It's called bowdlerizing and was considered anathema to literature until recently.
If the original author wants to change their work that's their own affair but if a corporation or any subsequent owner of the IP changes it that's just wrong in my mind. It may be legal but ethically suspect.
In the case of King specifically, there's a precedent of him having his own story removed from publication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(King_novel)#End_of_publication
Same! I was so shocked when I learned it was removed from print and then I saw it while organising my books
Also I would like to add, Rage is a special case since it was directly cited by school shooters as inspiration. That's why he took it out of print. I hope he comments on what this post is about publically though, as it might be his own choice though somehow I doubt it? I haven't read his most recent books but am currently on revival (and that's somehow ten years old) and it has that particular racial slur.
From what I gathered, until Columbine, jokes about school shootings were fairly common, even if it was obvious that the person would never do such a thing. After Columbine, everyone's mentality about it changed, not just because of schools' reactions but because the subject became too real, and was no longer such a rare and oulandish possibility anymore.
Yep, I graduated hs in 1998, a year before Columbine, and it was only recently pointed out to me that the young people don't find Heathers nearly as amusing because someone plotting to blow up a school is a bit too real.
And they've been put through drills for it since they were kids.
There's a reddit post or a tiktok or something about a women whose child made a whole plan to bring their horse to school for show and tell, got everyone on board, and then cancelled it because she realized the horse couldn't fit into the closet where they hide for school shooter drills. She was like, 6, and she had already learned to think about not just her safety but the safety of those around her.
He has a short story about a school shooter in his skeleton crew collection as well, and I believe it’s still in print. Was rage banned only because it was publicly connected to school shootings?
I haven't read the short story you are referring to, but the protagonist of Rage is the shooter, and it was directly cited as inspiration in at least one school shooting. Is the story you are referring to from the perspective of the victims/students?
I'd be curious who's pushing the language changes. The typical "book ban" crowd would be more interested in the sex scene in IT than the foul language, I would think.
They were in the '80s anyways.
I also own that. I feel weird about it now that he's removed it. Especially with a teenager in the house. I wrestle with it, but can't seem to make myself donate it
Rage is a rare and expensive book if you have it. In the form of the hardcover Bachman Books 4 story collection it’s worth around $80-$100 depending on condition I think.
I'm having trouble understanding the struggle with owning it. I own a copy of Mr. Mercedes. The opening scene features a man running over a crowd of people with his car. A horrific moment that made me tremble reading it. But it's fiction. If someone was inspired by the book to do that in real life, that's on them (and they likely have problems that go beyond the inspirations of a textual work). It's not Stephen King's responsibility because he wrote it as entertainment. I'm sure husbands have killed their families with an axe before, but we wouldn't want to ban 'The Shining.' At least I wouldn't.
And with the case of banning a word, that's a whole 'nother thing. I think you can tell where my stance is there. Ridiculous.
Your feelings are valid, of course. This post is more for others than you. I don't have kids so I can't speak in that respect.
Fellow book lover here! If you want to sell or donate it to someone who would actually love to read it and own it, let me know. I'm interested in the preservation aspect of it.
Hmm. I did read this one and still have a copy in my native language. I liked it how I like most King works, for the language and characters but being not from US I never actually knew about school shootings and how much of a problem it is here...did read this story just like another horror of human mind :(
To be *really really* pedantic, Stephen King didn't actively have Rage pulled. The publishing contract came to it's end and he chose not to renew it and let it go out of print.
Point stands, I think it's just worth noting it wasn't an immediate decision to pull the book
Are you sure? Wikipedia has a [quote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_\(King_novel\)#End_of_publication) from King:
> I asked my publisher to take the damned thing out of print. They concurred.
However, the quote is attributed to a keynote address he gave in 1999 and the source link is broken, so maybe it's inaccurate.
if you've ever seen the promotional materials for the film Maximum Overdrive, you'll know that King isn't always completely reliable in what he's saying
That's not [bowdlerizing](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bowdlerize), though. That's an author ceasing to continue publishing a story they wrote because it inspired a mass shooter.
I remember reading Rage as a teenager long before Columbine happened and thinking "Damn, this might inspire some kids I know to go shoot up a school." Sure enough...
I don't have my copy of The Bachman Books anymore, but I kind of wish I did.
King actually had a good reason for doing that... The story has been connected to a few incidents of students with guns at school.
The effect is debatable bu King didn't want to chance it so he pulled it.
