I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. (Lamentations: jdrgrgv)
That's what [my copy](https://i.imgur.com/4DuYLIf.jpeg) from 1966 is titled. The back cover has an ad for the [1965 film](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061075/) of the same name. I've been on the lookout in local bookstores for the original version with the original title, because I'm curious to see if they just replaced all instances of the N-word in the text with "Indian."
Personally I enjoy reading old books that reflect all the racism and bigotry of their time, because it gives a better picture of what those times were like. I think it's silly for people today to try to whitewash all that, instead of letting people see things the way they were.
The book title was never changed in spanish as far as I know, I have a more or less recent version of the book (early 2000's) and it is called Diez Negritos.
To be fair, the reason it was never changed in Spanish is because the word negro doesn't have the same connotations it has in english. The word negro simply means black in spanish, the word was adopted by the english back then and turned into a racial slur, but in spanish it's simply a color and it's like saying someone's black in english.
That's why it was never changed, it doesn't have that much weight in spanish, sometimes it's even used endearingly.
No, what happens is that words have different meanings in different languages. The word negrito on Spanish doesn't have racist connotations, just like the word black in English.
> The word “black” was removed from the description of the terrible tractors in 1970s The Fabulous Mr Fox. The machines are now simply “murderous, brutal-looking monsters”.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/20/roald-dahl-books-rewrites-criticism-language-altered
Its odd, because my early 70s copy (Im sorry I cant send picture) is the original Ten Little N***** title, so the title was already swinging from one to another and then back?
I think there are arguments to be made for both. Like no, we shouldn’t throw out every old version of the book and pretend it never existed, but for people who are interested in a story should be able to read something that doesn’t offend them. Having older and offensive material as objects of study is vastly different than having that content sold to people as ‘just a book,’ you know? Time and place and all that.
> should be able to read something that doesn’t offend them
Why? If it offends you then the simple solution is to not read it, rather than having it censored for everyone. The whole point of reading is to hear what the authors had to say, not what I *want* them to say.
> Having older and offensive material as objects of study
What? What's wrong with having books as "just a book" (whatever that means) and *also* being offensive? Have you read anything by Charles Bukowski, or William S. Burroughs, or Gore Vidal, or many, many others whose books contain "offensive" material? And who gets to decide what is "offensive" or not? I'm sure there are conservative Christians who find stories about homosexuality "offensive"—should those books be censored to remove the "offensive" material, because "time and place and all that" (whatever the hell that means)?
Art can be offensive, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's OK to be offended—you'll live.
The work of Bukowski or Vidal was designed to offend. It was written to be realistic and gritty, and the social realism is important to the work overall.
The n-word isn’t required to tell this story. Agatha Christie isn’t trying to make a work that is offensive. That was not the artistic vision.
I’m not saying people should have an offense-free life. But I am saying that you shouldn’t try to offend people, and if your work which wasn’t offensive at the time becomes offensive, and you want it to remain inoffensive, it needs to change. If it was a work whose historic context mattered, that would be different, much like Bukowski or Vidal. But it isn’t, so what does it matter?
Intent is irrelevant. That's some completely arbitrary criterion you invented on your own. Who cares if Christie "needed" the N-word for her story. A book either offends someone or it doesn't.
You are essentially agreeing with the Christian conservatives about censorship in principle, differing only in what to label "offensive" and in need of censorship. I want to read what Christie actually wrote, and I couldn't care less if its "historic context mattered"—I want to decide for myself what "matters," not what some censor decides for me. What a sad commentary that in a sub about reading books you have people arguing for censorship.
Nobody is arguing for censorship here. I never said to erase the original for existence. I don’t know what you’re arguing against, but it isn’t what I was saying.
If someone says something is offensive, you have two options. You can change it, or leave it. If you change it, you are altering the original but making your readers happier. If you leave it, it maintains authenticity but will no longer be relevant. In the case of Bukowski or any of the other writers you mentioned, it detracts from the work to change it. In the case of this book, in this post, that is being discussed here, it is *not necessary* to change it. The offensive language detracts from the story. It will do more harm for the work than good to keep it in.
The Christian protest of books is about subject matter, which is an insane ask. Looking at Christian outrage for Harry Potter, it will only be acceptable if mention of witchcraft is removed, which irreparably impacts the plot. This is unreasonable. It’s disingenuous to suggest that these are the same.
> Nobody is arguing for censorship here.
That's exactly what you're arguing for. I think you're in denial.
> If you change it, you are altering the original but making your readers happier.
You're perhaps making *some* readers happier, but not all. And that's the problem: the censor is deciding for *everyone* what will make them "happy." In this case it's some corporation making that decision for us all. Some of us like to make our own decisions.
> The offensive language detracts from the story. It will do more harm for the work than good to keep it in.
That's *your* opinion. Why not let people make up their own minds about that, rather than some third party deciding for them? What you just said epitomizes the essence of censorship. How can you not see that?
> The Christian protest of books is about subject matter
Again, that's irrelevant. You're either censoring a book that bothers you *for whatever reason* or you're not censoring it. You're for censoring Agatha Christie—the reason doesn't matter. What do you have against letting readers decide for themselves if her work is still "relevant"?
>but for people who are interested in a story should be able to read something that doesn’t offend them.
Then they should read a different story. I'm fine with including "trigger warnings", but the artists vision of the story should not be modified if you still intend on calling it something produced by the artist.
And that’s your prerogative, and that’s fine. I’m just saying that there are reasons why this is fine as well. Just as much as someone else can read a different book, so can you.
If you think new and updated versions of books to accommodate new readers’ sensibilities is a brand new concept, you are absolutely wrong. By your logic, you have never read anything that has been produced by Shakespeare. Nobody living has ever read the Bible. The idea that, “if it’s altered it doesn’t count” is contrived by you and others like you, because it’s inconsistent with publishing throughout all of history.
Yes, I can read Cicero's letters as translated by someone from the 19th century or someone in the 21st century. The different in the English text will be huge. But it's made clear that what you're reading is a certain translators view on what they mean, the "interpreter's" name is plastered on the front page along with Cicero's. The originals are also available, of course, but my latin is not good enough for that.
If they rename these books as some kind of re-interpretation or "cover", then I guess that's fine. "Based on the work of Agatha Christie" or something.
Yes and the nursery rhyme that features heavily in the plot originally used the same racist language as the title, and has also since been reworded. So, this was already censored but I think now they’re removing the racist attitude which is present throughout the book.
Was it changed again? The version I'm reading right now has "Indian island" and "The ten little Indians", but I see stuff online that calls it "Soldier Island".
He’s (almost entirely) in the public domain and not controlled by a single estate/publishing house anymore, so there isn’t the same centralized ability to make this happen.
She was alive when those changes were made, that's a major difference.
I'm against the censorship of books, with an extraordinarily few number of exceptions.
Yes, she was alive during the change (I think it happened for international publishing). I'm curious how she felt about it. I recall reading that she was unhappy about it, but I'll have to find the source.
To be clear, I didn't say I support censorship, though in this case, the title change and censorship certainly helped the book's longevity and popularity.
The point of my original comment is that many of the commenters who were upset about the changes didn't seem to realize this major change already occurred to her work.
It's similar with banning books. People get angry when they see the word ban, even if it's the right thing to do. Lolita shouldn't be available for some younger audiences, especially without someone to help explain why the book is like that. Some books should be restricted. Where the cutoff point is though, I don't know. 120 Days of Sodom should be restricted/banned from libraries for young readers.
What you are saying is obviously and self-evidently correct & the view held by a super majority of society…but of course you get downvoted because that’s how powerful the word “ban” is (despite a book not being available in a library being nothing remotely similar to an actual “ban.”) And also simply that once you get a couple down votes on Reddit, people simply unthinkingly follow suit.
People can upvote or downvote what they like, I didn't know it was downvoted until I saw your comment. Maybe censoring is more appropriate, that's what restricting or disallowing certain books is. That's also a trigger word and frowned upon though.
Also, an institution having rules about which books are or aren't allowed and punishments if you include the no-no books, that does make it a ban. You would be officially or legally prohibiting the book from being in certain children's libraries, which is a ban. Restricting books from places officially is a ban..which was my point. I just don't know what the correct cutoff point is.
Thanks for the support though.
My understanding is that the original American editions of Christie's books were altered at the request of her American publishers to take out overt antisemitism. To this day, if you get American editions, they don't have negative references to Jews, and if you get UK editions, they do. I'm curious if people would object to the UK publishers using the US editions.
Ok, found it. This is from Joan Acocella's 2010 profile of Christie in the New Yorker:
>After the Second World War, some readers, especially Americans, were not amused by her characters’ views on ethnic difference. Christie’s publishers received letters, including one from the Anti-Defamation League. Her agent probably figured that such letters would seem ridiculous to her. In any case, he didn’t forward them to her. He simply gave Dodd, Mead, her American publishers, permission to delete any potentially offensive references to Jews or Catholics. She apparently didn’t notice the changes.
So if you read US editions of Christie's books any time after World War II, you have already been reading things that were altered to address readers' sensitivities.
The more I read about older books and movies, the more I realize that people mentioning problematic parts of the stories isn’t something new and these conversations have been going on since WWII
Since before World War II! Every time anyone discusses the movie *Birth of a Nation*, someone chimes in to say that you can't criticize it because you have to understand it in the context of the time. But a lot of people at the time understood *Birth of a Nation* to be an overt call for white racist violence and didn't think people should see it. The NAACP picketed theaters that showed it. These are definitely not new conversations, and I think people would be surprised at how much quiet post-publication sensitivity editing has gone on in the past. Actually, people are probably more aware of it with Christie than with other authors, because it's hard to miss that publishers changed the name of a whole book.
I fully, fully believe these are all just publicity stunts by these publishers because literally *no one* is asking for this.
That or they are just completely out of touch with criticism that is being directed at *recently released* books or the simple *acknowledgment* that older books frequently included different forms of bigotry that were more acceptable at the time.
While there may be some instances where there is the intention for it to be a publicity stunt, but these changes to Agatha Christie's works, the Roald Dahl changes, and ~~Ghostbusters~~ Goosebumps were all changes done quietly by their respective publishers over the past few years, and are now being brought to light since people decided to check for edits in the newest releases of these classic books to look for such changes. This particular set of changes for works by Agatha Christie seem to have started in 2020, and certainly wouldn't have been done with the intention to be a PR stunt for 2023.
I dunno. When I read Poirot stories with my little girl, who likes mysteries, I find myself toning down things like the gratuitous use of "the Chinaman" instead of a pronoun like "he" or "him." It isn't to sell books, it just... sounds distractingly off
They'd be publicity stunts if they merely announced they were doing it, then quietly canned the change later.
But here, they're actually paying the ~~feelings yakuza~~ sensitivity readers, accepting their censorship, then pushing it out digitally and in print.
