Editing Racist Language
By Dave King | November 21, 2023 |
Once again, serendipity gave me this month’s topic. Not long after I put up last month’s piece on cultural appropriation, the New York Times published an article on the controversy around plans to rewrite the works of Georgette Heyer. Ms. Heyer, who wrote from the 1920s to the 1970s, essentially created the modern Regency romance.
She’s delightful to read in a lot of ways. I love her use of early 19th century language, but her Jewish characters are cruel stereotypes. Her estate has agreed to a new edition of her books with the anti-Semitism edited out. It’s about time.
The NY Times article argued both sides of the question. Readers are generally smart enough to see that things were different in the past, so posthumous rewriting to fit more modern sensibilities is unfair to the author. On the other side, the racist language of the past may be so offensive that some readers will be unable to read it at all.
In Ms.Heyers’ case, the offensive characters are relatively minor and easily rewritten to erase any antisemitism. In fact, because the characters are stereotypes, the book is stronger without them.
In other cases, the racism is so interwoven in the narrative that the story can’t be saved. For instance, I couldn’t get through Gone With the Wind. I mean, yes, great characters, wonderful romance, historic sweep, all of that. But I couldn’t get past the Lost Cause narrative – that the Confederacy may have lost the war, but, gosh darn it, they were right all along. The book can be taught in academic settings, where a teacher can give the cultural context, but by now it is more a historical document about the bad old days than popular entertainment.
Then there’s Booth Tarkington.
The house I grew up in didn’t have many books, and I think I read all of them – my older sister’s Bobbsey Twins collection, Oliver Twist (when I was far too young to follow it), a 19th-century edition of Pilgrim’s Progress, with woodcuts. And Penrod and Sam, a collection of short stories by Booth Tarkington. Later in life, I got hold of the first book in the series, Penrod.
Both books tell stories of Penrod Schofield, a boy growing up somewhere in the Midwest just after the turn of the 20th century. Two of Penrod’s friends were black, the brothers Herman and Verman. (That is correctly spelled, by the way. As Herman explains when they first meet Penrod, their parents just like rhyming names — they also have an older brother Sherman.) Because Tarkington was a product of his time, the brothers are often described using racist language. But . . .
In one of the stories from Penrod, Penrod has to stay in town while most of his friends visit relatives in the country to escape the summer city heat. While on his own, Penrod meets a bully, Rupe Collins, who menaces and humiliates him. And in one of the nice bits of characterization that make Tarkington worth reading, Penrod falls straight into hero worship. He starts spending more time with Rupe and emulating him. When Sam returns from the country and runs into Rupe and Penrod, Penrod encourages Rupe to bully Sam the way Rupe bullied him. Rupe is happy to comply by putting Sam in a headlock.
Into this scene walk Herman and Verman. Their immediate reaction is to tell Rupe to leave their friends alone. Rupe orders Penrod to throw them out of the carriage house where they’d been playing, referring to them with a racial slur. Herman takes even more exception to this. Rupe responds by towering over him and threatening him, much as he had threatened Penrod.
And then Herman and Verman just beat the sweet bejesus out of him.
Again, the language is extremely, unfortunately racist. I remember one reference to Verman hitting Rupe with a rake, as hard as he could, tines down, “because, in his simple, straightforward, African way, he wished to kill his enemy and kill him as quickly as possible.” And I can certainly appreciate why many readers wouldn’t be able to get past the language. But the story’s stuck with me all these years because what the brothers actually do is brave and honorable and done in defense of their own dignity.
Especially since Tarkington is completely behind them. They are the heroes of the story, full stop. When they send Rupe packing, they are justifiably exultant with no hint of guilt or regret. And their attack breaks Penrod’s hero worship, helping their friend get back to normal. Despite the language, I find it hard to be offended by a story in which two black boys are celebrated for beating the stuffing out of a white racist.
I think something that we explored a little last month might be the critical difference — putting in the imaginative work to get into the heads of characters very different from yourself. Georgette Heyer’s Jewish characters are nothing more than stereotypes, as are the happy slaves of Margaret Mitchell’s south. But Tarkington reaches beyond the racism of his day to create genuine human beings, though the racism is still there in the language. In fact, Tarkington is a good candidate for a very light posthumous editing. That would allow readers to enjoy Herman and Verman without reservation.
I don’t share the NY Times’ qualms about posthumous editing. The new edition should be marked as revised, so readers will be aware that changes have been made. (Interested historians can track down the original texts.) But after all, the job of an editor is to strip away whatever prevents the story from being as good as it can be.
So where do you weigh in on the question of posthumous editing? Unfair to the author? Necessary for modern readers?
