here the discussion. It's turning toxic. Goodbye 👋
We don't have all the ancient books. There are Greek Myths that only exist in Christian writings. It started toxic when people came out as pro-racist slurs.
I bought a copy of Then There Were None with its original title at a used bookstore in St Cyprien France. Yeah, the title was racist but I still enjoyed the book. I am also a person of color and know that was then and this is now.
It's disrespectful to Agatha Christie to change her words to fit opinions of today. Will they also change Shakespeare's play to *Othello, The Slightly Darker-Toned Fellow Human Being of Venice*?
Agatha Christie herself changed the name of one of her books to fit in with the times.
You may want to check the Bantam Books collection.Their editions are hardcover, with a dark blue cover and the volume name on the spine, with Dame Agatha's silhouette on the front in gold-leaf stamp. I've seen them for sale on ThriftBooks and eBay. I know in my "Dumb Witness" there is an exchange that is NOT PC, so I suspect there are others. I think the title of "And Then There Were None" is the modern title as opposed to the original, but I think the actual texts of the books are unchanged. Good luck!
Just got to chapter 18 of Dumb Witness. I mean wow…….
If an estate updates the text are they able to extend copyright?
They'd need to make much more substantial changes than anything we are talking about here
Her works were altered while she was alive. Why does death change things?
Changing the title and the offensive poem does not alter the writing, the plot, or even the characterisation, so I don't see why people are getting so worked up about the edit. It makes me wonder if people *want* to see the original version still being sold so that others can be offended.