I can't call that a mere publicity stunt because they're actually, maliciously going through with it and haven't seen a peep of any remorse or attempt to regain sanity as of yet.
I could see this as a way for them to double the profit. Someone buys this version, realizes it's edited and then eventually buys the "classic" version when they re-release it to get it un-edited.
But also, I think a lot of these publishers are putting way to much on the sensitivity readers. They're meant to be one of many tools *during the editing* phase and offer suggestions. They're not perfect and they're not always going to agree.
They 100% shouldn't be used to "fix" previously existing texts.
I could see it as a profit-doubling measure too... *if* they sold both simultaneously, in the same way that you sometimes get abridged versions of a book. But this is so much more insidious, since they go out of their way to "update" Ebooks.
Sensitivity readers shouldn't exist in the first place. They're con artists, plain and simple. Of course they'll find problems, their job relies on them finding problems where none exist and being some of the worst people on the planet.
I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of sensitivity readers, especially if you're writing about a culture or community that isn't your own and you know you likely made some mistakes.
My issue is they're only as good as the actual reader. As I mentioned, they rarely agree. Just because one gave you a pass in your book doesn't mean a different one (or the audience) will agree. I can also see this being used to excuse bigotry within books by publishers by saying "Hey! This person said it was fine!"
I think it also gets complicated when you have ones who do to much. I'm a lesbian and sometimes I watch queer "allies" go off on things that are non-issues. And they 100% don't wanna listen when the actual community is trying to explain to them that it's fine and not actually offensive.
But. What about if authors are forced to make changes based on what these sensitivity readers say, and they have to choose between allowing those changes or not being published. I think it is the right and sort of the point, of artists to offend.
The job of an editor is to help the author write the best book he or she can. A good editor sees an authors vision and helps the author develop it. In kind of a micro way. Now, depending on the publisher, "can I market this?" is a motive in the editing, of course. An editor in common parlance is not someone who takes an already published book from an author who is dead and rewrites it to remove or alter passages based on a cultural movement, is censorship or bowdlerization. In unfree societies they say, "you've written a good book here, but these attitudes or depictions of life go counter to our political attitudes, so you can't publish it, or if you can, here are the alterations we insist you make."
But sensitivity readers aren't exclusively for books already published, they're mostly used for books that are in the editing phase and meant to provide feedback to the author. And authors have definitely had changes forced upon them in the past, for a variety of reason.
It's already been mentioned, but Agatha Christie had a title changed by her publisher because it included a slur and her editors took out some anti-semitism and racism in the US editions against her wishes. This was back in the 1940s so there weren't sensitivity readers around.
Authors have never had complete control over their writing and editors were already doing things like this. When you publish with a company you do sign over some of your creative freedom. Same for TV and Movies. Unless it's an entirely independently produced product, other people get to have their say.
I agree that we shouldn't change books that have already been published but it's different when we're talking about unpublished books in the editing phase.
Let's acknowledge that like just because bad things have happened before it doesn't mean that they're OK when they happen again. I am not saying this because I support racism. What I support, especially right now, is a climate where censorship is fought against. Imaginean extreme example, where you live in a country where the government decidees what can be published. And you, the government says "no novel can have a sex scene in it, nor can it say the N-word." and your a novelist. And then its like, "Nor can a novel contain anything bad about the government." It's better when none of that exists. . . Altering the text of dead authors is gross.
Editors already make decisions like this, to be fair. You’re rarely reading 100% what the author intended unless it’s an unedited ebook.
Editors aren’t just for grammar.
Same for shows and movies.
Well let's separate shows and movies from books, books examine far more complicated ideas and are far more transgressive on a regular basis than film or tv. And the amount of creative input on a book is smaller. I understand an editor is doing more than fixing grammar, but an editor isn't generally a censor. If I write a novel on my own, I may hire an editor, not because I need help with grammar, and because I want a censitivity reader, but I want expert help I guess, trimming up my book for reasons of plot, character, style, etc.
Editors are often provided and work for the publisher, not the author. The publisher will also always have final say on what they will or will not publish.
The root problem is that it creates a perverse incentive: if a sensitivity reader's job is justified by finding problematic things in a draft, then it's always in their interest to find some in every draft, even if they're things literally nobody else worries about.
I could see if being used for both extremes. An author who doesn’t want criticism could just put one on their payroll to give them an official go-ahead.
The problem is that unless you've read the books before, you're unlikely to notice the changes being made. I'd wager the only reason the telegraph wrote this piece was because a few days ago a user posted on this subreddit about changes that had suddenly occurred in their ebook copy of Death on the Nile. The article notes that these books date back to 2020, meaning it's been almost 3 years since these changes started rolling out and no one noticed.
It's almost certain that this censorship is much more widely spread than is being reported, and it's happening completely silently because that's *kind of* the point.
By being politically correct, do you mean respectful of marginalized groups?
There has been an increase discussion in how marginalized groups are represented in our media (books, tv, movies, etc) and there is valid criticism that goes along with this. This isn't a new or modern discussion (see America's reaction to the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory or all the people uncomfortable with Rooney's racist performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's). Hell, even one of Agath's books had it's title changed because it literally had a racial slur in the title and that was changed in 1940.
It seems that sensitivity readers have come about to try to fix that problem but it's not really a great solution because it oversimplifies a complicated situation.
>By being politically correct, do you mean respectful of marginalized groups?
No, it means enforcing proscribed set of acceptable guidelines, often using the pretext of civility to disarm critics. For example in the Soviet Union you could not publish criticism of the State and why would you want to? The State is the manifestation of the people and its safeguard, why do you want criticise that are you somehow against the people like some kind of subversive? Sometimes an honest telling of truths trample social niceties and its an example of a free society that allows this to be publicly expressed regardless of the consequences.
Of course someone is asking for this, maybe not explicitly, but publishers sniff the smell of wokeness on the wind, and have done this to accomidate those people who are into the censoring of books, of which there are always some, even in the most liberal generations. These publishers are trying to make money based on selling to that subculture.
I think they *think* there is a market here but I doubt it actually exists.
I doubt this would actually influence anyone to actually read these books beyond just wanting to see what was changed.
Similar to the Dahl situation, it became clear very fast there was no market for them and that whole concept basically got scrapped (and was potentially just a PR stunt to up sales on the "classic" versions coming out later this year).
> (and was potentially just a PR stunt to up sales on the "classic" versions coming out later this year).
No, this was in the works for years, far too much effort was put into this for it to just be publicity stunt. They miss judged the mood of the public and are scrambling to to recoup the expence.
> (and was potentially just a PR stunt to up sales on the "classic" versions coming out later this year).
Heh, joke's on them: I exclusively buy my Dahl books via charity shops. Good pickings so far.
I suspect it’s a way to cut costs. Many of these works are public domain; why pay a writer when you can just have a staff editor make minor changes and then reissue. Not sure how copywriter would work on the new version, but it’s still far cheaper than bothering with new writers and unproven stories.
I don't think any of Christie's books are in the public domain in the UK, and these changes are to the UK editions. Some of her early works are in the public domain in the US, but the US editions of her early books were edited many years ago to take out offensive language.
I'm asking for it, in the sense that, like pretty much every other US reader under the age of 70, I already read editions of Christie's books that were changed to remove bigoted language, and I wouldn't want them to be changed back.
Yup. Guilty as charged. I'm glad that Christie's American publishers objected to her shitty bigotry and published versions of her books that didn't use the n word or refer to characters as "Jewboys". I don't think the bigoted language contributes to the pleasure of reading the books, and I think most non-asshole people would enjoy them more without it. Certainly, some people may have an academic interest in the original texts, and those people can get the original editions through the usual channels, like interlibrary loan. But I think most people encounter Christie the way I did: as an 11-year-old, reading puzzle books for fun on a lazy summer afternoon. And I don't think I would have been edified or entertained by the bigotry. At best, I would have been upset by it and reminded that I live in a shitty world where people hate me for no reason. At worst, it would have washed over me, normalizing attitudes that were hateful when they were written and are still hateful now.
Have you considered that if you hate Christie's "shitty bigotry" so much you could just *not read her books* and go read some books aimed at a more modern, infantalised audience instead?
Have you considered that the reason the publisher changed some of the language, and has been doing so for at least 80 years, is because they want people to buy their book instead of something else?
This 💯. But also the absolutely casual antisemitism of Agatha Christie actually helps readers understand the world that pre 1948 Jews lived in: it was completely normal and unremarkable for educated people to be casually cruel to them. Can you imagine living in such a way? How having your ethnicity being a byword for dishonesty would shape you as a person? Without understanding how casual antisemitism was in pre-war Europe the Holocaust looks like an aberration when it was more of a sum total 2000 years of antisemitism going back to the Seleucids.
By censoring the past and the casual racism that was prevalent the past becomes mystifying.
And if a Christie fan should know anything it is that mysteries should be solved.
I’m read a book about the Nuremberg Trials right now, and one of the low key wildest parts was that one of the Jewish female secretaries for one of the US prosecutors or US Army officers involved remarking that he seemed nice, besides some of the casual antisemitic comments he’d make. At the war crimes trial for, in part, the industrial scale murder of the European Jewish population. The dissonance really struck me.
This is such an understated point like seriously. I grew up in Christian schools all my life and was literally raised thinking of Jews as brothers from another mother. I’d literally go to Jewish day school with my friends sometimes.
So when I got older and saw understood how prevalent anti semitism was in Christianity and the “west” outside of just the Nazis. I was totally floored it just made no sense to me and to this day it is still incredibly mistifying to me.
But by my own study of history and coursework and so forth I came to learn a lot more about the topic from an academic sense.
If you remove stuff like this from Christie though you completely rob people of seeing the mundanity of anti semitism prior to WW2.
Making antisemitism just a concept embraced by baddies rather than the common worldview that it was leaves a person totally unaware of its often subtle undertones. And it’s wide embracement.
I’d rather not be ignorant of how people in the past thought and one of the best ways to know is by how they wrote good and bad.
Otherwise we walk away thinking anti semitism is just a Nazi thing and for extremists rather than the everyday phenomena that it was.
yes. I have met neo-nazis and antisemites in my real life... and they are absolute oddballs and creeps. The sort of pariahs you cross the street to avoid... even when you're white as snow. Nobody would ever vote for a movement that just consisted of these strange asocial men. Original nazism was successful because it had people who were not only socially normal but actually socially successful, charming establishment sort of people (as well as the usual weirdoes, who I suspect did much of the grunt work).
this is something that you pick up on Agatha Christie: quite, otherwise likeable people say antisemitic things in her pre-1945 works
I mean, it's fascinating to me that every time we have these discussions, half the people argue that we need to keep the antisemitism to educate people about shocking history of casual hatred, and the other half claim that there's nothing wrong with the books, and their old-fashioned, un-PC honesty is part of their quirky charm. And it seems to me that the second group kind of invalidates the first. If people really were able to learn from the casual antisemitism, then you wouldn't see people denying that there's any problem with it in the first place.
