15 Comments

This is really bad. Boggis. Bunce. Bean.

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A lot of Enid Blyton went out of print because people have no wish to expose their children to Golliwogs or normalised corporal punishment. Be grateful to the good people who are preserving Roald Dahl for future generations by gently rephrasing offensive and pejorative language. It would be much easier to just stop publishing it altogether.

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With respect, Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl are not the same. Blyton's works were littered with racial epithets. Dahl's work is now shorn of dangerous words such as... 'fat'.

A politically minded body adding politically minded text to a work is not 'gentle rephrasing.' It's literally re-writing a work with a political goal in mind.

Nor would it be easier to stop publishing it altogether. They've bought the works for $600m!

I appreciate your comments. Thank you for reading.

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"A samsara of eternal neurosis" gets my five star rating for favorite phrasing. Hard to imagine anything so arrogant as nameless little plebs editing the canon.

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'Nameless little plebs' is close to 'nameless little horrors' — another Thurber noted down somewhere on this desk...

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Feb 20, 2023Liked by Christopher Gage

Are these the only people that can publish Dahl's stuff? If so he should have been more careful of who he left in charge. Also lived experience, are there unlived experiences? Dreamed experiences, delusional experiences, experiemces that I didn't experience but someone told me they experienced?

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Just when I thought they had ruined, vandalized, insulted or desecrated everything that has ever made my life fun, enjoyable, meaningful and interesting. Screwing with The Witches is especially messed up. Though it's not surprising either: good old Roald's creativity may well be too raw, palpable and amazing for this processed, sanitized, vanilla era. And infantilized too, as Gombrowicz predicted.

Dahl wasn't the first: Dr. Seuss and Laura Ingalls Wilder have already been targeted. But he sure won't be the last. Buy a safe and guard your children's books if you have kids or grandkids down the road if they are "old school" stories. If they aren't coming for your children physically, they sure are coming for their soul cultivation tools - and, by default, the souls themselves.

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Feb 20, 2023Liked by Christopher Gage

And when she is done work for the day, Alexandra Strick jumps in her vehicle to enjoy her favourite track of the decade - Cardi B's "Wet Ass Pussy".

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In B-minor, of course!

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Feb 20, 2023Liked by Christopher Gage

Sadly, Shakespeare is next. There is nothing the left touches that it doesn't destroy.

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Feb 20, 2023Liked by Christopher Gage

Enjoyed the read. Keep up the great work.

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Sex in a wetsuit isn't so bad ..... but you feel weird afterwards

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Ha. You learn something new, every day!

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I felt a connection with those living out their fantasies in wetsuits

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Living Their Truth...

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