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
[coffee]
It’s a really interesting question. I understand your position on the question, but my worry is that in the wrong hands, an editor’s revision could be seen as a whitewashing of history. I think it’s good that we have books that reflect the language of the time, and if racism was rife in those times, the reader shouldn’t be deprived of seeing that.
Good points, and you’re not the only one to raise them. See my reply in the general conversation.
I don’t think books by dead authors should be bowdlerized. I see your point that removing a couple of stereotyped minor characters in Heyer’s book wouldn’t do serious damage. But when does removing the pound of flesh become a mortal wound? Do we publish revised editions of _Othello_? Of _Huckleberry Finn_? Of the Narnia chronicles?
I’m even unhappy with the censorship, even pre-publication censorship, of contemporary works.
I was initially tempted to bring Dr. Bowdler into the conversation — the file name of my working copy was “bowdler.” But I am certainly against censorship on general principles and believe it can often go too far. But with the rise of both anti-Semetic and Islamophobic hatred after the Hamas terrorist attacks, I came to see that these attitudes are not as much a part of our past as they had seemed. And I think that makes a difference. To allow the racism and prejudice of the past to stand without comment runs at least the risk of normalizing such attitudes. I think we as a society need to take a stand.
Incidentally, for those unfamiliar, in 1807, Dr. Thomas Bowdler published The Family Shakespeare, a collection of the Bard’s plays with the rough stuff removed so they would be safe to read to children. Since then, he has leant his name to the act of editing classics to fit modern sensibilities. I’ve never actually read Dr. Bowdler’s work, but my understanding is that he made the plays into something they were not.
Since these were written in different times, the reader should understand that. That doesn’t mean they have to like the way things were. One thing we can learn from history is not to repeat it. I think seeing the mistakes of earlier times and learning from those mistakes is worth cringing a bit. If a book is set in different times, that’s usually showing the way things really were. We can’t change history. We need to learn from it.
Thanks, Lauralynn. You’re not the only one to make this observation. I thought it deserved a general response, which I’ve included below.
I agree with both Lauralynn and Eric. My debut YA historical novel is set in 1950 in North Carolina and I’ve had to wrestle with the issue. Do I portray it the way it was or with the political correctness of 2023. Fortunately, I have a publisher who is guiding me in the difficult middle ground between accuracy and sensitivity to today’s readers. Not an easy task.
I’ve written before about the real challenges faced by modern writers creating sympathetic characters who reflect the often terrible attitudes of their cultures — such as racism. I think what I’m talking about here is slightly different. It’s not characters who are racist as much as it’s the author who is racist. Even Tarkington, who clearly saw Herman and Verman as people, was comfortable using degrading language to describe them. And Margaret Mitchell genuinely believed the Lost Cause narrative.
Who owns the copyright? If it’s the author or their estate then editing or not is their choice. If it’s in the public domain then who has the money to layout to edit, print, market and distribute gets to choose. “Our” choice is to buy it or not.
I think you point out well that it’s not a one size fits all situation. Some classics only need a little tweaking and they could be enjoyable for several more generations and more cultures. Some work is so ingrained with racism that it would be a different story if removed, so probably better to let the market decide to move on from that.
It is a nuanced question, with no clear one-size-fits-all answer. I’d also add what I was getting at in my comment below — that there’s also a social component to what you edit and what you allow. If we were living in a society where prejudice was more unthinkable, then it would be safer to allow more of the original language to stand. Where doing so risks normalizing the racism, then we have to be more careful.
Oh, and you’re right that the ultimate decision does rest with the copyright holder.
As long as it’s flagged as having offensive content removed, I will agree with you. If it isn’t flagged, no way. A work stands or falls by what was released with the author’s permission. To do otherwise is to lie to the reader.
Back in high school, our class translated the Archanians by Aristophanes. Our teacher noticed that there was something missing from the text. He went to an university library and looked at a different text. He found that the editor of the text we were using had removed lines that he found offensive then renumbered the lines to hide what he had done. There was no indication in the edition that it had been bowlderized. Our teach gave us copies of the deleted lines and off we went. We were incensed by the arrogance of the editor who decided that he had the right to chose what we could read.
v/r
Bill R.
HI Bill:
I think the operative word in your comment was “arrogance.” I posted about this subject before in the context of sensitivity readers, and there is a more-righteous-than-thou attitude hovering in the background of this demand for text cleansing.
I also agree that the proper remedy is an editorial comment at the beginning of the book explaining that the text contains material some will find offensive (with any necessary historical context), and perhaps even include a “notes for book group discussion” at the back that explores those sections.
But if we’re going to seek greater plurality and acceptance of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity, it does us no good to erase the evidence of what came before.
