Not wishing to pass judgment on the merits or demerits of bowdlerising Roald Dahl’s work (Rishi Sunak joins criticism of changes to Roald Dahl books, 20 February), it is a shame that Puffin didn’t do more to preserve Dahl’s rhythms when tinkering with his verse. The lines from James and the Giant Peach – “Aunt Spik-er was thin as a wire / And dry as a bone, on-ly dri-er” – are pleasing because of that steady rhythm, with two unaccented words between each strong stress.
In its place Puffin offers: “Aunt Spik-er was much of the same / And de-serves half of the blame.” The lack of any gap between “deserves” and “half” means you have to force your own pause there to keep time, and it throws the rhythm out of whack. The result isn’t a high crime, but it isn’t Dahl, either. I will add that you could try to clean up a book like The Twits, but it’s going to remain a horrible and mean-spirited story.
Chris Townsend
Fellow in English literature, Christ’s College, Cambridge University
• The Roald Dahl Story Company says it has updated the books “so they can continue to be enjoyed by all”, but maintain the “sharp-edged spirit” of the originals.
Some of us never enjoyed or celebrated Roald Dahl’s books, including his eminent contemporary, the children’s author Rosemary Sutcliff, who was my godmother. As she pointed out to me when I was young, Dahl’s books are not so much “sharp-edged” as mean and nasty. Furthermore, Dahl is also on the record as having expressed abhorrent antisemitic views. No amount of judicious editing can remove for some of us the mean spirit embodied in his stories, nor eradicate the stain of antisemitism.
Anthony Lawton
Church Langton, Leicestershire
• Librarians are, as ever, at the forefront of free speech and opposed to banning books and proscribing authors. There has been much debate on the censorship of not just Roald Dahl but also Tintin titles, Enid Blyton and David Walliams, among others. The School Library Association, an independent body that works towards all schools having a library, has suggested the following wording for stickering books with outdated language: “This title contains content of its time which may offend.” Let readers make up their own minds.
Ilona Jasiewicz
London
• In Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl, the author Donald Sturrock quotes a letter in which Roald Dahl calls my father “a loud-mouthed Jewish gent of the worst type”. His view changed during an emergency when my father showed up to take Dahl, his wife Patricia Neal and their baby Theo to the hospital.
“He was the sort of friend who would drive through a storm to help,” Dahl later said.
Isn’t it better to reveal the truth of a man’s transformation than to gloss over his initial bigotry for fear of being politically incorrect? Those who are offended should stop meddling with the literary canon.
Jenna Orkin
New York City, US
• I read an unedited edition of Robinson Crusoe as a child, at my grandma’s house. It included a gruesome account of the launching of canoes over the trussed, living bodies of prisoners. An asterisk directed that “when reading aloud to children, this passage should be omitted”. Of course I then read it with very close attention.
Valerie Smith
Harrogate, North Yorkshire
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