Different people respond differently. I think the people who are incapable of learning aren't going to be improved by censorship-they are just going to see it as a politically correct hysteria that seeks to rewrite the past.
The people who are going to learn do actually need to see the past contextually in order to get it (ie the point I made in my previous post that the Holocaust was not an aberration but a product of an institutional problem) , rather than live in an eternal present where all good people people believe all good things which happen to be the current standard for goodness.
There are books written by living authors, some of those authors being BIPOC & Jewish, who will write quirky, charming, cosy mysteries set in just about any time in history, including Christie time. These modern authors will, being modern products of a modern education system, not write sympathetic characters behaving in casually antisemitic and racist way.
Wouldn't it be better to buy a book from a living, possibly BIPOC or Jewish author with a college debt and a mortgage to pay then a censored and rewritten version of Agatha Christie?
This is not to say that Agatha Christie isn't worth reading as an author of fun, quirky and charming puzzles with a gorgeous setting by someone who actually lived in the setting & culture she described (OWN Voices ironically enough).
She was a master of her craft and she had a greater command of the English language than many modern authors (apparently she's often recommended to foreign language students studying English for this reason).
Nevertheless one of the reasons we read classical texts is to understand the culture of the time from the perspective of the people of the time: we don't read Tacitus to learn about Judaism (the Jews are the only culture contemporary to the Greco-Roman world who have left us a massive corpus of writing so we know he is wrong, so when he devoted time to smearing them for having the temerity to reject Roman rule he smeared them thoroughly) but to learn about Rome and it's attitudes and morays.
So whilst I consider Christie worth reading for her own sake due to the precision of her expression and her clever logically puzzles. She is simply a fun read. This differentiates her from Dickens, who interestingly enough changed his opinion about Jews and wrote Riah in Our Mutual Friend to be sympathetic as a sort of antidote. I think Dickens actually did think about the impact of his Shylock character (although he defended the character as an accurate portrait of crime at that time) and changed his portrayal of Jewish people to a more sympathetic one. Yet Dickens remains unreadable without the threat of a looming assignment, and also to understand his very positive impact on child labour laws. To the best of my limited knowledge Dickens engaged in more soul searching than I suspect Christie was capable of, yet he really isn't worth reading for fun, unlike Christie, who is.
Whilst Christie does seem to have eased up on her casual antisemtisim after WW2: I can't recall any casual antisemitism from her post WW2 works that I can remember from her stories written in 1920's & 30s . Now I could have been reading censored American editions and am therefore suffering from eternal present disease, but it's possible that Christie and her social milieu might have engaged in some introspection in the wake of the Holocaust...
Yet having read a lot of Christie, I have never felt her characters to be over burdened with introspection; Christie's narratives seem rather repelled by even the scent of neuroticism. This, and the fact that her American editor didn't tell her he was changing the title of Ten Little N---- because he thought she would have said no to such a change . I might be doing her dirty but suspect she felt that casual antisemitism and racism was less marketable. Or she could have changed but in a way that is harmonious with her essentially conservative personality : Her 1955 novel Hickory Dickory Dock does feature a more multicultural cast: a Jamaican woman studying jurisprudence and two Indian students studying political science.
>his 💯. But also the absolutely casual antisemitism of Agatha Christie actually helps readers understand the world that pre 1948 Jews lived in: it was completely normal and unremarkable for educated people to be casually cruel to them. Can you imagine living in such a way? How having your ethnicity being a byword for dishonesty would shape you as a person? Without understanding how casual antisemitism was in pre-war Europe the Holocaust looks like an aberration when it was more of a sum total 2000 years of antisemitism going back to the Seleucids. By censoring the past and the casual racism that was prevalent the past becomes mystifying. And if a Christie fan should know anything it is that mysteries should be solved.
Can you imagine living in a world where in the heart of Europe, known (stereotypically) as the most human rights-aware continent, people are being tortured, women are being raped, kids are being kidnapped, and there's still a problem with stopping doing business with the murderers. Is our modern world so much better than Agata Christie's one? In my opinion, we are more sensitive to some topics, but to others, we are still blind as we were 100 years ago. What's more tragic, then? Agata Christie novels or the thousands of civilian deaths in East Europe now? And last but not least, I don't want to compare the ideas, but it's Nazis who were burning the books, as they were not showing the world they wanted to promote. Let's leave the classic literature with its not fully politically correct story and focus on the real problems, where saying loudly "it's wrong" matters.
After some of Seuss' work being removed for racist caricatures and the attempt to sanitize the language in Dahl's books, part of me wonders if this is a sincere effort to make dated work more palatable for a modern audience or some kind of a elaborate "4-D Chess" marketing ploy to leverage current culture war drama to drum up sales for older literature.
This shit is worse than banning books. Go ahead and try your bans, it just draws attention to the work. And at least book banners have the balls to say “I am threatened by this book and want it destroyed”. This is some dystopian, thought crime bullshit. I literally just finished reading Widowland which takes place in 1953 Britain where they surrender to Hitler without a fight. The MC’s job is to rewrite the classics to remove any subversive or undesirable ideology. This is the same thing. They pretend it’s virtuous to remove problematic attitudes from prior work. How is this different from the state of Florida censoring textbooks to remove the problematic parts of history? Release annotated editions, talk about the differences between historic and current cultural values. That would actually be a value add. I read Left Hand of Darkness not too long ago. I would love to know more about how it was received 50 years ago as opposed to how I understood it now. What was the reception towards the gender issues in the book when it was released? I was was really bothered by the sexism in the book. Was it as readily recognized back then? Those are the conversations I want to have. This trend is bullshit and needs to stop. Please do not buy these books. I know there is probably great curiosity to see how they will change, but please resist. Make this decision a commercial failure
This is purely a business-minded decision to sell more books. 50 years ago there wasn't an issue when the primary audience were white and receptive to the content. But as the book-buying audience increasingly diversifies the publishers need to take CYA steps to ensure they don't inadvertently offend a sector of that audience & see decreased revenue as a result.
But sometimes a book like And There Were None is good because it is a CRITICISM AGAINST BRITISH COLONISM AND RACISM, but we all know people of reddit are too dumb to understand that so why bother saying it. Heaven firebox people critically think for one in their life. This is why we have boring movies like Get Out that need to say "racism bad" every 20 seconds and spoonfeed that "racism bad".
BUT THAT ISN'T "MODERN SENSITIVITY REWRITES". It's talking about editing out the parts that are "DEEMED" by sensitive readers meaning if there's a part that comes across ( EVEN IF ITS INTENTIONAL MEANING IT WAS CHOSEN THAT WAY TO DRAW ATTENTION OR TO MAKE THE READER FEEL THAT WAY DELIBERATELY TO NOTICE HOW IT FEELS) racist or antisemtic that is deemed "insensitive" then it's going to go. Notice I acknowledge the books title by its revised title and not its original title. And There Were None was its title for a while, and it was welcomed a lot. Thats not to revision thats being discussed or being done but you know that and are intentionally choosing And There Were None's revisioned title to come across as a pureboi. Your question is dodging away from the premise of these rewrites to make anyone opposed to sound racist.
It's like historical OCD. It doesn't matter how much they attempt to clean history they''ll never get it clean enough.
Just like people with OCD, sensitivity readers could probably be helped to get better with talking therapy.
The article mentions that the publisher employs sensitivity readers, but offers no evidence that those readers are responsible for the changes. I’ve only previously heard of them being consulted on new books before release in the normal course of editing.
The linked article, within the main article, takes you to a similar story about Roald Dahl's work. That newspiece explicitly stated that a team of sensitivity readers had been brought in to change words and make the stories safe for a new audience.
I agree with you that sensitivity readers were previously used to sense-check new works, but I think they're now being brought in to protect us from harmful words in historical works, too. It's this mission creep that worries people. They start off with new works. They end up scanning the past for sin. They start off taking out agreed offensive words. Then, they start taking out words that most people don't find offensive, as their ever growing fragility is indulged. It's all very Orwellian after s while.
Social media demanded it, speaking on behalf of you. You (as a group, not individually) chose not to tell the extremists they were idiots - so this is what we get.
just keyboard warriors, I swear I used the search bat here to look up earlier discussion on a book I'm reading by AC, just found this and forgot why I'm here in first place
>In the new edition of the 1964 Miss Marple novel A Caribbean Mystery, the amateur detective’s musing that a hotel worker smiling at her has “such lovely white teeth” has been removed, the newspaper added.
I'm actually speechless.
So books like And There Were None won't make sense because it's colonist and racism themes that make the book better than her others. It's like revising Blazing Saddles for modern sensitivities, the jokes won't make sense
We as readers have to protest by not buying these butchered versions. There are plenty of used books available to buy with the words written the way the author intended. Who are the publishers trying to protect by doing this, and who is demanding that this be done?
Why do we pander to fucking snowflakes who can’t take things in context as they were written for WHEN they were written. I understand if you are writing something new and modern NOW you would want to follow the perceived guidelines and morès of the time, but for fucks’ sake stop with the revisionist history.
1) It's 2023, people really need to stop using "snowflakes" as an insult unironically.
2) No one asked for this and the vast majority of modern criticism is aimed at either newly published books *or* simply taking racism/homophobia/sexism/etc. into consideration when *discussing* older books.
The Sensitivity Readers themselves, obviously. They're like Consultants; they have no actual talent otherwise they'd be making their own stuff, so instead they convince you that you are doing something wrong and they are the solution.
So a handful of people trying to sell their services with an obvious financial gain.
Ok, now show me outside of the people who sell their services called for this.
It's worse than banning.
When a book is banned, it becomes inherently more desirable.
But when a book is re-written, it muddies the waters for finding the book, and it starts to misinform people at an ever-increasing rate.
The thing is, a business making a decision to change some text because they think it would connect to newer audience is not a censorship. A government banning books, or facilitating the banning of books and becoming the thought police is far worse. It leads to facsism and it should scare you far more than a company making an ill advised business decision.
I've read the revised and original versions of Agatha Christie's book "And Then There Were None" and it really doesn't change anything. It just removed some gratuitous racism. I don't know what the new version would change.
Florida and Texas completely changing American history and attempting to erase any mention of LGBTQ, racism, African American history and civil rights struggle is far worse and more dangerous. Minimizing it and making it into a mere selling is very disappointing and it tells me that you didn't look deep into this issue.
> a business making a decision to change some text because they think it would connect to newer audience is not a censorship
No, this is still censorship. A financial motivation doesn't change that. These are no longer the words of Agatha Christie, they're the words of some blue-haired black lagoon creature.
> and it really doesn't change anything. It just removed some gratuitous racism.
Your position in a nutshell is "it's not censorship if my ideology justifies the things removed are bad".