Yes, the word “Orwellian” has become a cliché but that’s because it remains apt in describing the erasure of words, thoughts, and facts that have fallen out of favor — with whom? There’s the rub. The party, the movement, the church, the government, the “publishing community”–some self-appointed council of moral scolds pronouncing their enlightenment from on high. It’s condescending not just to readers but to those it seeks to “protect.”
I’m not looking to whitewash all the depictions of the Irish as simian, sub-human creatures of the kind that proliferated throughout the 19th century. I find them informative of a type of viewpoint that never truly disappears, only goes underground when the moral climate is inclement. But as we’ve seen of late, once given a bit of fresh air, that attitude springs back to life with renewed energy and power.
And who among us would like the book-burners and book-banners being the ones to decide what sections of books get “revised”?
David, I certainly agree on general principles. The problem, as I’ve said below, is that some of the attitudes that I’d like to see edited haven’t fallen as far out of favor as I’d like. The Irish are no longer threatened by the stereotypes of past centuries, but both Jews and Arabs have been killed in the recent protests around the battle between Israel and Hamas. The modern-day censors sometimes overreach, and there is certainly some arrogance and self-righteousness involved. But even while we have to be careful of overdoing it, I think there is a real need there.
Oh, I’m a real believer in preserving the original text. Any changes have to be flagged as such.
I reread what I posted this morning. It came out much stronger than intended. My apologies.
Bill R.
I just read it again, too, and I can’t see anything you have to apologize for. In fact, this entire discussion has been hearteningly civil.
Something to think about: if you change the text to meet later, improved standards of social and racial justice, you dilute public awareness of that very improvement. Of progress made. It certainly makes sense to remind readers that this is now, and that was a very different then, but shouldn’t that be enough? Otherwise, you begin pulling at a thread stretching back to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984.
Bingo, as Bertrand Russell would say.
Funny, Barry, how you and I were making very similar comments virtually simultaneously.
Thank you, David. That puts me in the best of company. Your recent posts on this and related subjects should be required reading.
Again, in terms of history, yes the original texts and attitudes should be preserved. Especially for attitudes — like the prejudice against the Irish that David mentioned — that are genuinely in the past.
Where the dangerous attitudes of the past are still alive in the present, though, we may not want to run the risk of further normalizing them.
I see your point, Dave, and I also want nothing to do with normalizing let alone amplifying hateful, derogatory caricatures and stereotypes–especially those that remain dangerous today. I’m just wary of who controls the red pen. Is the marketplace of ideas sufficient for combating hate speech? Is the answer to harmful speech more speech not less? I’ll concede these are hard questions with complex answers. But I think the best antidote to antisemitism and Islamophobia and racism in general is greater visibility of Jewish, Muslim and POC writers, speakers, politicians, educators, etc., with platforms that allow their voices to be heard. I’m reminded of the 1980s and 1990s when homophobic rhetoric began to subside because, with so many gays refusing to remain closeted, straights came to realize they not only knew someone who was gay, but loved that person. I think amplifying marginalized voices in the present is a far more effective strategy than air-brushing the past.
Excellent points, David, and thank you. I particularly agree about how platforming the voices of the victims of prejudice can help eliminate it. It’s much easier to hold to a stereotype when you don’t have to face real, often likable, people.
As to who controls the red pen, ultimately the control needs to rest with the copyright owners, of course. And mistakes are going to be made, probably fairly often. We should still give it our best shot.
A needed post. And Barry truly nailed it. I taught English literature in high school, and what I had during that time was a department chairman who wanted excellence but also equality and understanding. We had a few riots in our school, signaling even more that TRUTH must be honored in the history of prejudice. That doesn’t mean you don’t read Gone with the Wind, a truly long and often boring novel. It does mean you provide your students with Richard Wright and Langston Hughes and you devote class time to discussion. Turbulence provides an opportunity to have students talk about the truth of their lives. One student in particular took me on: “Why read about these rich white folks when five of us have to sleep in one bedroom?” THAT, I will never forget. And my answer? We talked for a very long time.
I do think that reading original authors as written is safer within the context of a classroom, when you can provide counterbalancing examples and context, and spark a guided discussion that can be enlightening.
The view that racism was a product of its time carries, it seems to me, an assumption that modern racism is different than historic racism. I recently read And Then There We’re None. The Jewish character had his “race” mentioned for the sole purpose of explaining how sleazy he was, like all of his “race”. Kinda like what I’m hearing on SM as the joint tragedies pile up in the Holy Land. Kinda like the new Netflix series Bodies, where the sole dirty detective, among the heroic ones, is a sleazy – wanna guess his religion? – yup, you guessed it right. If the original character has an identity for the purpose of it explaining his evilness and deficiencies, that is trouble worth fixing because we live in troubled times, where stereotypes are getting people killed.
