From Lady C to Augustus Gloop

In my second year at grammar school, I decided to become a school librarian. There were several perks to being a librarian. For instance, we had a small kitchenette annexed to the library - about the size of a boot cupboard, really - in which we could make tea and toast at break-time. Another perk: we could easily ‘check out’ as many books as we liked. But the greatest benefit of being a member of this select band was that we had unfettered access to the ‘black books’ contained within the ‘forbidden section’ - a glass-fronted locked cabinet that contained various volumes to which access was carefully controlled. Unless you were a librarian, that is.

What books lay within this inner sanctum, this Unholy of Unholies? There were various graphic illustrated sex education manuals (well, graphic to the mind of a twelve-year-old lad enrolled at an all-boys grammar school in 1970s Britain: hardly sensational stuff by today’s standards). More interesting was the slang dictionary of the English language, which I eagerly scrutinised for the plethora of intriguing words that, curiously, were omitted from our standard school dictionaries. Restricted access or not, certain pages were blatantly more well-thumbed than others. Which was also the case with the most notorious tome that had been deposited amongst the other ‘black books’: DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley's Lover. By the time I came to read it, almost twenty years had passed since the famous prosecution of Penguin Books for publishing this infamous work: perhaps the greatest cause célèbre in the battle against censorship in the 20th century.

The chief prosecutor in that famous trial, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, had become a laughing stock by suggesting that this was not the kind of book ‘you would wish your wife or servants to read.’ Britain was on the cusp of a social and sexual revolution that would shortly consign Griffith-Jones’ world-view to the dustbin of history. He wasn’t alone, of course, in being unprepared for this; as the great Philip Larkin mournfully expressed a few years later in his poem Annus Mirabilis:

Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me)

Between the end of the Chatterley ban

And the Beatles’ first LP.

Once I had read the book for myself, I must confess to a certain disappointment. It wasn’t a patch on other works by Lawrence, like Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow or Women in Love. Yes: here in the text of a novel, for the first time, I was able to read some of those ‘forbidden words’ I’d previously been looking up in the aforementioned slang dictionary. But, on reflection, I didn’t really understand what all the fuss had been about.

In the same year that I read Lady C, I also read George Orwell’s Animal Farm, followed soon after by his masterpiece, 1984. What had been a vague unease with the idea of censorship now hardened into an unyielding opposition to it. More than forty years on, my feelings on the matter are stronger than ever. As Winston Smith, Orwell’s protagonist in the dystopian nightmare world of 1984 writes, in his diary:

‘Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.’

Revisionist views of literature, art and music are no less dangerous than revisionist views of history. And, in my view, the rewriting of Roald Dahl (yes, I got to the subject of this Challenge in the end…) is nothing short of monstrous. Or - to use a very Dahlish word - beastly.

Less than a week has passed since I first read, in an article published in The Guardian on February 18th, that new editions of Dahl’s work had been published (in which, amongst other things, Augustus Gloop is now ‘enormous’ rather than ‘fat’; Miss Trunchbull is now a ‘most formidable woman’ rather than ‘most formidable female’; and Mrs Twit is no longer ‘ugly’). And I’m still fuming.

It seems ironic to me that these changes have been made by Dahl’s publisher Puffin, itself an imprint of Penguin - the very publishing house that was once willing to champion DH Lawrence in the battle against censorship. How the mighty have fallen!

Now, it’s important to distinguish between changes of language that might be required for the purposes of understanding and clarity, as opposed to alterations motivated by a desire to bring the thinking of the past into line with whatever happens to be the prevalent attitudes of the current day. Clearly, these are the principles that should be applied when translating from one language to another. Even then, there remains the clear understanding that reading the original text in the original language of composition is always to be desired, if possible.

