Roald Dahl Gets a Rewrite

03/08/2023

The day comes when remaining the same becomes more painful than the risk to grow. And when that happens there are many goodbyes. We leave old patterns, old friends, old lovers, old ideas, and some cherished beliefs. Loss and growth are so often one and the same.
Phoebe Eng, lecturer

The British publisher Puffin has released new editions of Dahl’s children’s stories, each now stating, "The wonderful words of Roald Dahl can transport you to different worlds and introduce you to the most marvelous characters. This book was written many years ago, and so we regularly review the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today,"
In an editorial for the Atlantic, Helen Lewis notes:

Reading through the extensive list of changes…I first felt revulsion: Roald Dahl without nastiness is not Roald Dahl. Something about the process feels dishonest …My second thought was this: If his work is really this bad, why even try to save it?

…Some of the new edits are minor and defensible, such as changing the Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach to be Cloud-People. Some reflect adult pieties far more than the protection of children: Matilda is no longer allowed to read the colonialist Rudyard Kipling and is given Jane Austen instead. A few edits, though, are so contrary to the spirit of Dahl that they feel like a violation.

Exploring motivations from social justice to capitalism, Lewis concludes:

Dahl staggers on, embarrassing the cultural gatekeepers by remaining popular despite being so thoroughly out of tune with the times. The work does so because of the dirty secret that children, and adults, like nastiness. They enjoy fat aunts and pranked teachers and the thrilling but illegal doping of pheasants. Today’s corporations want to have it all, though. They want the selling power of an author like Roald Dahl, shorn of the discomforting qualities that made him a best seller. They want things to be simple—a quality that we might call childlike, if Dahl hadn’t shown us that children can be so much more.

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