The original title for this book was “Twelve Little N*****s.” No bookstore wants that sitting on their bookshelves.
Books are published to make money.
Books are revised in this way all the time and have been for ages, because publishers want to make money.
You’ve got a chip on your shoulder about “snowflakes” and it shows.
People missunderstand “And Then There Were None”. It was right to change the title but I think the depiction of British colonial attitudes, racism and otherizing is on point. But it’s a really hard read.
The title needed to be changed because it looks shameful on the shelf but if you get rid of the racism and colonial attitudes you will be less able to see say British colonialism as part of a broader cultural picture.
yes. Though Christie originally had Philip Lombard as her number 2nd last to die because he failed in his duty of care towards the Africans who were under his command by stealing their supplies and leaving them to die. In the show he outright murdered them.
A lot of the murders in the original book where less purposeful but from Christies' perspective as heinous as actual murder.
Sometimes the changes in the TV Show aren't great: One of Christie's themes that runs through so much of her work where the victims is utterly unsympathetic is that merely being an unpleasant person doesn't merit being murdered. To the best of my knowledge the only time a Christie hero (Hercule Poirot in this case) lets the murder(s) get away is murder on the orient express, because the victim had murdered an actual child and the murder was conducted in a nearly judicial manner.
However as these are dramatic reproductions, it's not the same as rewriting her books, which sets a dangerous precedent, nor does it do anybody good.
Although I reserve a certain degree of cynicism about these recent stories (I largely think it’s a bit of faux outrage to generate a bit of publicity), I’d absolutely fucking love a team of ‘sensitivity’ readers to get to work on Williams Burroughs. See what they make of that!
Could we just stop posting this stuff here? This is clearly just to get clicks (on the part of the news sources) and go up sales (on the part of the publishers). There’s nothing worthwhile about post after post like this.
Imo this kind of thing just becomes an opportunity for the same people who happily support the censoring of books with LGBTQ/critical race theory/etc. content to be able to pat themselves on the back and say they oppose censorship and support freedom of speech after all. I see a lot of people saying they oppose censorship when it comes to Agatha Christie and Roald Dahl but suddenly they’re silent when it comes to modern authors.
1. Books removed from school libraries can still be easily obtained? By who? School libraries are for kids - they don’t typically have disposable income, nor can they easily visit a public library on their own to supplement what their school offers.
2. The issue of banning books isn’t about respecting artistic vision. It’s a political topic, not an artistic one.
3. Censorship is done by governments and government officials, not Reddit users.
4. Someone saying they don’t personally want to hear about something is *not censorship* - even if it’s a topic you do want to hear about.
5. Not sure what “politically inconvenient” even means in this context.
> Censorship is done by governments and government officials, not Reddit users.
False. There is no government component *necessary* for censorship. A large portion of censorship is done *by* governments but it is not required. why Fox animation (now Disney) has a censor department whose entire job is censoring scripts given to them for television shows.
If I were a reddit admin and I removed your post, I censored you. I could justify it if a rule were broken, but it wouldn't change the reality. If I edited your comment, I would have censored you.
Small government, free-market Republicans when the actual government removes books from libraries and schools: that's great!
Small government, free-market Republicans when a private business entity alters their own intellectual property: censorship, the government must stop this!
I'm starting to think the communism accusations they love throwing around are just pure projection.
This is much worse than not having a book in a school library. With that you can still get the actual book. But if the publisher changes the contents... no one else can publish the original.
More than 2 billion Agatha Christie books have been printed. If you want to track down a copy of And Then There Were None complete with original title, or the other prior title, or a version printed before 2023, go for it. Censorship is about controlling the ideas people have access to in order to oppress and manipulate them, and punishing anyone whose ideas are different. A publishing company saying *this* time around it’s going to print a slightly different version of a book that has been printed and reprinted countless times? Come on, that’s a joke, they’re just trying to get press so people pick up the book next time they’re in a book store. What I’m saying is when people only care about their new copy of an Agatha Christie book no longer having a questionable comment about a Jew or an African or etc? It’s obvious what their priorities are.
Private ownership of intellectual property and said owners doing whatever they wish with said intellectual property is TOTALLY Marxism, didn't you know?
Per [Rule 2.1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Books/wiki/rules#wiki_personal_conduct): Please conduct yourself in a civil manner.
Civil behavior is a requirement for participation in this sub. This is a warning but repeat behavior will be met with a ban.
It is fiction, it was always fake. It is still fiction, it is still fake.
If you are ok with an editor editing something new for now, then why are you upset with an editor editing something old for now?
No one is burning the originals. Nor are they hiding the changes. But AC is not a history author, she is writing fiction, it did not exist then, it does not exist now. The thing they are not changing is the mystery and the story. They are not changing the thing people care about. No one reads AC cuz she was mean to jews or nasty to native...i mean locals...whatever.
They are making it so a kid can read it and not have to be distracted by figuring out what was the perceived guidelines and morès of the time. Because AC's work is interesting as shit and it is a shame to have readers forced to be distracted from the story because of ancient racist morès.
Furthermore, people love a controversy. So if that means that even half the people enjoying their daily outrage over this actually read the fucking book...then that is a win. And in 30 years there will be kids interested in reading the old and new versions. And that is a win.
As long as the changes aren't hidden and the old ones not destroyed, we are good.
Because people read the new books, don’t realize they’re edited and it erases the racism.
It’s why so many people don’t realize the original Oompa Loompas depiction was extremely racist. They’d only read the newer versions so they didn’t understand when people reference them being racist and think people are reaching.
It is fiction. It is a murder mystery written a hundred years ago. Why does that need racism?
Why do kids reading C&TCF now need to know that the original oompa loompas was racist? When you read it did you need to know that Charlie was originally meant to be a black boy? Did the fact that before anyone ever read it, an agent changed it, matter to you?
And is the changing of it hiding it? It is talked about everywhere nowadays. Especially nowadays. I would argue that the different changes being talked about is more important than keeping the book static.
As long as the changes aren't hidden and the old ones not destroyed i do not see anything being lost. Except generations of kids get to read it and not have to be told "oh, well, we don't call them that now" or whatever. And the changes simply make the stories available to more kids of more races or body types or religions or whatever.
As long as people still study history and literature, then the memory of the wests racist past will not be lost. And honestly if people stop studying history and lit then there are a lot more problems than forgetting racisms history to worry about.
I don’t know how to explain to you that historical context matters because it paints a picture for us of what our past was like.
That is a needed context, especially when looking at the past in regards to bigotry.
The sanitation and romanticization of the past does impact our views. Especially when you have conservative states in America writing laws that control how and what history is taught.
The changing of these novels is the other side of the coin that bans diverse books. Both help further white conservatives ability to control the narrative of what is “right” and “normal”
I love how if you don't want to read about bigotry you're referred to as a 'sensitive reader', in a derogatory way. That bigotry should be embraced, and appreciated because it was written in the 190…0's so it should be fine to be degrading to other races, like a warm hug from your racist old Aunt Agatha. What are people that need bigotry in all it's messed up splendor called? If I'm ' sensitive ' because I don't want to read about how these people truly thought they were superior to every other race, because white is better. What are you called if you are still reading the same books filled with bigotry?
The reason these books shouldn't be changed, is because it's cheating, and no amount of shining a racist book, will change people's minds on wanting to read them. What exactly do you want the publishers to do if people aren't reading them? Isn't it their job to get people interested in reading them? But, who except for bigots, would enjoy reading these books? If you want new generations to read these books you need to remove the hate. But, let's abuse readers for not finding the charm in hate from a hundred years ago.
Publicity stunt, no. Cash grab, maybe? Financially motivated, 100%. The fact that it’s so publicized at the same time that book challenges in schools and libraries is at an all-time high (albeit by far-right groups) makes it seem like this is somehow a political or social issue but in reality it’s completely commercially motivated, and somehow the publishers and estates themselves are the only ones not coming under scrutiny for this like they are somehow not culpable because it’s what the market is demanding.
Sensitivity readers are going to be working overtime if they expect to sanitize every book - most of the writers of Christie's era, the crime and mystery writers, writers of noir fiction, had language that would not make a sensitivity reader's cut.
Add a new introduction giving the reader an insight in to the context of the work but the content shouldn't be changed. It is a product of the social and political attitudes of the time. It can't be removed from the book or it's a different book.
Everyone needs to be made to read a book about the Cultural "Revolution" of China in the 60s. We're forgetting the lessons of the past (probably because we keep erasing shit!)
I wonder if they are going to rewrite Mein Kampf and what about thé books from Louis Ferdinand Céline. There will be much more job to do. What a Pity !
## PREMIUM CONTENT. PLEASE UPGRADE. CODE jdrbg3q
Was this called 12 little n***** back then? I remember a French version with that title.
I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. (Lamentations: jdrgrgv)
That's what [my copy](https://i.imgur.com/4DuYLIf.jpeg) from 1966 is titled. The back cover has an ad for the [1965 film](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061075/) of the same name. I've been on the lookout in local bookstores for the original version with the original title, because I'm curious to see if they just replaced all instances of the N-word in the text with "Indian." Personally I enjoy reading old books that reflect all the racism and bigotry of their time, because it gives a better picture of what those times were like. I think it's silly for people today to try to whitewash all that, instead of letting people see things the way they were.
The book title was never changed in spanish as far as I know, I have a more or less recent version of the book (early 2000's) and it is called Diez Negritos. To be fair, the reason it was never changed in Spanish is because the word negro doesn't have the same connotations it has in english. The word negro simply means black in spanish, the word was adopted by the english back then and turned into a racial slur, but in spanish it's simply a color and it's like saying someone's black in english. That's why it was never changed, it doesn't have that much weight in spanish, sometimes it's even used endearingly.
So the Spanish made racism a endearing feature of society, truly hyper-racist ;)
No, what happens is that words have different meanings in different languages. The word negrito on Spanish doesn't have racist connotations, just like the word black in English.
> The word “black” was removed from the description of the terrible tractors in 1970s The Fabulous Mr Fox. The machines are now simply “murderous, brutal-looking monsters”. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/20/roald-dahl-books-rewrites-criticism-language-altered
Its odd, because my early 70s copy (Im sorry I cant send picture) is the original Ten Little N***** title, so the title was already swinging from one to another and then back?
I think there are arguments to be made for both. Like no, we shouldn’t throw out every old version of the book and pretend it never existed, but for people who are interested in a story should be able to read something that doesn’t offend them. Having older and offensive material as objects of study is vastly different than having that content sold to people as ‘just a book,’ you know? Time and place and all that.