So in essence you’re saying that stereotyping characters is a form of racism? I’d not thought about that before, but I can see that many characters mentioned in this discussion are stereotypes. Something interesting to consider when reading and when writing.
Well, there are other ways to stereotype people besides race — ask any Ginger. But racial stereotypes are definitely a substitute for doing the work of genuine characterization.
Agreed. That’s one reason I’ve worked hard to write against stereotypes in my mysteries.
Yes. This is essentially what I’ve been saying. It’s one thing to present the attitudes of the past in history texts or in classrooms, where you can have a balanced discussion. It’s another thing to preserve these attitudes in popular entertainment — which helps shape culture — when the culture hasn’t entirely given up on them.
Incidentally, as an example of the kind of progress I’m talking about, the original British title of And Then There Were None was Ten Little N*******s, which became Ten Little Indians in later editions. On the one hand, the change in title wasn’t flagged in the later editions. On the other hand, the change was made by Christe herself, so it could be seen as part of her creative process.
I am not a fan of revising old works. This is history. That is who we were as a species back then. When you know better, you do better – hopefully.
If I write a white guy being a racist, I am white BTW, I don’t want anyone revising that 70 years from now if humanity somehow moves beyond the color of our skin. The combined stories of history show the evolution (hopefully) of humanity. Or, more likely, shows how the targets of discimination (race, religion, sexual preference) change over time or by region.
As I’ve said elsewhere, creating characters who are racist is a different sort of problem from editing writers who were racist. And, yes, the targets often change over time. The Polish jokes I heard growing up seem to have largely, thankfully, disappeared.
The problem with Polish jokes or a great many other ethnic jokes is they are just “moron” jokes with an ethnicity attached. The Sean and Paddy jokes are the Irish iteration.
There is a literary journal titled Maledicta which publishes scholarly essays on swearing and other “bad language” in often obscure languages. Every year they published a collection of ethnic jokes that had to be specific to the ethnicity of the person or group mentioned in the joke. An example from: “Have you heard about what’s gone wrong with the Irish boomerang? No matter how you throw it, it never comes back. It just sings really sad songs about how much it wants to.”
Trust me, that was one of the few worth repeating in civilized company.
There is a classical text called the Philogelos — from the Greek for “Love of Laughter.” It’s a collection of jokes compiled probably in the early 3rd century AD. For the Romans, the idiots were Abderans, from a small city in Thrace. For instance, did you hear the one about the Abderan and the eunuch?
Seems an Abderan, on a journey, fell in with a eunuch. As they travelled together, they got to talking. At one point the Abderan asked the eunuch if he had any children.
The eunuch said, “No . . . ” and explained why.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” the Abderan said. “But I wouldn’t worry. You’ll have grandchildren one day.”
What an interesting topic and discussion. Thanks for starting it with your post, Dave.
One of my thoughts on the topic of editing past works for racism is why waste time and money sanitizing old works. Maybe just put thought and effort into how story is written today without the stereotypes and racist language.
But then, I’m not black or Jewish, or Indigenous, so I don’t know how deep the barbs might go when reading a book with racist characters and language.
However, I grew up as “poor white trash” and suffered bigotry because of that. I know what it feels like to be insulted and shunned. And I cringe when I see racism in action in our world today. However, I didn’t cringe at the depiction of poor white trash in James Wade’s novel, River Sing Out. The central characters in the story are the poorest of poor in East Texas. Issues of racism and bigotry are not skirted in this tale, but it is the truth. And I firmly believe the art of story is about the truth. If we don’t reflect that to the world, who will?
Oh, I do think that class prejudice is a real thing, and that writers need to work to avoid the bigotry it represents. And I say this as the son of a man with an eight-grade education, who was working as a farm hand when he met my mother. (This was back in the thirties — they were married in ’38). He learned mechanics as a machinist’s mate on a landing craft in WWII and wound up co-owner of a gas station.
Even so, I think there may be differences between class prejudice and racial prejudice. I’ve always taken “poor white trash” to refer less to an economic situation and more to an attitude toward life.
So true about the attitude, Dave. And as one of my Black friends pointed out to me, I have risen above what people think of me because I’m no longer that poor young girl. But my friend can never get past the color of her skin that too often prompts an immediate negative reaction in folks. Nobody knows I was poor white trash at one point in my life unless I tell them. :-)
Revising older works to remove the evidence of racisms, which are still clearly with us today? Just…no. You don’t repair harm by editing it out. That’s pretending it didn’t happen. Pretending it isn’t still happening. Whitewashing it. Turning a blind eye to it. It’s inauthentic. Fake. False. Unrighteous. And it doesn’t solve anything. It sounds to me like a money grab by people who are trying to make these books more “marketable.” Can we all, please, just say no?
