Roald Dahl censored? It seems rather that he was castrated posthumously – by his British publisher Puffin and his heirs. Hundreds of passages from his children’s books have been modified or deleted for commercial reasons by a team of sensitivity readers from the UK organisation Inclusive Minds. Words like “fat,” ugly,” and “stupid” have been removed, an “attractive woman” has been changed to “a kind, middle-aged woman,” and the machines at Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory are no longer black in color.
In this way, the work of this brilliant, humorous provocateur in children’s literature is stripped of any sting. It becomes obedient and predictable, in short, exactly what the wayward Dahl wanted to prevent. If we follow this trend in the Netherlands, there will also be a few things to expect from the contrarian Annie MG Schmidt. She wrote in ‘Leeszaal’: ‘I supply spiritual food to madams/ who come in and love nothing but/ the very latest love books.’ Can you still write so scornfully about women, or shall we just make ‘people’ of those many ‘ladies’ at Schmidt? – then we will be rid of all problems.
And what about E. du Perron who in The country of origin wrote: “A native woman can be repulsive for two reasons: her sirihmond and the coconut oil in her hair; the former was forbidding or avoidable, but the latter seemed indispensable, and the recovery of that air on a pillow might make a European realize how low he had sunk.”
A bad passage, yes, but there are more masterpieces with bad passages. Ban it anyway because there are enough masterpieces without bad passages?
What all those interventions, like Dahl’s, have in common is a complete lack of respect for the work of the writer
That is how we automatically end up with Gerard Reve and the infamous quote from a letter to Simon Carmiggelt: “I am very much in favor of those beautiful peoples becoming completely independent as soon as possible, and costing us nothing more, so that we all have a bag full of put mirrors and beads on the tjoekie tjoekie steamer, one way Takki Takki Jungle, sir!”
It seems like racism veiled with irony, and it could very well be, although Reve has denied it. So delete it or leave it to the reader to decide whether to laugh or cry – or maybe both? So far no action has been taken, but if we leave it to the self-proclaimed language police in the name of the zeitgeist, we shouldn’t be surprised when Reve’s publishing house will soon have to answer for itself.
What all those interventions, like Dahl’s, have in common is a complete lack of respect for the work of the writer. He is only allowed to write wrinkle-free, risk-free texts.
Samuel Beckett once demanded that his play Waiting for Godot only to be played by men. “Fuck Beckett!” cried the programmer of the Groningen student theatre, and together with his board he canceled the performance that did not fit in with the university’s diversity policy. That same week, writer Jamal Ouariachi distanced himself from his play Emperor without clothes because a theater company messed up the play.
Dahl, Beckett, Ouariachi – how hard it is that texts need writers.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of February 22, 2023