My understanding of the New Testament, for example, has been greatly enhanced by my reading the text in the original Greek, as I and a few friends have regularly been doing together on a weekly basis for over four years now. CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and various friends once did exactly the same, almost a century ago, when they gathered week by week to read the Icelandic Sagas in their original tongue, as part of the Koalbiters’ Club (a precursor of sorts to the later Inklings). Much as I love Tolkien’s masterful translations of some of the foundational texts of Middle and Old English (not least that superlative epic poem, Beowulf), I know it cannot compare with the original. If I really want to appreciate Beowulf fully, then I should learn Anglo-Saxon (I have tried, actually!); and then I should read the original text - a text that has not changed for a thousand years. But I shudder to think what text of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will be available for future readers in a thousand years time; and how similar (or not) it will be to what Dahl originally wrote.

Translating is not, therefore, the same as rewriting. Nor is adapting. I mentioned, in the previous paragraph, JRR Tolkien - surely one of the greatest philologists and wordsmiths of the 20th century. Tolkien’s greatest work, The Lord of the Rings, has been adapted for radio, television and film on numerous occasions. Sometimes, these have been faithful adaptations (such as the wonderful BBC radio version, made in 1981). Two decades later, the Oscar-winning Peter Jackson film adaptation worked under different constraints from those of a radio studio, albeit with a far greater budget; yet that too was also a loving and thoughtful production. Both productions were faced with hard decisions about what to omit, what to retain and what to re-purpose from the source material. The large-scale action scenes were, of course, realised with far greater effect in the film adaptation that would ever have been possible within the confines of a radio studio. By contrast, the radio drama retained much more of Tolkien’s poetry from the epic; a much-loved element of the novel that many of the film’s aficionados, like myself, nevertheless missed from Jackson’s version of the tale. Interestingly, both adaptations completely removed the Tom Bombadil sub-plot (wisely so, in my opinion - some of course will disagree). But I have a great deal of respect for both adaptations, making the very best use as they did of their contrasting dramatic forms.

However, the less said about Amazon’s recent television series The Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power, the better…

So, adapting is not the same as rewriting either.

What, then, about rewriting? What are the ground rules for this?

One word: Don’t.

Or - to expand slightly - in my view, there is generally only one person who has the authority, should they choose to do so, of rewriting (as opposed to translating or adapting) a work of literature. And that is the original author. Which in the case of the deceased Roald Dahl is now impossible.

It’s interesting to note that very few authors ever do succumb to the temptation - or the pressure - to rewrite their work, once finally published. One of the few recent exceptions I can think of to this is the fantasy author Neil Gaiman, who has published several slightly-revised ‘preferred texts’ after-the-fact of his original published works. There’s also the interesting example of science fiction writer Douglas Adams, who in his own lifetime (let’s forget posthumous travesties like the film adaptation) was creatively involved in several different versions of his most famous work, The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, in radio, TV, LP and novel formats. Sometimes these versions diverged from one another in quite significant ways. So, which one is ‘canon’? The short answer: All of them!

Generally, unlike Gaiman and Adams, most authors have resisted the temptation to revisit their published works; and that isn’t at all surprising, really, when you think about it. When one considers the amount of time and energy that is lovingly poured into crafting their works, you can see why authors, once finally reaching that cathartic point - It is finished - would generally rather move onto the next work, or otherwise take a well-earned rest. And this is still the case, perhaps even more so, if they are aware of the limitations and deficiencies of their work. Returning to Tolkien, the preface to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings contains these remarkably honest words:

The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short.

Amen to his last statement.

Sometimes - before publication - authors, dramatists and composers expend considerable energy on rewrites. They cannot bring their work to completion. They set the work aside - hoping to return to it, perhaps. Or sometimes admitting to themselves forlornly that it will never reach that final form. Afraid, even, to finish it. To say: ‘There! It’s done.’ For examples, think of The Silmarillion (Tolkien again). Or Schubert’s famously unfinished 8th symphony. And sometimes Death himself intervenes: none more poignantly so than in the case of Mozart, in the midst of writing his Requiem. Lacrimosa dies illa / Qua resurget ex favilla /Judicandus homo reus (‘Full of tears will be that day / When from the ashes shall arise / The guilty man to be judged’): possibly the final words of the Requiem score that he worked on.