I think the intent of the edits I’m talking about are not to pretend racism didn’t happen. It’s to make what are otherwise good books accessible to a readership for whom the racism would destroy the pleasure in reading. I know there are some people who greatly enjoy Gone With the Wind despite the happy slaves and noble Klan members. I am not one of them.
You could say this is making the books more marketable, and no doubt it is sometimes done with a fair amount of cynicism. But I’m not sure it’s necessarily a bad thing if it brings pleasure to readers that they otherwise wouldn’t have.
I can’t just walk away from this:
“It’s to make what are otherwise good books accessible to a readership for whom the racism would destroy the pleasure in reading.”
I think you’re saying that if incidental racism in an “otherwise good” book that’s meant to be “popular entertainment” makes people uncomfortable, it’s okay to edit out the racism so readers won’t have to feel that discomfort if they choose to read that book.
Have we truly reached a point where that’s okay? And reading on, I see that only historians and students—intellectuals—will be given the original text and everyone else will get a book with a warning label. What would that say: “This book has been edited to make you feel more comfortable”? Will that be on the cover or the last page?
It doesn’t matter whether the racism is the author’s or the narrator’s or a character’s. It doesn’t matter if the book is “otherwise good.” It doesn’t matter whether the book is nonfiction or “popular entertainment.” It’s reprehensible to sanitize it in this fashion and especially after the author has died and cannot approve or object to those changes.
With respect, Dave, it *is* necessarily a bad thing. I do hope you’ll reconsider your position.
Marcie, you articulated your position well and I am in complete agreement with you on this topic. Thank you.
Several of you have raised the question of whether the kind of posthumous editing I’m recommending would amount to whitewashing history. And my initial thoughts for this article were closer to that approach.
But I started writing this article before the November 7th Hamas attacks and Israel’s response. Since then, there’s been such an outpouring of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia that it became clear the attitudes of the past may not be as far in the past as we thought. So while I’m certainly against censorship on general principles — I originally intended to bring Dr. Bowdler’s The Family Shakespeare into the discussion — I think we may face another factor right now. Allowing the prejudices of the past to stand without comment in popular entertainment runs the risk of normalizing them at a time when they are already far more normal than I’d like.
Understand, I don’t think the attitudes of the past should be buried. Original texts should be available for historians and for students who can be given the appropriate historical context. But we’re not talking about history. We’re talking about popular entertainment, whose deep-seated attitudes are often absorbed unconsciously.
Also, I think there can be cases where the original text can stand, perhaps with warnings, mostly because the attitude of the author goes so strongly against the language they use. You could probably leave Tarkington unchanged since Herman and Verman’s actions speak more loudly than the words used to describe them. And it would be hard to purge the racist attitudes from Twain’s Huckleberry Finn without undermining the tension between Tom and Huck’s love for Jim and society’s condemnation of them for it. When Huck decides he would go to hell rather than betray Jim, that’s a blow against racism that should be allowed its full impact.
This problem is in many ways a Human Resources issue. In my glittering career as a writer and editor of corporate propaganda, I often found myself a member of the Human Resources department. And there I learned that there’s no place for “case-by-case” or “flexible” rules. No, no. If you let one poor slob come in late every day because he’s taking care of his old mother, you’ll have twenty people screaming at you. Why can’t *they* come in late? And if you let Samuel Clemens use the “N” word, you have to let *everybody* use it.
Well … No you don’t. The kids know the word. They know all the other words, too. They understand that what was normal in the 19th Century isn’t supposed to be normal now. They know they shouldn’t hurt people. I think they can handle it if they see Huck Finn using the word.
Actually, I read an article many years ago about the question of editing the N word out of Huck Finn. As I said in an earlier comment, I’m not necessarily in favor of it — I do believe you have to work on a case to case basis. But the article did describe a high school class where students saw Twain’s use of the word as tacit permission to use it themselves. So it’s not always true that they know that what was normal in the 19th century is not normal now.
A friend of mine in the advertising world told me about an HR head who quit because she could no longer referee the battles that arose of exactly the kind you describe. Everyone was always offended about something, and what was intended but perhaps poorly expressed never mattered. The feelings of the offended party could not be assuaged with an anodyne, “But that’s not what I meant.” This is evidence of the “elevation of the subjective” that’s resulted from misreading critiques of what can justifiably be considered true, which is another cul de sac in this cultural enclave in which we now find ourselves.
Barry nailed it. And who has the right to decide what another author SHOULD have written? No, I strongly oppose this kind of rewriting without the author being alive to approve it.
There’s a very simple solution when it comes to books that offend you:
Don’t read them.
But to try to write them out of existence is every bit as dangerous as the way our schoolbooks are currently being rewritten, to keep from offending people who don’t want to know how badly their own ancestors behaved.
