On the New Roald Dahl Editions
Written in March, 2023.
Storytellers have been adapting stories since language began. It’s in our very make up to infuse the story with our own personal bias. When I’m tasked to read bedtime stories and the book handed to me is by the Brothers Grimm, you can be sure that Uncle James is going to skip and spin his own version of those tortured tales. And, for the sake of the little ones, I may even be prepared to wake those stories up a bit, by turning witches into femmes who, through their own freedom of choice, are now happily childless older women. Maybe my version is closer to the truth.
We now learn that Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus – or Nero, as we’ve come to know him – was not a demonic and paranoid pyromaniac, as history taught us for millennia. As it turns out, he was actually your common-or-garden variety of Roman emperor. This is sad news for me. I rather liked the previous lurid version. I’d get a dopamine rush just thinking about our antihero tiptoeing his way around Rome by night setting fire to the market and torching an entire city. Boy, if only I were in Rome at the time and still an angry young man, Nero and I would have been kindred spirits.
Then there’s the Quran… Well, I couldn’t relate to it. I tried, but nope – not for me. However, through what can only be called divine intervention, I was led to the writings of the Persian Shafi’ite poet Shams Tabriz and his student Mewlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi – or simply Rumi. Distilling the tenets summarised in Quranic verse, their poetry speaks of a world infused with love and is, in my view, some of the most exquisite literature in history. And what do Muslim fundamentalists think of their Sufi kin? Well, they’re deemed heretics, of course. One can’t go ‘adapting’ a foundational source text to serve one’s own agenda – of course not.
As for the Bible – well, most Christians I know take the Old Testament with a pinch of salt and tend to focus on the New Testament, which was consolidated into a single text about 500 years ago. Hmm, that sure was a while back… Maybe we’re due for a Newer Testament to align with current social values.
There is only one single surviving playscript by William Shakespeare – and it is the manuscript of a minor work not always included in the Shakespearean canon. How do we know the masterpieces weren’t written on the fly by the actors themselves – a little tweak here and a little tweak there? The first folio was published ten years after the bard’s death! Please, I’ve spent plenty of time with these folk. Actors change their lines!
As for my favourite Shakespeare for Dummies – well, now that I think about it, I take exception to being called a dummy. I was born that way and demand a rewrite that is more respectful of my lot in life. Shakespeare for People Challenged by Elizabethan English would be less offensive. Hint, hint – something you might want to think about for future branding, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Our very own National Party were masters of social engineering. To buttress their warped agenda, they censored many books – for the public’s own good of course.
Get to the point, James! What do you think about the woke rewriting of Roald Dahl’s children’s books? Well, it’s quite simple for me, really. We’ve always changed stories; why stop now? Crack on, edit away. More importantly though, if you want to get hold of the unexpurgated version of James and the Giant Peach, pop on down to your local second-hand bookstore.
· * James Findlay runs a second-hand bookshop where he sells edited books, communist manifestos, woke books, National Party censored books and outright banned books.