(Let’s not get into whether unfinished works should be completed by other hands - even hands as respectful as Mozart’s pupil Süssmayr, or Tolkien’s son Christopher. That’s another controversy for another time.)

But Roald Dahl indisputedly completed many works. Many of them have become beloved classics of children’s literature. He did not feel the need to rewrite them. With what audacity should lesser writers (and publishers looking for a ‘fast buck’ from ‘new’ editions) feel the need to do so? It’s not ‘artistic reinterpretation’. It’s not reviewing the language ‘to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today’ (as the publisher's blurb maintains). It’s cultural vandalism - pure and simple.

Yes, there are plenty of controversial works in the vast canon of literature. Are we going to raise the age of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, or Nabokov’s Lolita, because they make us feel uncomfortable these days? Are we going to rewrite Huckleberry Finn, removing from Twain's work every use of the ‘N-word’? That’s the logical next step - it would seem - from trying to tell us that Augustus Gloop might be ‘enormous’, but he certainly isn’t ‘fat’.

Some commentators have suggested that Roald Dahl is being retrospectively ‘punished’ for his well-documented anti-Semitic views. Well, again, I don’t want to go too far down another rabbit hole, that of so-called ‘cancel culture’; but altering or invalidating another person’s work because of some supposed moral shortcoming in the artist - real or otherwise - is unbelievably facile. Caravaggio was, possibly, a murderer. He also happens to be one of my favourite artists. The late Eric Gill’s sculptures have become enormously controversial recently, in view of discoveries about his personal life. But what, then, about film directors like Roman Polanski? Or the possible proclivities of Lewis Caroll and JM Barrie? Or poets like Jean Genet, once a petty thief; or the perpetually inebriated Swansea poet, Dylan Thomas? What about drug-using novelists like William Burroughs? Or even - in the current moment, most controversially - JK Rowling? Can I divorce the art from the artist? Should I? To what extent does the artist inform the art? Should one appreciate the music, or the novel, in and for itself? Complex questions, to be sure: but the unyielding orthodoxies of ‘cancel culture’ seem to be a most illiberal response to me.

‘Ah, but Roald Dahl is a children’s author’ - comes back the rejoinder. ‘Corrupting the young - we can’t have that!’ Well, I’m certainly not dignifying that criticism with a response. The artificial division of literature into ‘children’s’ and ‘young adult’ and ‘adult’ categories is something I began to reject long before I took an interest in Lady C and the other ‘black books’ in our school library.

If you think a work lacks literary merit - don’t read it. If as a publisher you think it’s had its day - don’t reprint it. Altering the text to suit current-day identity politics, without the author’s express permission, is tantamount to pissing on their grave.

Good art should entertain us, challenge us, inspire us, and even, sometimes, disturb us. Think of one of Picasso’s most famous works - Guernica. It contains some shocking imagery - such as a gored horse, screaming women, a dead baby, a dismembered soldier, and flames. It was meant to shock. It was the artist’s response to the Spanish Civil War and the Fascist destruction of the Basque town of Guernica in 1937. Are we to judge Picasso’s work as too troubling for consideration today? Of course not.

But, then again, are we step by step remorselessly heading for the kind of world that EM Forster warned about in his extraordinary short story, The Machine Stops? In this remarkable work, first published in 1928 (!), the author predicts the rise of the internet (yes, really), human dependency upon machines, and the death of scientific inquiry and artistic imagination. In the story, we are introduced to a Lecturer, an ‘expert’ in French history, who to ‘tremendous applause’ declaims the following to his enraptured audience:

‘There will come a generation that has gone beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation “seraphically free from taint of personality”, which will see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as they would like it to have happened, but as it would have happened had it taken place in the days of the Machine.’

Sorry Huxley - sorry Orwell. Forster got there a few years before you.

I’m going to give the final word to Salman Rushdie: a man who appreciates the cost of creative integrity, and the dangers of censorship, far, far more than most of us ever will. He posted his reaction to the brouhaha about Dahl on Twitter a few days ago. He wrote:

‘Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.’

Spot on. Now I really need to get around to reading The Satanic Verses.