Sorry, Dave – I’m not with you on this one. The authors wrote what they wrote, reflecting their own minds, their own beliefs, and yes, their own flaws. Kinda like every one of us is doing. Will it all stand the test of time? Doubtful. But it probably shouldn’t, or it would indicate we’ve stopped making progress.
Fair enough. But I don’t think making minor edits to a book to eliminate characters who are shallow, poorly-crafted stereotypes is writing a writer out of existence. And as I’ve said, the original texts should be readily available for academic settings, and any changes should be flagged.
I’m talking about popular entertainment. And of making otherwise decent writers available to a wider audience who would enjoy them.
Rewriting becomes a very slippery slope – look at all the qualifications you’re adding (already popular book, “minor” edits, etc.), and then think of how hard they would be to apply. I mean, if you want to rewrite every “shallow, poorly-crafted stereotype” character, you’ll spend your entire lifetime just revising James Patterson novels. (Wait, did I say that out loud?) And the BIG question: who gets to decide what’s offensive?
With these “minor” offenses, I think most of us are able to make the “hey, it was a different time” leap on our own, without whitewashing the manuscript. Just like we’ve learned to deal with that racist uncle or culturally insensitive grandpa at the big holiday dinner. We still love them, but we don’t love everything they stand for.
As someone whose day job is conflict and its management I have to ask, mostly in jest, hands up please, everyone who’s learned to deal with the racist uncle and culturally insensitive grandpa at holiday dinners?
Well, I’m not simply recommending editing things like Heyer’s grasping, rapacious Jewish moneylenders because they’re stereotypes. I’m recommending editing them because any sensible reader would be offended by them, which would undermine their enjoyment of what would otherwise be an enjoyable book. The fact that editing them out also eliminates shallow, lazy characterization is just a bonus.
I’d argue that the situation is different from dealing with a racist relative — and, yeah, I’ve had them. Readers are not judging the author. They are trying to enjoy the book itself and having that enjoyment undermined by racist language.
And, yes, sometimes editing for cultural correctness can go too far, but that’s not a reason to not try to get it right. The problem with the slippery slope argument is that everything is a slippery slope to someplace.
I’m currently listening to a fabulous audio read of my beloved childhood favorite Wuthering Heights by British actress Joanne Froggert. OMG 😱 can this possibly be the same edition I fell for? Yes, head over heels in love with a dark tale of a young woman and hero suffering unrequited passion in a prison of class expectations. The book that upped my appetite for literature sometime in my passage from 12 to 15.
My internet search revealed my childhood treasure was indeed deeply abridged edition?
Now I barely recognize the outlines of that story I loved as I listen to Emily’s horror-show of physical and psychological abuse and power inflicted. Yet, there they are—Cathy and Heathcliff, two desperately unheroic soulmates bleeding each other and everyone else who bleeds them.
It turns out my favorite classic has been revised several times—first extensively by her sister Charlotte after Emily’s death. She ‘edited it’ the second edition to make the language more and characters more palatable to Brits not accustomed to Yorkshire dialect and ways (more about that in a note I’ll post below.)
I fell in love with a ‘Classics’ edition for young people. Today Amazon offers a more recently abridged version: “Pick up this beautifully illustrated book for an incredible tale of separation, chaos, love, and revenge…” Is this bad or good?
My mind says ‘bad.’ My heart cries ‘good.’ I would never have read the original as a child. And certainly the original prose would be dead on arrival for a writer today. Yet, I am completely blown away listening to the original now— both as a reader and as a writer admiring Bronte’s craft. This is not the weaving of the romantic fantasy that spoke to me in my youth. It is reality TV if there were TV in Emily’s day—a raw view of life Emily’s time and place. And because I have now hiked the Yorkshire Moors (yes, I cried out “Heathcliff”) I know Wuthering Heights is real.
So should stories be edited for the times? I suppose it is like translating foreign editions…it depends on the translator and their sensibility. I’ve read several amazing and different new translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey this year that are breathing new life into ancient stories. Would Homer(S) be happy? I think if I were so lucky to author such a tale I would.
Because without the abridged version that awakened me to imagine a darker, more complex world, would I have longed to travel to Yorkshire? To learn the Bronté’s story?
And when I discovered the scars of abuse and resulting trauma and mental illness alive in my own family closet would I have been willing to see it? How complicated it becomes?
Just comparing the two versions tells me a great deal about our world—how much has changed yet stays the same. Would I be listening to the unabridged tale today if the children’s ‘classic’ hadn’t cast it’s spell?
I hate the idea of others revising and editing what I love. But am very glad I fell in love with my abridged Wuthering Heights. And I am giving thanks for the publishers, librarians and literary junkies who jealously guard the original canon. Novels are reflections of lived history. We glimpse ourselves in distant mirrors.
