23 Comments

As usual, you cut right to the heart of the matter. Thank you!

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Feb 20, 2023Liked by Lincoln Michel

This was excellent.

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Ah yes the profits. Still remember when someone did a Shakespeare edition written with emojis.

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Can't it be about both? Does the profit motive make the threat to free speech more or less benign? It should be shocking to us that a company could believe it would be profitable to alter a text along these lines.

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I agree with you 100 percent. This is madness and utter stupidity, but it is not censorship.

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These corporate “editors” are not writers. The fact they think they can change art on a profitable whim shows they have no understanding of the subtleties of real creativity. And where does this end? What if this next happens to music, sculpture, photography?

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The worst part is that while Dahl isn't exactly the best wordsmith, he works by being so utterly over-the-top. Kids revel in the casual cruelty of so many passages as part of the life they live, even if they were never in an English boarding school or poorhouse. "Great flabby folds of fat bulged out" to "Great folds bulged out" kills the alliteration without actually changing the tone at all, like eliding so many adjectives. It's just... pointless.

In the end, even if they have to recall and pulp every copy, they'll probably still call it a win, though. People will remember and buy the originals with all the dramatic attention, especially when the "revert" comes.

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To quote the Australian columnist

Joe Hildebrand:

Who killed Roald Dahl? Everyone.

Everyone who didn’t stand up for free speech when it mattered. Everyone who didn’t stand up against censorship when it mattered. Everyone who cheered on while statues were pulled down and history was whitewashed. That’s who.

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A thought out piece with balanced viewpoints

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Lebron James does not like this

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