Roald Dahl sanitised.

[Wowbagger]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive

How long until they get to Chaucer and Pepys?

[Cudzoziemiec]

By chance, I happened to see a non-exhaustive list of books deemed unacceptable to be sold in a chain of charity bookshops. It included obvious things like Mein Kampf and David Irving, along with perhaps less obviously unacceptable (but obviously weird) authors like David Icke, but also certain titles by Dr Seuss. These ones in fact: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/books/dr-seuss-books.html

[Peter]

How is Thomas The Tank Engine done these days - changes?

[Paul H]

How long until they get to Chaucer and Pepys?

Probably about the same time they start being read by eight year olds.
There's nothing wrong with children's books being revised to reflect modern sensibilities, neither is it anything new.

[CrinklyLion]

Interesting thread about this over on Twitter https://twitter.com/TabitaSurge/status/1626879729461604353

As she says, a few tweets in

It has nothing to do with THE WOKE SCOLDS and the NEW PURITANS. It has everything to do with maintaining massive revenue streams

I'd guess Chaucer and Pepys are 'safe' so long as there isn't more money to be made from 'updated' versions of 'em.

[Paul H]

Interesting thread about this over on Twitter https://twitter.com/TabitaSurge/status/1626879729461604353

As she says, a few tweets in

It has nothing to do with THE WOKE SCOLDS and the NEW PURITANS. It has everything to do with maintaining massive revenue streams

She also says

leave texts alone and let them go out of print when the world moves on.

Which IMO would be more of a shame, they are good stories.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Uh huh.

Tabitha McIntosh
@TabitaSurge
·
12h
My personal opinion: leave texts alone and let them go out of print when the world moves on. But that doesn't make money.
l

Or if you want to be a woke scold, whatever that is, you can discuss why the world is no longer reading them. Or have fun guessing what the world won't be reading in 20 years' time.

But a similar point was made in the NYT thing about Seuss: the titles withdrawn sell in the low thousands or in several cases have been out of print for several years. No one's banning something like Green Eggs and Ham, which sells getting on for half a million copies a year (in the US).

[Hot Flatus]

Well if they can rewrite the Bible...

[T42]

What's the "acceptable" version of fucking Philistines?

[Nuncio]

'Making love to members of an ancient race from the south coast of Caanan'

[Captain Nemo]

Doubleplus ungood thoughtcrime.

In Orwell's 1984, those compiling the Newspeak dictionary reckoned that they would completed their task by about 2050.

Seem to recall recently reading that somebody had been offended by the use of the word "scalpel" since it carried connotations of the practice "scalping", as in the collection of enemies' scalps as battle trophies, and was instead using "doctor's knife".

[rogerzilla]

How is Thomas The Tank Engine done these days - changes?

They took the N-word out decades ago.  It was only used as a simile; there aren't any black people on the Isle of Sodor, it seems.

One of my favourite children's books, The Box Of Delights, has a few uncomfortable passages, but it's not popular enough to attract the bowdlerisers.

[citoyen]

Actually looking at the changes that have been made rather than giving a kneejerk response, I’m finding it hard to get worked up about any of them.

[citoyen]

How long until they get to Chaucer and Pepys?

Probably about the same time they start being read by eight year olds.
There's nothing wrong with children's books being revised to reflect modern sensibilities, neither is it anything new.

There are already versions of the Canterbury Tales for children. No idea how they treat the Miller’s Tale.

[citoyen]

How is Thomas The Tank Engine done these days - changes?

They took the N-word out decades ago.  It was only used as a simile; there aren't any black people on the Isle of Sodor, it seems.

Those wretched books have an awful lot more wrong with them than use of the N word.

[Peter]

How is Thomas The Tank Engine done these days - changes?

They took the N-word out decades ago.  It was only used as a simile; there aren't any black people on the Isle of Sodor, it seems.

Those wretched books have an awful lot more wrong with them than use of the N word.

I was actually thinking of thre Fat Controller!

[Tim Hall]

How is Thomas The Tank Engine done these days - changes?

They took the N-word out decades ago.  It was only used as a simile; there aren't any black people on the Isle of Sodor, it seems.

Those wretched books have an awful lot more wrong with them than use of the N word.

I was actually thinking of thre Fat Controller!

I think in later versions (possibly only TV adaptations) The Fat Controller is renamed Sir Topham Hat.

[Kim]

How is Thomas The Tank Engine done these days - changes?

They took the N-word out decades ago.  It was only used as a simile; there aren't any black people on the Isle of Sodor, it seems.