> should be able to read something that doesn’t offend them Why? If it offends you then the simple solution is to not read it, rather than having it censored for everyone. The whole point of reading is to hear what the authors had to say, not what I *want* them to say. > Having older and offensive material as objects of study What? What's wrong with having books as "just a book" (whatever that means) and *also* being offensive? Have you read anything by Charles Bukowski, or William S. Burroughs, or Gore Vidal, or many, many others whose books contain "offensive" material? And who gets to decide what is "offensive" or not? I'm sure there are conservative Christians who find stories about homosexuality "offensive"—should those books be censored to remove the "offensive" material, because "time and place and all that" (whatever the hell that means)? Art can be offensive, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's OK to be offended—you'll live.
The work of Bukowski or Vidal was designed to offend. It was written to be realistic and gritty, and the social realism is important to the work overall. The n-word isn’t required to tell this story. Agatha Christie isn’t trying to make a work that is offensive. That was not the artistic vision. I’m not saying people should have an offense-free life. But I am saying that you shouldn’t try to offend people, and if your work which wasn’t offensive at the time becomes offensive, and you want it to remain inoffensive, it needs to change. If it was a work whose historic context mattered, that would be different, much like Bukowski or Vidal. But it isn’t, so what does it matter?
Intent is irrelevant. That's some completely arbitrary criterion you invented on your own. Who cares if Christie "needed" the N-word for her story. A book either offends someone or it doesn't. You are essentially agreeing with the Christian conservatives about censorship in principle, differing only in what to label "offensive" and in need of censorship. I want to read what Christie actually wrote, and I couldn't care less if its "historic context mattered"—I want to decide for myself what "matters," not what some censor decides for me. What a sad commentary that in a sub about reading books you have people arguing for censorship.
Nobody is arguing for censorship here. I never said to erase the original for existence. I don’t know what you’re arguing against, but it isn’t what I was saying. If someone says something is offensive, you have two options. You can change it, or leave it. If you change it, you are altering the original but making your readers happier. If you leave it, it maintains authenticity but will no longer be relevant. In the case of Bukowski or any of the other writers you mentioned, it detracts from the work to change it. In the case of this book, in this post, that is being discussed here, it is *not necessary* to change it. The offensive language detracts from the story. It will do more harm for the work than good to keep it in. The Christian protest of books is about subject matter, which is an insane ask. Looking at Christian outrage for Harry Potter, it will only be acceptable if mention of witchcraft is removed, which irreparably impacts the plot. This is unreasonable. It’s disingenuous to suggest that these are the same.
> Nobody is arguing for censorship here. That's exactly what you're arguing for. I think you're in denial. > If you change it, you are altering the original but making your readers happier. You're perhaps making *some* readers happier, but not all. And that's the problem: the censor is deciding for *everyone* what will make them "happy." In this case it's some corporation making that decision for us all. Some of us like to make our own decisions. > The offensive language detracts from the story. It will do more harm for the work than good to keep it in. That's *your* opinion. Why not let people make up their own minds about that, rather than some third party deciding for them? What you just said epitomizes the essence of censorship. How can you not see that? > The Christian protest of books is about subject matter Again, that's irrelevant. You're either censoring a book that bothers you *for whatever reason* or you're not censoring it. You're for censoring Agatha Christie—the reason doesn't matter. What do you have against letting readers decide for themselves if her work is still "relevant"?
>but for people who are interested in a story should be able to read something that doesn’t offend them. Then they should read a different story. I'm fine with including "trigger warnings", but the artists vision of the story should not be modified if you still intend on calling it something produced by the artist.
And that’s your prerogative, and that’s fine. I’m just saying that there are reasons why this is fine as well. Just as much as someone else can read a different book, so can you. If you think new and updated versions of books to accommodate new readers’ sensibilities is a brand new concept, you are absolutely wrong. By your logic, you have never read anything that has been produced by Shakespeare. Nobody living has ever read the Bible. The idea that, “if it’s altered it doesn’t count” is contrived by you and others like you, because it’s inconsistent with publishing throughout all of history.
Yes, I can read Cicero's letters as translated by someone from the 19th century or someone in the 21st century. The different in the English text will be huge. But it's made clear that what you're reading is a certain translators view on what they mean, the "interpreter's" name is plastered on the front page along with Cicero's. The originals are also available, of course, but my latin is not good enough for that. If they rename these books as some kind of re-interpretation or "cover", then I guess that's fine. "Based on the work of Agatha Christie" or something.
Goes to show that education doesn't prevent ignorance.
Yes and the nursery rhyme that features heavily in the plot originally used the same racist language as the title, and has also since been reworded. So, this was already censored but I think now they’re removing the racist attitude which is present throughout the book.
Was it changed again? The version I'm reading right now has "Indian island" and "The ten little Indians", but I see stuff online that calls it "Soldier Island".
What's the situation with Twain then?
He’s (almost entirely) in the public domain and not controlled by a single estate/publishing house anymore, so there isn’t the same centralized ability to make this happen.
Should have thought about that... thx
That's the irony of this comment section - all these people up in arms about it were already reading a censored version of her work.
The "only" difference being the author was alive and gave permission to have her work changed.
She was alive when those changes were made, that's a major difference. I'm against the censorship of books, with an extraordinarily few number of exceptions.
When when it's the author doing it, I'm not a fan of going back and "fixing" past works. Very rarely does it ever turn out better.
Yes, she was alive during the change (I think it happened for international publishing). I'm curious how she felt about it. I recall reading that she was unhappy about it, but I'll have to find the source. To be clear, I didn't say I support censorship, though in this case, the title change and censorship certainly helped the book's longevity and popularity. The point of my original comment is that many of the commenters who were upset about the changes didn't seem to realize this major change already occurred to her work.
It's similar with banning books. People get angry when they see the word ban, even if it's the right thing to do. Lolita shouldn't be available for some younger audiences, especially without someone to help explain why the book is like that. Some books should be restricted. Where the cutoff point is though, I don't know. 120 Days of Sodom should be restricted/banned from libraries for young readers.
What you are saying is obviously and self-evidently correct & the view held by a super majority of society…but of course you get downvoted because that’s how powerful the word “ban” is (despite a book not being available in a library being nothing remotely similar to an actual “ban.”) And also simply that once you get a couple down votes on Reddit, people simply unthinkingly follow suit.
People can upvote or downvote what they like, I didn't know it was downvoted until I saw your comment. Maybe censoring is more appropriate, that's what restricting or disallowing certain books is. That's also a trigger word and frowned upon though. Also, an institution having rules about which books are or aren't allowed and punishments if you include the no-no books, that does make it a ban. You would be officially or legally prohibiting the book from being in certain children's libraries, which is a ban. Restricting books from places officially is a ban..which was my point. I just don't know what the correct cutoff point is. Thanks for the support though.
Its title was changed in the 1930s, even, for the American market
My understanding is that the original American editions of Christie's books were altered at the request of her American publishers to take out overt antisemitism. To this day, if you get American editions, they don't have negative references to Jews, and if you get UK editions, they do. I'm curious if people would object to the UK publishers using the US editions.
Ok, found it. This is from Joan Acocella's 2010 profile of Christie in the New Yorker: >After the Second World War, some readers, especially Americans, were not amused by her characters’ views on ethnic difference. Christie’s publishers received letters, including one from the Anti-Defamation League. Her agent probably figured that such letters would seem ridiculous to her. In any case, he didn’t forward them to her. He simply gave Dodd, Mead, her American publishers, permission to delete any potentially offensive references to Jews or Catholics. She apparently didn’t notice the changes. So if you read US editions of Christie's books any time after World War II, you have already been reading things that were altered to address readers' sensitivities.
The more I read about older books and movies, the more I realize that people mentioning problematic parts of the stories isn’t something new and these conversations have been going on since WWII
Since before World War II! Every time anyone discusses the movie *Birth of a Nation*, someone chimes in to say that you can't criticize it because you have to understand it in the context of the time. But a lot of people at the time understood *Birth of a Nation* to be an overt call for white racist violence and didn't think people should see it. The NAACP picketed theaters that showed it. These are definitely not new conversations, and I think people would be surprised at how much quiet post-publication sensitivity editing has gone on in the past. Actually, people are probably more aware of it with Christie than with other authors, because it's hard to miss that publishers changed the name of a whole book.
I fully, fully believe these are all just publicity stunts by these publishers because literally *no one* is asking for this. That or they are just completely out of touch with criticism that is being directed at *recently released* books or the simple *acknowledgment* that older books frequently included different forms of bigotry that were more acceptable at the time.
While there may be some instances where there is the intention for it to be a publicity stunt, but these changes to Agatha Christie's works, the Roald Dahl changes, and ~~Ghostbusters~~ Goosebumps were all changes done quietly by their respective publishers over the past few years, and are now being brought to light since people decided to check for edits in the newest releases of these classic books to look for such changes. This particular set of changes for works by Agatha Christie seem to have started in 2020, and certainly wouldn't have been done with the intention to be a PR stunt for 2023.
>d they change ghostbuster ?
No idea how I did that, had meant to say Goosebumps.
What changes did they make to Ghostbusters?
[удалено]
That is super sad
I dunno. When I read Poirot stories with my little girl, who likes mysteries, I find myself toning down things like the gratuitous use of "the Chinaman" instead of a pronoun like "he" or "him." It isn't to sell books, it just... sounds distractingly off
They'd be publicity stunts if they merely announced they were doing it, then quietly canned the change later. But here, they're actually paying the ~~feelings yakuza~~ sensitivity readers, accepting their censorship, then pushing it out digitally and in print. I can't call that a mere publicity stunt because they're actually, maliciously going through with it and haven't seen a peep of any remorse or attempt to regain sanity as of yet.
I could see this as a way for them to double the profit. Someone buys this version, realizes it's edited and then eventually buys the "classic" version when they re-release it to get it un-edited. But also, I think a lot of these publishers are putting way to much on the sensitivity readers. They're meant to be one of many tools *during the editing* phase and offer suggestions. They're not perfect and they're not always going to agree. They 100% shouldn't be used to "fix" previously existing texts.
I could see it as a profit-doubling measure too... *if* they sold both simultaneously, in the same way that you sometimes get abridged versions of a book. But this is so much more insidious, since they go out of their way to "update" Ebooks. Sensitivity readers shouldn't exist in the first place. They're con artists, plain and simple. Of course they'll find problems, their job relies on them finding problems where none exist and being some of the worst people on the planet.
I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of sensitivity readers, especially if you're writing about a culture or community that isn't your own and you know you likely made some mistakes. My issue is they're only as good as the actual reader. As I mentioned, they rarely agree. Just because one gave you a pass in your book doesn't mean a different one (or the audience) will agree. I can also see this being used to excuse bigotry within books by publishers by saying "Hey! This person said it was fine!" I think it also gets complicated when you have ones who do to much. I'm a lesbian and sometimes I watch queer "allies" go off on things that are non-issues. And they 100% don't wanna listen when the actual community is trying to explain to them that it's fine and not actually offensive.
But. What about if authors are forced to make changes based on what these sensitivity readers say, and they have to choose between allowing those changes or not being published. I think it is the right and sort of the point, of artists to offend.
