Nutty Idiots

A friend recently went on a book-buying spree as an act of protest. A couple of hours after setting out to a used bookstore, she appeared outside my office. Her arms were piled with children’s books by Roald Dahl. She invited me to pick out one that I might like – I went with Matilda. Here it sits on my desk, in all its originally-published glory (1988), from Puffin Books.

On the first page there are the usual endorsements, including one from The New York Times Book Review: “Roald Dahl has done it again … Matilda will surely go straight to children’s hearts.” More interestingly, perhaps, there is a personal inscription on the inside cover, written to one of its past owners: “To Charles, To many wonderful nights of eating – I mean reading. Love, Kristen.” Perhaps Charles was a chocolate cake lover!

As you may have heard, Puffin Books has decided that the New York Times and Kristen don’t know what they are talking about. A book that could once be enjoyed curled up in bed – a book that could touch the hearts of boys and girls – has apparently become an offence. The Baltimore Sun, in 1988, declared Matilda to be “Dahl at his outrageous best.” Apparently the sensitivity readers hired by Puffin think that Matilda is Dahl at his outrageous worst! And so they have taken to re-writing his offensive words.

The banished words from Dahl’s books would include “ugly” and “white” (as in pale) and “fat” and “female” and “delinquents.”  Where once there were “eight nutty little idiots,” in Matilda, now there are “eight nutty little boys.” Why it’s ok for boys to be nutty, but not idiots, I can’t quite figure out!

His own words

The backlash was fast and furious, which is welcome in a world that often just rolls with these punches. Even the Prime Minister of England got in the act. Through a spokesperson, Rishi Sunak declared: “It’s important that works of literature and works of fiction are preserved and not airbrushed.” Well yes, that’s true. We shouldn’t pretend that an author and his work are something they are not. (There is lots to dislike about Dahl, including anti-Semitic comments he made while alive.) Readers should be able to decide whether they want to read or recommend an author, rather than some false representation of the author.

There is more to it than this, though. The publisher’s impulse to alter Dahl’s books is an impulse to make the world in its own image. They were trying to prevent readers from being surprised and offended by the world of the story, trying to make it predictable and safe. It’s an impulse to banalisation, to use a great French word that indicates our making things banal. We do this by limiting what others may say and who they may be, which is entirely inconsistent, of course, with Dahl’s literary intention and accomplishment.  

Another way to put this is to say that Puffin’s sensitivity readers think parents and their kids can’t be trusted – can’t be trusted to respond appropriately to diverse personalities and values. Aren’t strong enough to respond well to any hint of insult. Since parents and young readers can’t be trusted, so the logic goes, we must give them books that have been scrubbed of the inappropriate.

As my book-buying, protesting friend said: “We all might have to relate to an ugly, horse-faced uncle who sometimes says inappropriate things.” (Ok, ok … she actually just said “an uncle”). But if we can and should figure out how to relate to that uncle, then we can and should be able to read Roald Dahl in his own words.