Opinion

21st-century editors should keep their hands off 20th-century books

But it’s a threat to free expression, to historical honesty and, indeed, to readers themselves for contemporary editors to comb through works of fiction written at different moments and rewrite them for today’s mind-set, particularly with little explanation of process or limiting principles. The trend raises uncomfortable questions about authorship and authenticity, and it ignores the reality that texts are more than consumer goods or sources of entertainment in the present. They are also cultural artifacts that attest to the moment in which they were written — the good and the bad.

This is not to say that applying these principles is easy. Some changes are understandable, and publishers should consider how to address flagrantly offensive language, particularly in books young children might read. Doing so is not some new “woke” phenomenon, as conservative critics often insist; nor does it necessarily amount to “censorship,” as writers such as Salman Rushdie have contended. The original title of Christie’s “And Then There Were None,” first published in 1939, contained a racial expletive. The title appeared in Britain until the 1980s, but no American edition of the book has ever borne it.

Moreover, language is not static; it continues to evolve after a book is published in ways an author likely never anticipated. The estate of Ursula K. Le Guin recently authorized the publisher of her Catwings series to change words such as “dumb,” “lame,” stupid” and “queer” in seven instances across three books. In common parlance, the word “queer” now means something different than it did when Catwings was first published in 1988. The estate determined that changing the language was necessary to ensure the author’s point comes across.

But, in general, the best way to respond to language that some or most readers would find inappropriate is not with unexplained revisions but to surround original works with context, in the form of critical introductions as well as annotations in new editions, wherever possible. It’s urgent to explain, in introductions and scholarly comments, why certain words are harmful; about a given author’s personal biases and politics; and how each shaped their view of the world. In most cases, no one gains from effacing the originals; all that accomplishes is risking the creation of another text altogether, one that tells readers about their own times and little about the moment in which a particular text emerged.

In a new edition of Christie’s “Death on the Nile” (1937), all mentions of the word “natives” now read “locals.” In one scene, in which a wealthy British woman gazes out from a cruise ship heading down the Nile, she observes a group of Egyptian children on the riverbank. “They come back and stare, and stare,” she notes, “and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children.” The new version contains only the following: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”

The editors would have people read “Death on the Nile” without the imprint of British colonialism and the racist worldview it inspired, including in Christie herself. That history matters: The novel is an Orientalist fantasy of discovery in an untamed former colony. That the characters speak in a certain way is a testament to the brutality of their worldview, a brutality readers cannot risk forgetting.

Meanwhile, the estate of Dahl, acquired by Netflix in 2021, has begun collaborating with Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin, on new versions of his novels that take out any language related to race, gender or appearance. This is motivated in part by revelations about Dahl’s virulent antisemitism, for which the estate has formally apologized.

But the changes that have been made so far border on caricatural. Augustus Gloop, one of the most memorable characters in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” is no longer described as “fat.” Now, he is simply “enormous” — as if “enormous” is less pejorative. The editors are also making the texts more gender neutral. In “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Oompa Loompas are no longer “small men”; they are now “small people.” Likewise, in “James and the Giant Peach,” the “Cloud Men” are now “Cloud People.”

There is no denying Dahl’s antisemitism, of which any reader should be made aware in an introduction or biographical note. But reclassifying Augustus Gloop from “fat” to “enormous” hardly addresses the author’s bigotry. Instead, it responds to a complicated question — what to make of an author’s work when that author was a bigot — with superficial changes to beloved texts that fail to help readers come to terms with Dahl’s dark legacy. In the process, they deny readers an opportunity to reckon with — and learn from — texts that offer both modern-day relevance and windows into the past.

In the case of Fleming’s Bond novels, the rewriting is more substantial. In one scene in “Live and Let Die,” the dashing and debonair Bond walks into a nightclub in swinging Harlem. The original text reads that the audience in the club that night was “grunting like pigs at the trough.” The new version reads, “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.” The new version contains neither a simile as Fleming’s original does nor any attempt to describe the audience members. This is not striking a certain word; this is the imposition of a different literary voice. Who, in the end, is the author, Fleming or the sensitivity reader?

Literature is often meant to be provocative. Stripping it of any potential to offend dilutes its strength, especially in a moment when there is a concerted effort in this country to limit what can be read and taught. Publishers need not reprint books with no acknowledgment of potentially offensive contents. They can treat the publication of such texts as opportunities to explain why they read the way they do, in introductions and in footnotes. And, if publishers see little option but to change wording, they should at least explain to readers what they are changing and why.