Salman Rushdie slams ‘absurd censorship’ of Roald Dahl’s books
The children’s classics now have gender-neutral Oompa-Loompas and the word ‘fat’ is out after advice from ‘sensitivity readers’.
Novelist Salman Rushdie has condemned the decision to make hundreds of changes to Roald Dahl’s children’s books as “absurd censorship”.
The British newspaper The Telegraph reports that Puffin, the children’s imprint of the British publisher Penguin Books, will remove many of Dahl’s nastier character descriptions, to ensure that the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today.”
“Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship,” Rushdie, a Booker Prize-winning author, wrote on Twitter, adding that Puffin Books and the Dahl Estate “should be ashamed”.
Rushdie was stabbed in New York last year. The 1989 Iranian fatwa against his novel The Satanic Verses made him one of the most famous writers on Earth.
Following the novel’s publication, Dahl wrote a letter to The Times, branding Rushdie a “dangerous opportunist” who “knew exactly what he was doing and cannot plead otherwise”.
Puffin has hired sensitivity readers, who review manuscripts before publication to check for offensive stereotypes or language and to suggest edits to Dahl’s writing about gender, weight, race, and mental health.
Extensive edits have been made to the descriptions of characters’ physical appearances. The words “fat” and “ugly” have been cut entirely from every new edition. Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is no longer fat but “enormous”, and the menacing Mrs Twit of The Twits is no longer “ugly and beastly” but just “beastly”.
Some characters have gone through a gender-neutral makeover. Oompa-Loompas, once described as “small men” are now “small people” — as are the “Cloud-Men” in James and the Giant Peach.
Entire passages have also been added. In The Witches, under a paragraph detailing that the witches are bald underneath their wigs, is a new sentence: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”
Where Dahl originally wrote that a witch posing as a human may work “as a cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman” which, in the updated version, has been altered to a woman “working as a top scientist or running a business.”
Rushdie is the latest literary giant to weigh in on the revision debate. On Twitter, Comedian David Baddiel posted a screenshot comparing the 2001 version of The Twits to a revised version. The 2001 version reads “You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth”, the new edit takes out the reference to a “double chin”.
“The problem with the Dahl bowdlerisation is it has no logical consistency,” Baddiel commented. “Here, double chin has been cut, presumably to avoid fat shaming. But what about wonky nose or crooked teeth shaming? Once you start on this path you can end up with blank pages.”
The problem with the Dahl bowdlerisation is it has no logical consistency. Here, double chin has been cut, presumably to avoid fat shaming. But what about wonky nose or crooked teeth shaming? Once you start on this path you can end up with blank pages. pic.twitter.com/BKbArYIGrh
— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) February 18, 2023
US author Michael Shellenberger also criticised the changes as “totalitarian censorship” that should be “broadly condemned.”
Succession star Brian Cox said Dahl’s texts should be “left alone”, and likened the censorship to McCarthyism. “Roald Dahl was a great satirist, apart from anything else,” Cox told Times Radio. “His children’s work is full of satirical edge. It’s disgraceful. It’s a kind of form of McCarthyism, this woke culture, which is absolutely wanting to reinterpret everything and redesign and say, ‘oh, that didn’t exist’. Well, it did exist. We have to acknowledge our history.”
In a statement, The Roald Dahl Story Co. said that the review of Dahl’s writing began in 2020, and the tweaks were “small and carefully considered” and that the review was “not unusual.”
“We want to ensure that Roald Dahl’s wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today,” the statement read. “When publishing new print runs of books written years ago, it’s not unusual to review the language used, alongside updating other details including a book’s cover and page layout.”
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