Those wretched books have an awful lot more wrong with them than use of the N word.

I was actually thinking of thre Fat Controller!

I think in later versions (possibly only TV adaptations) The Fat Controller is renamed Sir Topham Hat.

Presumably they've kept all the proper nightmare-fuel stuff like Henry being bricked up in the tunnel, and whoever it was that got made into a generator?

And from my limited experience of the Thomas universe, you're allowed to be as racist as you like, as long as it's to Diesel locomotives.

[spesh]

Well, leaving aside the anthropomorphising of locomotives, the Sodor books presented a throroughly unrealistic portrayal of rail transport.

No strikes or engineering works messing up the timetable, for a start.

And let's not get started on how Thomas's grumpy German cousin Gustav got memory holed. 

OK, that last bit might have contained a traces of LIE...

[citoyen]

Presumably they've kept all the proper nightmare-fuel stuff like Henry being bricked up in the tunnel, and whoever it was that got made into a generator?

And from my limited experience of the Thomas universe, you're allowed to be as racist as you like, as long as it's to Diesel locomotives.

You'll also no doubt have noted that the engines are all male (wonder what Freud would have said about that). The only female characters IIRC are Clarabel and Annie, who are coaches - ie they have no autonomy and can only get about in service to a male. And they're given to Thomas as a reward - basically, they're his harem.

No strikes or engineering works messing up the timetable, for a start.

No trade unions on Sodor. I bet Jacob Rees Mogg is a massive fan.

[Mr Larrington]

How is Thomas The Tank Engine done these days - changes?

They took the N-word out decades ago.  It was only used as a simile; there aren't any black people on the Isle of Sodor, it seems.

Those wretched books have an awful lot more wrong with them than use of the N word.

I was actually thinking of thre Fat Controller!

I think in later versions (possibly only TV adaptations) The Fat Controller is renamed Sir Topham Hat.

He was named as Sir Topham Hatt in the editions I had as a small Mr Larrington in the latter stages of the 1960s but nearly always referred to as The Fat Controller.

[Tim Hall]

John Finnemore does a sketch about Thomas the Tank Engine.In it The Fat Controller doesn't mind being called Fat as he's "taken ownership of it".

The sketch also explores how a human driver actually drives a sentient, talking train. Apparently by plunging his hands into the brain and manipulating the lobes.

[T42]

100-odd years ago:

https://jamesbranchcabell.library.vcu.edu/life-and-times/banning-jurgen/the-judging-of-jurgen-by-james-branch-cabell-1920/

Jurgen now looked more attentively at this queer creature; and he saw that the tumblebug was malodorous certainly, but at bottom honest and well meaning; and that seemed to Jurgen the saddest thing he had found among the Philistines. For the tumblebug was sincere in his insane doings and all Philistia honored him sincerely, so that there was nowhere any hope for this people.

Nowadays a cock and balls on TV wouldn't raise an eyebrow, but perish the thought that the word man might appear anywhere outside an article explaining men's shortcomings.

[Cudzoziemiec]

How is Thomas The Tank Engine done these days - changes?

They took the N-word out decades ago.  It was only used as a simile; there aren't any black people on the Isle of Sodor, it seems.

One of my favourite children's books, The Box Of Delights, has a few uncomfortable passages, but it's not popular enough to attract the bowdlerisers.

The Box of Delights is a wonderful story. I don't recall any dodgy parts, either from my own reading of it as a child or from reading it to my son. But because he loved it so much, I then read him another of Masefield's children's stories, Jim Davis, which turned out to contain "the n word". I can't remember now if it actually referred to a person or was used as a simile. As it happened, there had recently been an incident at school where a Little White Boy used that word in a fight with a Little Black Boy and got sent home – which was inconvenient for his mother as they were on a camp in a farm in Pembrokeshire at the time. In a strange circularity, that farm was part of some organisation connected with Michael Morpurgo, who wrote the introduction to a 2002 re-edition of Jim Davis: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Jim_Davis.html
I've no idea if they altered that section, the edition I read him was much earlier.

[rogerzilla]

It's Abner Brown, the arch-villain, rationalising his thieving ways:

'And think of all the benefits that I have conferred; the stimulus that I have given to the jewel trade. Half the noble families of England, you might say of Europe, have had to buy new jewels because of me. Think of the impetus that this has given to the mining industry. Many black and brown creatures in remote parts of the world are munching the banana of content in full employment when, but for little Abner, they might be sitting in the sun doing nothing starving. Now, very likely, they can even go to the cinema.'

It is funny, but hardly appropriate these days.