This is an interesting question.
I’d say that both abridgements and modern translations make great works accessible to larger audiences. As I mentioned above, I read Oliver Twist long before I was ready for it. If I’d read an abridgement (or even a Classics Illustrated version) I might have been entertained enough to want to come back to the book in later life. As for translations, I think they do need to keep up with modern language just to keep the works readable. I’ve tried to read 18th-century translations of Horace, and the Popian rhyming couplets drove me crazy.
From British Literature Wiki — Charlotte Bronté’s prologue on her edited 2nd edition of Emily’s Wuthering Heights.
https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/charlotte-bronte/#:~:text=Charlotte's%20sister%20Emily%20wrote%20Wuthering,before%20Charlotte's%20edition%20was%20published).
Charlotte’s sister Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, but it was Charlotte who edited and published the novel after Emily’s death, in addition to penning the preface to the work (it was originally published in 1847, a year before Emily died and three years before Charlotte’s edition was published). Charlotte additionally added a Biographical Notice, publicly admitting for the first time that the mysterious authors Currer, Ellis, and Action Bell were in fact three women (Ref 2). Charlotte takes the preface as a chance to both praise her sister’s work and express doubt on the inclusion of some of the controversial elements.
The Preface reveals that, while Charlotte admired her sister’s work, she was not afraid to point to its “faults,” or to debate the controversial elements of Wuthering Heights. She discusses the great loss that many readers will experience, as anyone unfamiliar with the passions and wildness of northern England will not be able to appreciate Emily’s skill in representing these qualities. She also acknowledges that Emily–a woman not inclined to converse with the people around her yet knew much about them by listening–may have had a darker view of people than most; as Charlotte claims, when all one knows of people is facts about them, the mind clings to “tragic and terrible traits,” which stick out in memory. Charlotte also expresses doubt that it is “right or advisable” for her sister to have written a character as dark as Heathcliff; however, she notes that it hardly matters, because the writer is “not always master” of her art, and “little deserve[s] blame” if her creative product is unattractive (Ref 3). Even having pointed to these faults, though, Charlotte herself does not even hint at the contention that any of these elements make Wuthering Heights of lesser quality. In fact, she ends her Preface first on the concept that Emily–or an author, for that matter–is not necessarily responsible for the controversial elements of the novel, at least the ones that she addresses in the Preface. She also notes that, despite all this, Wuthering Heights is an impressive work, and ends her Preface on that note.
Most of my thoughts have already been said but I wonder … what words do we use today without any qualms that future generations will want to edit out? What prejudices are rife but unrecognised? Will “geek” become “The G-word”?
First, I’d like to compliment everyone who commented on this subject matter and Dave for starting the conversation. It’s not an easy topic to discuss, and, as usual, WU groupies do it with class.
While I see and respect all sides of the debate, my worries fall with those who wonder who controls the red pen, as David says. I spent a large portion of this summer at editor’s conferences. For days, I sat in classrooms, taking notes from our industry’s brightest. While there was a fair amount of insightful information, I was surprised by the dramatic push to make editors into social renegades. I’m not talking about subtle suggestions, either. Many of you would be shocked to see the vast list of words and phrases we editors are now supposed to red line–whitewashing, for one, which is now considered a highly racist word.
To me, this relates to Dave’s article in that who gets to be the editor ‘fixing’ an author’s written work? If it’s any of the hundreds of fine editors at these top-notch industry conferences, including the speakers, I worry about the implications. We are being taught to gatekeep the English language. Homeless or immigrant–don’t even think about it–they are people without residency or displaced citizens. The word Jew must be rewritten. Even words like he, she, woman, and man are supposed to be on the chopping block. And those who don’t comply are browbeaten–which, by the way, is no longer an acceptable term. Since I am an independent editor, I have a certain amount of flexibility. But editors who work for publishers and agencies have to toe the line or find another career. So what will become of manuscripts before they are published books?
I don’t have the answers, but I know these slopes are treacherous.
Hugs,
Dee
I’m not sure I have the answers, either. I do think that, in some cases, the need for editing is unambiguous. But there are plenty of other cases where cultural sensitivity goes too far. When I hear “whitewashing,” I know it’s not about race but about coating surfaces with a layer of lime for sanitary purposes.
I suspect that’s part of the problem, though. It’s no longer about your intent, or how you hear a word. It’s about how others hear it. Who gets to choose what is appropriate or over-sensitive? The lines are not only blurry but always changing. Evolution is a bumpy ride.
Thanks for the discussion, Dave.