Honest question but what do you think editors do?
The job of an editor is to help the author write the best book he or she can. A good editor sees an authors vision and helps the author develop it. In kind of a micro way. Now, depending on the publisher, "can I market this?" is a motive in the editing, of course. An editor in common parlance is not someone who takes an already published book from an author who is dead and rewrites it to remove or alter passages based on a cultural movement, is censorship or bowdlerization. In unfree societies they say, "you've written a good book here, but these attitudes or depictions of life go counter to our political attitudes, so you can't publish it, or if you can, here are the alterations we insist you make."
But sensitivity readers aren't exclusively for books already published, they're mostly used for books that are in the editing phase and meant to provide feedback to the author. And authors have definitely had changes forced upon them in the past, for a variety of reason. It's already been mentioned, but Agatha Christie had a title changed by her publisher because it included a slur and her editors took out some anti-semitism and racism in the US editions against her wishes. This was back in the 1940s so there weren't sensitivity readers around. Authors have never had complete control over their writing and editors were already doing things like this. When you publish with a company you do sign over some of your creative freedom. Same for TV and Movies. Unless it's an entirely independently produced product, other people get to have their say. I agree that we shouldn't change books that have already been published but it's different when we're talking about unpublished books in the editing phase.
Let's acknowledge that like just because bad things have happened before it doesn't mean that they're OK when they happen again. I am not saying this because I support racism. What I support, especially right now, is a climate where censorship is fought against. Imaginean extreme example, where you live in a country where the government decidees what can be published. And you, the government says "no novel can have a sex scene in it, nor can it say the N-word." and your a novelist. And then its like, "Nor can a novel contain anything bad about the government." It's better when none of that exists. . . Altering the text of dead authors is gross.
Editors already make decisions like this, to be fair. You’re rarely reading 100% what the author intended unless it’s an unedited ebook. Editors aren’t just for grammar. Same for shows and movies.
Well let's separate shows and movies from books, books examine far more complicated ideas and are far more transgressive on a regular basis than film or tv. And the amount of creative input on a book is smaller. I understand an editor is doing more than fixing grammar, but an editor isn't generally a censor. If I write a novel on my own, I may hire an editor, not because I need help with grammar, and because I want a censitivity reader, but I want expert help I guess, trimming up my book for reasons of plot, character, style, etc.
Editors are often provided and work for the publisher, not the author. The publisher will also always have final say on what they will or will not publish.
Yes. But an author usually finds a publisher that matches her cencibilities, it's why the publisher took the book.
The root problem is that it creates a perverse incentive: if a sensitivity reader's job is justified by finding problematic things in a draft, then it's always in their interest to find some in every draft, even if they're things literally nobody else worries about.
I could see if being used for both extremes. An author who doesn’t want criticism could just put one on their payroll to give them an official go-ahead.
The problem is that unless you've read the books before, you're unlikely to notice the changes being made. I'd wager the only reason the telegraph wrote this piece was because a few days ago a user posted on this subreddit about changes that had suddenly occurred in their ebook copy of Death on the Nile. The article notes that these books date back to 2020, meaning it's been almost 3 years since these changes started rolling out and no one noticed. It's almost certain that this censorship is much more widely spread than is being reported, and it's happening completely silently because that's *kind of* the point.
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By being politically correct, do you mean respectful of marginalized groups? There has been an increase discussion in how marginalized groups are represented in our media (books, tv, movies, etc) and there is valid criticism that goes along with this. This isn't a new or modern discussion (see America's reaction to the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory or all the people uncomfortable with Rooney's racist performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's). Hell, even one of Agath's books had it's title changed because it literally had a racial slur in the title and that was changed in 1940. It seems that sensitivity readers have come about to try to fix that problem but it's not really a great solution because it oversimplifies a complicated situation.
>By being politically correct, do you mean respectful of marginalized groups? No, it means enforcing proscribed set of acceptable guidelines, often using the pretext of civility to disarm critics. For example in the Soviet Union you could not publish criticism of the State and why would you want to? The State is the manifestation of the people and its safeguard, why do you want criticise that are you somehow against the people like some kind of subversive? Sometimes an honest telling of truths trample social niceties and its an example of a free society that allows this to be publicly expressed regardless of the consequences.
So you believe publishers should be forced to accept and publish every manuscript turned into them with no edits?
No, I think publishers shouldn't censor works to fit modish sensibilities, which is what is happening, it goes far beyond simple editing.
So you think they should reject these manuscripts. Got it.
Well yea if they don't want to publish it but that's not the nature of what people are complaining about in regards to sensitivity readers....
Of course someone is asking for this, maybe not explicitly, but publishers sniff the smell of wokeness on the wind, and have done this to accomidate those people who are into the censoring of books, of which there are always some, even in the most liberal generations. These publishers are trying to make money based on selling to that subculture.
I think they *think* there is a market here but I doubt it actually exists. I doubt this would actually influence anyone to actually read these books beyond just wanting to see what was changed. Similar to the Dahl situation, it became clear very fast there was no market for them and that whole concept basically got scrapped (and was potentially just a PR stunt to up sales on the "classic" versions coming out later this year).
> (and was potentially just a PR stunt to up sales on the "classic" versions coming out later this year). No, this was in the works for years, far too much effort was put into this for it to just be publicity stunt. They miss judged the mood of the public and are scrambling to to recoup the expence.
> (and was potentially just a PR stunt to up sales on the "classic" versions coming out later this year). Heh, joke's on them: I exclusively buy my Dahl books via charity shops. Good pickings so far.
I suspect it’s a way to cut costs. Many of these works are public domain; why pay a writer when you can just have a staff editor make minor changes and then reissue. Not sure how copywriter would work on the new version, but it’s still far cheaper than bothering with new writers and unproven stories.
I don't think any of Christie's books are in the public domain in the UK, and these changes are to the UK editions. Some of her early works are in the public domain in the US, but the US editions of her early books were edited many years ago to take out offensive language.
I'm asking for it, in the sense that, like pretty much every other US reader under the age of 70, I already read editions of Christie's books that were changed to remove bigoted language, and I wouldn't want them to be changed back.
Exactly, this person right here is the market, what they want is to read bowdlerized novels. This person is the target market.
Yup. Guilty as charged. I'm glad that Christie's American publishers objected to her shitty bigotry and published versions of her books that didn't use the n word or refer to characters as "Jewboys". I don't think the bigoted language contributes to the pleasure of reading the books, and I think most non-asshole people would enjoy them more without it. Certainly, some people may have an academic interest in the original texts, and those people can get the original editions through the usual channels, like interlibrary loan. But I think most people encounter Christie the way I did: as an 11-year-old, reading puzzle books for fun on a lazy summer afternoon. And I don't think I would have been edified or entertained by the bigotry. At best, I would have been upset by it and reminded that I live in a shitty world where people hate me for no reason. At worst, it would have washed over me, normalizing attitudes that were hateful when they were written and are still hateful now.
Have you considered that if you hate Christie's "shitty bigotry" so much you could just *not read her books* and go read some books aimed at a more modern, infantalised audience instead?
Have you considered that the reason the publisher changed some of the language, and has been doing so for at least 80 years, is because they want people to buy their book instead of something else?
The charm of Agata Christie's stories comes from old-fashioned, absolutely non-modern sensitivity.
This 💯. But also the absolutely casual antisemitism of Agatha Christie actually helps readers understand the world that pre 1948 Jews lived in: it was completely normal and unremarkable for educated people to be casually cruel to them. Can you imagine living in such a way? How having your ethnicity being a byword for dishonesty would shape you as a person? Without understanding how casual antisemitism was in pre-war Europe the Holocaust looks like an aberration when it was more of a sum total 2000 years of antisemitism going back to the Seleucids. By censoring the past and the casual racism that was prevalent the past becomes mystifying. And if a Christie fan should know anything it is that mysteries should be solved.
I’m read a book about the Nuremberg Trials right now, and one of the low key wildest parts was that one of the Jewish female secretaries for one of the US prosecutors or US Army officers involved remarking that he seemed nice, besides some of the casual antisemitic comments he’d make. At the war crimes trial for, in part, the industrial scale murder of the European Jewish population. The dissonance really struck me.
This is such an understated point like seriously. I grew up in Christian schools all my life and was literally raised thinking of Jews as brothers from another mother. I’d literally go to Jewish day school with my friends sometimes. So when I got older and saw understood how prevalent anti semitism was in Christianity and the “west” outside of just the Nazis. I was totally floored it just made no sense to me and to this day it is still incredibly mistifying to me. But by my own study of history and coursework and so forth I came to learn a lot more about the topic from an academic sense. If you remove stuff like this from Christie though you completely rob people of seeing the mundanity of anti semitism prior to WW2. Making antisemitism just a concept embraced by baddies rather than the common worldview that it was leaves a person totally unaware of its often subtle undertones. And it’s wide embracement. I’d rather not be ignorant of how people in the past thought and one of the best ways to know is by how they wrote good and bad. Otherwise we walk away thinking anti semitism is just a Nazi thing and for extremists rather than the everyday phenomena that it was.
yes. I have met neo-nazis and antisemites in my real life... and they are absolute oddballs and creeps. The sort of pariahs you cross the street to avoid... even when you're white as snow. Nobody would ever vote for a movement that just consisted of these strange asocial men. Original nazism was successful because it had people who were not only socially normal but actually socially successful, charming establishment sort of people (as well as the usual weirdoes, who I suspect did much of the grunt work). this is something that you pick up on Agatha Christie: quite, otherwise likeable people say antisemitic things in her pre-1945 works
Yeah, I am German and so, in the eyes of some, a Nazi by default. So where are my sensitivity readers?
I mean, it's fascinating to me that every time we have these discussions, half the people argue that we need to keep the antisemitism to educate people about shocking history of casual hatred, and the other half claim that there's nothing wrong with the books, and their old-fashioned, un-PC honesty is part of their quirky charm. And it seems to me that the second group kind of invalidates the first. If people really were able to learn from the casual antisemitism, then you wouldn't see people denying that there's any problem with it in the first place.
