The Dahl-Christie Paradox: Hypocrites, Readers and Editors

In the Telegraph, permanently outraged Simon Heffer has found a new cause wit which to beat his 'cancel culture' drum: the editing of Roald Dahl's children's books to remove 'offensive' words and phrases.

It calls to mind that stunning poem by Charles Baudelaire, which contains the famous phrase borrowed by Eliot in The Waste Land, referring to the Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!
Au Lecteur (To the Reader) by Charles Baudelaire (fleursdumal.org)

Here he is, summoning up the Orwellian nightmare we live in-

"What is it about the past that some young people find unbearable? After all, no one is expecting them to live through it. Indeed, some of us who did find the present infinitely worse. The vandalism of Roald Dahl’s writings for children by “sensitivity readers” to make them “suitable”, has brought the wickedness of rewriting, or eliminating, the past and evidence of it to the forefront of our discourse. It would also have Dahl (with whom I once spent an evening: shrinking violet he was not) turning in his grave. Sadly, it goes far beyond children’s books, and indeed books generally: films, statues, television programmes, indeed, whole historical ideas must now be modified to please ill-educated and inexperienced tyros, if they are allowed into the public arena at all. Are we really so delicate? Why tolerate this lunacy?George Orwell’s chilling prediction has come true – it’s time to make a stand (yahoo.com)

The lunacy he speaks of is hardly new, indeed, even as I write the man hired by Rupert Murdoch to tell lies on Fox News and distort history, Tucker Carlson, has been handed hours of footage of the violent insurrection of Jan 6th, presumably so he can re-write history to prove whatever point he wishes to make to support the insurrection or make some idiotic claim like 'it wasn't that bad', or 'the FBI let it happen' and so on.

More to the point, we have been here before. Consider the case of the notorious, but hugely popular crime fiction Agatha Christie published in 1939 whose title has changed numerous times because the original is considered so offensive. Ten Little ***** ...Christie is an old relic of Empire for whom foreigners were 'dark', 'mysterious' 'untrustworthy' and so on, be they Jews, Arabs, Greeks, or just Black. The links will help you explore this peculiar book with one link arguing it activates a primitive feeling in humans that is at the root of the book or the stories' popularity.

Enjoy?


The Paris Review - The History Behind Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None”

Revisiting the Racism that Inspired One of the World’s Bestselling Crime Novels | by Joel Eisenberg | Writing For Your Life | Medium