Great topic! Reading old books gives me an idea of what it was like to live back then. The good and the bad. As I read the discussion, my mind kept going back to a bit of dialogue I took out of a novel, I wrote in 2021. Lilacs in the Dust Bowl, biographical fiction, is based on my grandmother’s immigration to Manitoba, Canada just before the Great Depression begins. Somewhere in there, I had a character say (referring to the farmland that the gov’t. had given them) “Even the Indians didn’t want it.”
My daughter, who’s become knowledgeable about indigenous issues, was appalled that I had written that into the story. It’s a piece of dialogue I remember a family member saying. Is it insensitive? Today, it definitely is. Did the immigrant farmers back then know the land had been stolen by the gov’t., that treaties hadn’t been honoured?No.
Though I wanted to keep that bit of dialogue in, as it was a reflection of the times, I took it out after the book was published and uploaded a revised manuscript. I still don’t know if that was the right decision.
Thank you for engaging the WU community in such a thoughtful discussion, Dave.
I’ve recently reread several childhood favorites and discovered flaws akin to what you’re mentioning. One was, in fact, a Heyer. And after wondering if I should discard the books altogether–and having to work through that a younger Jan was apparently oblivious to certain troublesome dynamics–I decided they’d remain on my keeper shelf. My enjoyment of the story will be forever altered, but I think it’s a good thing to acknowledge that even favorite author are flawed human beings, and that I cannot disengage my brain because of author-hero worship or the desire to be entertained. I hope that’s a lesson that follows me into the larger world, where we are about to be awash in AI-generated media and judgment/skepticism will be ever more required of me as a consumer. So I’m in favor of leaving the text unchanged but providing editorial notes and book club notes, as has been suggested.
I think bottom line is per Charlotte Brontè editing Emily post mortem we are all products of our time and place. And the times they are always rapidly changing. And our world is now both global and more culturally rich/fractured than we ever understood it before. And a truly globally community where almost anyone can see everything is a place no one has lived before. And as artists we are challenged to reach to find common threads at the heart of the matter.
Dave, thanks for opening the door to discussing editing previously published books that are now objectionable. I’m against it because this is a subjective matter. No matter how many notes have been added to the edited versions, at some point they could be lost and now we’ve lost an original treasure. Let the work speak for itself for the time it was created. Our stories capture the zeitgeist and they should be left alone. I wouldn’t want someone else tampering with my stories. For better or worse, they are as they are. Judge me. Besides, we cannot succumb to the rule of “I’m offended.” Who gets to decide what’s offensive enough that it should be changed? I don’t trust the academics or the govt. or the self-proclaimed monitors of language. It’s a judgment best left up to the person. I happen to not enjoy stories with too many f-bombs (and usually they coincide with lazy writing so I feel I’m not missing much) so I don’t read them. I don’t try to clean them up. There are plenty of other books vying for my attention, including classics.
I have some oldies that remain on my shelf, one of my favorites being Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruijff, even though I cringe at the way the various scientists refer to Africans. Alas, those attitudes still remain–Africans, Asians, and the poor in general are still considered expendable when it comes to testing new drugs/vaccines.
Several of you have raised the question of whether or not the posthumous editing I describe is simply imposing our own cultural standards on writers of the past.
Well, no.
First, I’d hope that racism and antisemitism are not topics we’re going to reconsider in the future. Second, clear thinking people have always realized they’re wrong. In 1757, British thinker Stephen Fovargue argued in A New Catalogue of Vulgar Error that prejudice against people over their skin color was “so absurd, that I must beg Leave to quit the Subject, till some one has convinced me, that a white Horse is better than a black one.”
Dave, I read through all the comments and the take-away for me relates to my own writing an added Black-American, secondary character, into my sequel. The main character takes a stand, because as the author, I was never a racist back in the 1960s. The Black-American character is a musician, a very good one, an asset to the band the main character plays in. He becomes a friend and a support as a back-up singer or the main character. Sly and the Family Stone band had black and white singers, which wasn’t that usual at that time in 1969. Let’s see what my editor and sensitivity reader have to say with the first draft in February 2024. Thanks for this most interesting topic. Christine
I’m one of those that want to read the original book, the way the author wrote it with all their prejudices and what we see as off kilter views. Most of those were the views of a big chunk of the people back then. And we need to see it, read it, and understand it. And from your comments on ‘Gone With the Wind’ you have no understanding of the difference in house slaves versus field slaves and what she wrote wasn’t all that uncommon feelings back then.
I have never been a racist or one to put down other cultures, but the overly sensitive today are making it more difficult to write reality from today or the past for fear or offending someone–like the person who was offended when I had a black doctor taking care of a white woman who stays with his family for a couple of months. I saw nothing wrong with it, but she and several others did.
I’ve come to the conclusion that you will always be offensive to someone, so don’t worry about it and write what you want.