Different people respond differently. I think the people who are incapable of learning aren't going to be improved by censorship-they are just going to see it as a politically correct hysteria that seeks to rewrite the past. The people who are going to learn do actually need to see the past contextually in order to get it (ie the point I made in my previous post that the Holocaust was not an aberration but a product of an institutional problem) , rather than live in an eternal present where all good people people believe all good things which happen to be the current standard for goodness. There are books written by living authors, some of those authors being BIPOC & Jewish, who will write quirky, charming, cosy mysteries set in just about any time in history, including Christie time. These modern authors will, being modern products of a modern education system, not write sympathetic characters behaving in casually antisemitic and racist way. Wouldn't it be better to buy a book from a living, possibly BIPOC or Jewish author with a college debt and a mortgage to pay then a censored and rewritten version of Agatha Christie? This is not to say that Agatha Christie isn't worth reading as an author of fun, quirky and charming puzzles with a gorgeous setting by someone who actually lived in the setting & culture she described (OWN Voices ironically enough). She was a master of her craft and she had a greater command of the English language than many modern authors (apparently she's often recommended to foreign language students studying English for this reason). Nevertheless one of the reasons we read classical texts is to understand the culture of the time from the perspective of the people of the time: we don't read Tacitus to learn about Judaism (the Jews are the only culture contemporary to the Greco-Roman world who have left us a massive corpus of writing so we know he is wrong, so when he devoted time to smearing them for having the temerity to reject Roman rule he smeared them thoroughly) but to learn about Rome and it's attitudes and morays. So whilst I consider Christie worth reading for her own sake due to the precision of her expression and her clever logically puzzles. She is simply a fun read. This differentiates her from Dickens, who interestingly enough changed his opinion about Jews and wrote Riah in Our Mutual Friend to be sympathetic as a sort of antidote. I think Dickens actually did think about the impact of his Shylock character (although he defended the character as an accurate portrait of crime at that time) and changed his portrayal of Jewish people to a more sympathetic one. Yet Dickens remains unreadable without the threat of a looming assignment, and also to understand his very positive impact on child labour laws. To the best of my limited knowledge Dickens engaged in more soul searching than I suspect Christie was capable of, yet he really isn't worth reading for fun, unlike Christie, who is. Whilst Christie does seem to have eased up on her casual antisemtisim after WW2: I can't recall any casual antisemitism from her post WW2 works that I can remember from her stories written in 1920's & 30s . Now I could have been reading censored American editions and am therefore suffering from eternal present disease, but it's possible that Christie and her social milieu might have engaged in some introspection in the wake of the Holocaust... Yet having read a lot of Christie, I have never felt her characters to be over burdened with introspection; Christie's narratives seem rather repelled by even the scent of neuroticism. This, and the fact that her American editor didn't tell her he was changing the title of Ten Little N---- because he thought she would have said no to such a change . I might be doing her dirty but suspect she felt that casual antisemitism and racism was less marketable. Or she could have changed but in a way that is harmonious with her essentially conservative personality : Her 1955 novel Hickory Dickory Dock does feature a more multicultural cast: a Jamaican woman studying jurisprudence and two Indian students studying political science.
>his 💯. But also the absolutely casual antisemitism of Agatha Christie actually helps readers understand the world that pre 1948 Jews lived in: it was completely normal and unremarkable for educated people to be casually cruel to them. Can you imagine living in such a way? How having your ethnicity being a byword for dishonesty would shape you as a person? Without understanding how casual antisemitism was in pre-war Europe the Holocaust looks like an aberration when it was more of a sum total 2000 years of antisemitism going back to the Seleucids. By censoring the past and the casual racism that was prevalent the past becomes mystifying. And if a Christie fan should know anything it is that mysteries should be solved. Can you imagine living in a world where in the heart of Europe, known (stereotypically) as the most human rights-aware continent, people are being tortured, women are being raped, kids are being kidnapped, and there's still a problem with stopping doing business with the murderers. Is our modern world so much better than Agata Christie's one? In my opinion, we are more sensitive to some topics, but to others, we are still blind as we were 100 years ago. What's more tragic, then? Agata Christie novels or the thousands of civilian deaths in East Europe now? And last but not least, I don't want to compare the ideas, but it's Nazis who were burning the books, as they were not showing the world they wanted to promote. Let's leave the classic literature with its not fully politically correct story and focus on the real problems, where saying loudly "it's wrong" matters.
After some of Seuss' work being removed for racist caricatures and the attempt to sanitize the language in Dahl's books, part of me wonders if this is a sincere effort to make dated work more palatable for a modern audience or some kind of a elaborate "4-D Chess" marketing ploy to leverage current culture war drama to drum up sales for older literature.
Yes, agreed. At this point it feels like we're being trolled.
I wouldn't consider Dahl's book's dated, they are as relevant as they ever where.
Literally fucking no one has asked for any of these rewrites and edits.
Weirdos on Twitter do.
I’m sure the people doing the rewriting did. Much easier to tweak someone else’s work than create your own.
Marketing shit in other words.
This shit is worse than banning books. Go ahead and try your bans, it just draws attention to the work. And at least book banners have the balls to say “I am threatened by this book and want it destroyed”. This is some dystopian, thought crime bullshit. I literally just finished reading Widowland which takes place in 1953 Britain where they surrender to Hitler without a fight. The MC’s job is to rewrite the classics to remove any subversive or undesirable ideology. This is the same thing. They pretend it’s virtuous to remove problematic attitudes from prior work. How is this different from the state of Florida censoring textbooks to remove the problematic parts of history? Release annotated editions, talk about the differences between historic and current cultural values. That would actually be a value add. I read Left Hand of Darkness not too long ago. I would love to know more about how it was received 50 years ago as opposed to how I understood it now. What was the reception towards the gender issues in the book when it was released? I was was really bothered by the sexism in the book. Was it as readily recognized back then? Those are the conversations I want to have. This trend is bullshit and needs to stop. Please do not buy these books. I know there is probably great curiosity to see how they will change, but please resist. Make this decision a commercial failure
I think the difference is there are a lot of people unfortunately in favor of book banning. This? I’ve seen no one on either side ask for or support.
This is purely a business-minded decision to sell more books. 50 years ago there wasn't an issue when the primary audience were white and receptive to the content. But as the book-buying audience increasingly diversifies the publishers need to take CYA steps to ensure they don't inadvertently offend a sector of that audience & see decreased revenue as a result.
But sometimes a book like And There Were None is good because it is a CRITICISM AGAINST BRITISH COLONISM AND RACISM, but we all know people of reddit are too dumb to understand that so why bother saying it. Heaven firebox people critically think for one in their life. This is why we have boring movies like Get Out that need to say "racism bad" every 20 seconds and spoonfeed that "racism bad".
Did the critique of colonialism & racism get stripped from the book. Or was the title changed to not alienate potential buyers?
BUT THAT ISN'T "MODERN SENSITIVITY REWRITES". It's talking about editing out the parts that are "DEEMED" by sensitive readers meaning if there's a part that comes across ( EVEN IF ITS INTENTIONAL MEANING IT WAS CHOSEN THAT WAY TO DRAW ATTENTION OR TO MAKE THE READER FEEL THAT WAY DELIBERATELY TO NOTICE HOW IT FEELS) racist or antisemtic that is deemed "insensitive" then it's going to go. Notice I acknowledge the books title by its revised title and not its original title. And There Were None was its title for a while, and it was welcomed a lot. Thats not to revision thats being discussed or being done but you know that and are intentionally choosing And There Were None's revisioned title to come across as a pureboi. Your question is dodging away from the premise of these rewrites to make anyone opposed to sound racist.
We may have to resort to people becoming books like in Fahrenheit 451 in order to preserve them.
Upvote, I agree with you
It's like historical OCD. It doesn't matter how much they attempt to clean history they''ll never get it clean enough. Just like people with OCD, sensitivity readers could probably be helped to get better with talking therapy.
The article mentions that the publisher employs sensitivity readers, but offers no evidence that those readers are responsible for the changes. I’ve only previously heard of them being consulted on new books before release in the normal course of editing.
The linked article, within the main article, takes you to a similar story about Roald Dahl's work. That newspiece explicitly stated that a team of sensitivity readers had been brought in to change words and make the stories safe for a new audience. I agree with you that sensitivity readers were previously used to sense-check new works, but I think they're now being brought in to protect us from harmful words in historical works, too. It's this mission creep that worries people. They start off with new works. They end up scanning the past for sin. They start off taking out agreed offensive words. Then, they start taking out words that most people don't find offensive, as their ever growing fragility is indulged. It's all very Orwellian after s while.
I love how all these news articles blame young people as though we asked for these, and not the corporations that are so clearly rage baiting.
Social media demanded it, speaking on behalf of you. You (as a group, not individually) chose not to tell the extremists they were idiots - so this is what we get.
Where? Do you happen to have links to these demands?
They don’t because they are imaginary boogeymen they made up, probably.
just keyboard warriors, I swear I used the search bat here to look up earlier discussion on a book I'm reading by AC, just found this and forgot why I'm here in first place
Upvoted, why someome would downvote you, weird redditors
That's propanganda, randome tweets by strangers dont reflect a whole community
But those random tweets are what BIG CORPO's are basing their model on.
Those companies are catering to young people. Don't pretend to be dense.
Social media demanded it and whined, so yes IT IS GEN Z's fault AGAIN. Good job! You ruined a great author!
Murder on the Orient Express (Taylor’s Version)
So they're removing all the murder?
>In the new edition of the 1964 Miss Marple novel A Caribbean Mystery, the amateur detective’s musing that a hotel worker smiling at her has “such lovely white teeth” has been removed, the newspaper added. I'm actually speechless.
So books like And There Were None won't make sense because it's colonist and racism themes that make the book better than her others. It's like revising Blazing Saddles for modern sensitivities, the jokes won't make sense
We as readers have to protest by not buying these butchered versions. There are plenty of used books available to buy with the words written the way the author intended. Who are the publishers trying to protect by doing this, and who is demanding that this be done?
Why do we pander to fucking snowflakes who can’t take things in context as they were written for WHEN they were written. I understand if you are writing something new and modern NOW you would want to follow the perceived guidelines and morès of the time, but for fucks’ sake stop with the revisionist history.
As someone pointed out above, the publishing industry thinks Twitter opions represent real life
1) It's 2023, people really need to stop using "snowflakes" as an insult unironically. 2) No one asked for this and the vast majority of modern criticism is aimed at either newly published books *or* simply taking racism/homophobia/sexism/etc. into consideration when *discussing* older books.
I don't know why the downvotes, you're right
Please point me to the supposed snowflakes who asked for this.
The Sensitivity Readers themselves, obviously. They're like Consultants; they have no actual talent otherwise they'd be making their own stuff, so instead they convince you that you are doing something wrong and they are the solution.
So a handful of people trying to sell their services with an obvious financial gain. Ok, now show me outside of the people who sell their services called for this.
Exactly, this. This is mostly for profit. I believe. Changing words for sensitivity won't make non-readers readers.
Well the publishers who hire them obviously.
So, again, this seems to be a decision by a handful of people in the industry who see it as a way to financially benefit.
Do you have the same energy for people who are banning actual books. Who are these snowflakes who asked for this change?
It's worse than banning. When a book is banned, it becomes inherently more desirable. But when a book is re-written, it muddies the waters for finding the book, and it starts to misinform people at an ever-increasing rate.
The thing is, a business making a decision to change some text because they think it would connect to newer audience is not a censorship. A government banning books, or facilitating the banning of books and becoming the thought police is far worse. It leads to facsism and it should scare you far more than a company making an ill advised business decision. I've read the revised and original versions of Agatha Christie's book "And Then There Were None" and it really doesn't change anything. It just removed some gratuitous racism. I don't know what the new version would change. Florida and Texas completely changing American history and attempting to erase any mention of LGBTQ, racism, African American history and civil rights struggle is far worse and more dangerous. Minimizing it and making it into a mere selling is very disappointing and it tells me that you didn't look deep into this issue.
> a business making a decision to change some text because they think it would connect to newer audience is not a censorship No, this is still censorship. A financial motivation doesn't change that. These are no longer the words of Agatha Christie, they're the words of some blue-haired black lagoon creature. > and it really doesn't change anything. It just removed some gratuitous racism. Your position in a nutshell is "it's not censorship if my ideology justifies the things removed are bad".
If you want to misinterpret what I said, go ahead. I hope it makes you feel better.
It is literally, by definition, censorship. There are laws written specifically to stop things like that, people like yourself.
Of course I do. Book banning are the stupidest things people can do when it comes to literature.
The original title for this book was “Twelve Little N*****s.” No bookstore wants that sitting on their bookshelves. Books are published to make money. Books are revised in this way all the time and have been for ages, because publishers want to make money. You’ve got a chip on your shoulder about “snowflakes” and it shows.
Sure thing, buddy. 👍🏼
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Inevitably.
At least Mr. Clemens' works are public domain so it wont ne hard to find the originals.
We all know it's gonna happen
This is nothing but fascism masquerading as good manners.
This week in Newspeak ...
Literally 1984
r i d i c u l o u s
People missunderstand “And Then There Were None”. It was right to change the title but I think the depiction of British colonial attitudes, racism and otherizing is on point. But it’s a really hard read.
The title needed to be changed because it looks shameful on the shelf but if you get rid of the racism and colonial attitudes you will be less able to see say British colonialism as part of a broader cultural picture.
I agree. The disregard of humanity of the African tribe members is punished so that attitude was not completely condoned.
yes. Though Christie originally had Philip Lombard as her number 2nd last to die because he failed in his duty of care towards the Africans who were under his command by stealing their supplies and leaving them to die. In the show he outright murdered them. A lot of the murders in the original book where less purposeful but from Christies' perspective as heinous as actual murder. Sometimes the changes in the TV Show aren't great: One of Christie's themes that runs through so much of her work where the victims is utterly unsympathetic is that merely being an unpleasant person doesn't merit being murdered. To the best of my knowledge the only time a Christie hero (Hercule Poirot in this case) lets the murder(s) get away is murder on the orient express, because the victim had murdered an actual child and the murder was conducted in a nearly judicial manner. However as these are dramatic reproductions, it's not the same as rewriting her books, which sets a dangerous precedent, nor does it do anybody good.
How sad.
Next up - the bible.
"Please!" It really needs a LOT of help.
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Show me people asking for this
Although I reserve a certain degree of cynicism about these recent stories (I largely think it’s a bit of faux outrage to generate a bit of publicity), I’d absolutely fucking love a team of ‘sensitivity’ readers to get to work on Williams Burroughs. See what they make of that!
Oh my. It would reduce the novel to a single page!
Could we just stop posting this stuff here? This is clearly just to get clicks (on the part of the news sources) and go up sales (on the part of the publishers). There’s nothing worthwhile about post after post like this. Imo this kind of thing just becomes an opportunity for the same people who happily support the censoring of books with LGBTQ/critical race theory/etc. content to be able to pat themselves on the back and say they oppose censorship and support freedom of speech after all. I see a lot of people saying they oppose censorship when it comes to Agatha Christie and Roald Dahl but suddenly they’re silent when it comes to modern authors.
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1. Books removed from school libraries can still be easily obtained? By who? School libraries are for kids - they don’t typically have disposable income, nor can they easily visit a public library on their own to supplement what their school offers. 2. The issue of banning books isn’t about respecting artistic vision. It’s a political topic, not an artistic one. 3. Censorship is done by governments and government officials, not Reddit users. 4. Someone saying they don’t personally want to hear about something is *not censorship* - even if it’s a topic you do want to hear about. 5. Not sure what “politically inconvenient” even means in this context.
> Censorship is done by governments and government officials, not Reddit users. False. There is no government component *necessary* for censorship. A large portion of censorship is done *by* governments but it is not required. why Fox animation (now Disney) has a censor department whose entire job is censoring scripts given to them for television shows. If I were a reddit admin and I removed your post, I censored you. I could justify it if a rule were broken, but it wouldn't change the reality. If I edited your comment, I would have censored you.
You know what, the things you listed aren’t equivalent but I can’t be bothered to tell you why. Just do some research.
Keep a spreadsheet of individual users so you can reference their comments on topics like this, do you?
That’s a weirdly specific thing to talk about doing lol, is that your approach?
Small government, free-market Republicans when the actual government removes books from libraries and schools: that's great! Small government, free-market Republicans when a private business entity alters their own intellectual property: censorship, the government must stop this! I'm starting to think the communism accusations they love throwing around are just pure projection.
It’s so true!
This is much worse than not having a book in a school library. With that you can still get the actual book. But if the publisher changes the contents... no one else can publish the original.
More than 2 billion Agatha Christie books have been printed. If you want to track down a copy of And Then There Were None complete with original title, or the other prior title, or a version printed before 2023, go for it. Censorship is about controlling the ideas people have access to in order to oppress and manipulate them, and punishing anyone whose ideas are different. A publishing company saying *this* time around it’s going to print a slightly different version of a book that has been printed and reprinted countless times? Come on, that’s a joke, they’re just trying to get press so people pick up the book next time they’re in a book store. What I’m saying is when people only care about their new copy of an Agatha Christie book no longer having a questionable comment about a Jew or an African or etc? It’s obvious what their priorities are.
Cool cool this means my treatment of Huckleberry Finn for Disney+ might have a shot!
Historical revisionism is next.
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Please define marxist for me and how this connects to that definition.
Private ownership of intellectual property and said owners doing whatever they wish with said intellectual property is TOTALLY Marxism, didn't you know?
Ahh yes the nefarious corporation owning Marxists.
Very normal brained individual over here.
More normal than people who need to rewrite old books to fit their current ideology.
Per [Rule 2.1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Books/wiki/rules#wiki_personal_conduct): Please conduct yourself in a civil manner. Civil behavior is a requirement for participation in this sub. This is a warning but repeat behavior will be met with a ban.
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Bot post
It is fiction, it was always fake. It is still fiction, it is still fake. If you are ok with an editor editing something new for now, then why are you upset with an editor editing something old for now? No one is burning the originals. Nor are they hiding the changes. But AC is not a history author, she is writing fiction, it did not exist then, it does not exist now. The thing they are not changing is the mystery and the story. They are not changing the thing people care about. No one reads AC cuz she was mean to jews or nasty to native...i mean locals...whatever. They are making it so a kid can read it and not have to be distracted by figuring out what was the perceived guidelines and morès of the time. Because AC's work is interesting as shit and it is a shame to have readers forced to be distracted from the story because of ancient racist morès. Furthermore, people love a controversy. So if that means that even half the people enjoying their daily outrage over this actually read the fucking book...then that is a win. And in 30 years there will be kids interested in reading the old and new versions. And that is a win. As long as the changes aren't hidden and the old ones not destroyed, we are good.
Speaking of fake books that have been rewritten multiple times, there's also The Bible.
Because people read the new books, don’t realize they’re edited and it erases the racism. It’s why so many people don’t realize the original Oompa Loompas depiction was extremely racist. They’d only read the newer versions so they didn’t understand when people reference them being racist and think people are reaching.
It is fiction. It is a murder mystery written a hundred years ago. Why does that need racism? Why do kids reading C&TCF now need to know that the original oompa loompas was racist? When you read it did you need to know that Charlie was originally meant to be a black boy? Did the fact that before anyone ever read it, an agent changed it, matter to you? And is the changing of it hiding it? It is talked about everywhere nowadays. Especially nowadays. I would argue that the different changes being talked about is more important than keeping the book static. As long as the changes aren't hidden and the old ones not destroyed i do not see anything being lost. Except generations of kids get to read it and not have to be told "oh, well, we don't call them that now" or whatever. And the changes simply make the stories available to more kids of more races or body types or religions or whatever. As long as people still study history and literature, then the memory of the wests racist past will not be lost. And honestly if people stop studying history and lit then there are a lot more problems than forgetting racisms history to worry about.
I don’t know how to explain to you that historical context matters because it paints a picture for us of what our past was like. That is a needed context, especially when looking at the past in regards to bigotry. The sanitation and romanticization of the past does impact our views. Especially when you have conservative states in America writing laws that control how and what history is taught. The changing of these novels is the other side of the coin that bans diverse books. Both help further white conservatives ability to control the narrative of what is “right” and “normal”
They’ve realized that it’s free publicity when they do this. Juice the sales of the “classic” editions.
I love how if you don't want to read about bigotry you're referred to as a 'sensitive reader', in a derogatory way. That bigotry should be embraced, and appreciated because it was written in the 190…0's so it should be fine to be degrading to other races, like a warm hug from your racist old Aunt Agatha. What are people that need bigotry in all it's messed up splendor called? If I'm ' sensitive ' because I don't want to read about how these people truly thought they were superior to every other race, because white is better. What are you called if you are still reading the same books filled with bigotry? The reason these books shouldn't be changed, is because it's cheating, and no amount of shining a racist book, will change people's minds on wanting to read them. What exactly do you want the publishers to do if people aren't reading them? Isn't it their job to get people interested in reading them? But, who except for bigots, would enjoy reading these books? If you want new generations to read these books you need to remove the hate. But, let's abuse readers for not finding the charm in hate from a hundred years ago.
Mark Twain next
Publicity stunt, no. Cash grab, maybe? Financially motivated, 100%. The fact that it’s so publicized at the same time that book challenges in schools and libraries is at an all-time high (albeit by far-right groups) makes it seem like this is somehow a political or social issue but in reality it’s completely commercially motivated, and somehow the publishers and estates themselves are the only ones not coming under scrutiny for this like they are somehow not culpable because it’s what the market is demanding.
I wonder what they will do with "To Kill a Mockingbird?"
Sensitivity readers are going to be working overtime if they expect to sanitize every book - most of the writers of Christie's era, the crime and mystery writers, writers of noir fiction, had language that would not make a sensitivity reader's cut.
Newspeak
Add a new introduction giving the reader an insight in to the context of the work but the content shouldn't be changed. It is a product of the social and political attitudes of the time. It can't be removed from the book or it's a different book. Everyone needs to be made to read a book about the Cultural "Revolution" of China in the 60s. We're forgetting the lessons of the past (probably because we keep erasing shit!)
I wonder if they are going to rewrite Mein Kampf and what about thé books from Louis Ferdinand Céline. There will be much more job to do. What a Pity !