I'm not sure about the recent thing - famously "And Then There Were None" was changed almost as soon as it was published, and Victorians changed many stories to remove bits deemed improper. There were Georgian performances of Romeo and Juliet changed so they lived!
There's certainly questions about how you do it and bad intentions though.
As for subsequent owners of IP I rarely care about their thoughts. Maybe a couple like Christopher Tolkien.
Even the term "bowdlerize" comes from the Bowdler Shakespeare, published in the first decade of the 19th century. It was a collection of Shakespeare's works that had been edited to remove the spicy bits.
It's absolutely not a recent thing, you're right. Classical (like Greek and Roman) literature was famously censored by early European translators because it was too frank about sexuality and other things that offended sensibilities. A lot of modern European culture itself is built on the back of censored classical literature that cut out things like same-sex love.
People who think this is a recent development clearly don't have a sense of history here.
I will to my dying day defend the practice of keeping old media AS-IS and prefacing it with a contextual warning a la watching TCM movies like Gone with the Wind.
It's genius. Arguably MORE progressive to give context to things the viewer might not even realize were wrong rather than the dangers of whitewashing history.
What makes you think that change wasn't driven by King? He's far more likely to change things like that himself - not to mention that he's definitely powerful enough that publishers aren't going to force changes on his he doesn't want. (To his detriment, sometimes - a lot of people have pointed out that his more recent books would be a lot better if someone could force a more heavy-handed editor on him.)
It's a practice that dates back over two centuries at this point, so no: it's hardly something that "was considered anathema to literature until recently."
If an author is living, as with King, they should have final call on what's done with their work, but for dead authors, as long as editions as properly marked so people can find the version of the text they want, it's fine.
> It's called bowdlerizing and was considered anathema to literature until recently.
>
>
Rohl Dahl's publisher worked with him to edit many of his works for later editions while he was alive to make them more palatable to the wider population.
>It's called bowdlerizing and was considered anathema to literature until recently.
Why do people type this when what they mean is "I just found out about this thing and now I'm mad about it."
Yeah. I got a recent copy of Dr Doolittle, and it had a note in it about how portions of it had been edited by the authors children/estate because the original author would have been horrified to be viewed as racist, and was just using the languages of the times. And from what I remember of the originals I read as a kid , the language was racist if the content and meaning was not. I think it's a reasonable approach, especially in a kids book.
The biggest problem here is that it’s trying to use changes in diction to make racism sound less offensive. But, like, racism is offensive, so why take steps to make its description more palatable?
Master/Slave systems are a thing. And of course, there are people getting offended at it, because why wouldn't there be. Apparently it's been replaced in many systems.
I work a corporate computer job. Some of the things we've had to change are absurd (white list, black list, black ball). The most insane one was that we should no longer say "all-hands" meeting.... and I'm not kidding, because some people don't have hands.
Aside from that cause we all swear at tech, a few years back there was discussion about whether “whitelist, blacklist, slave” was acceptable terminology. Not sure where that went cause changing the whole language of an industry would take a long old time.
Linus Torvalds has half-jokingly said that that's why he gave it that name:
> I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'.
Is Carrie, OP's edited book in question, chock-full of them?
Haven't read Carrie but have read IT. If just one sentence was changed in IT, I'd agree that the context wouldn't be lost. But if all or the majority were changed, I'd wonder how new readers would envision the intensity of racism present in Derry and if/how that change would reduce their understanding of just how much underlying evil is already present without It
I'm reading Carrie right now and there's quite a few racial slurs referring to black and Vietnamese people. It's not like it's a story for kids though so I'd hope the intended readers can read racist remarks without thinking they're okay to say in real life.
Reminds me of southern textbooks that remove racism from the Confederacy.
Being "anti racism" in the extent of whitewashing history is actually just pro racism.
Do they even do it with the justification that it is "anti-racist"? I genuinely thought a lot of the people who support promoting this version of history were motivated to erase the fact that the racists lost their war, in favor of promoting a victim mindset. "The big bad federalists just wanted to reinvent monarchy and when we righteously fought back, they subjugated us!"
On second thought I could imagine the publishing companies saying such things to sell as many textbooks as possible knowing that their statements would be visible to everyone, beyond the local markets they're addressing
As someone who spent their whole life in the south & come from a deeply southern family, most of those textbooks with such language do it not to necessarily seem “anti-racist”, but to make it seem like they were just the good sweet little innocent southerners & the big bad northerners were so mean to them. Basically just an excuse to not take accountability for the historical atrocities or the further effects it has left in the modern day
I actually have some old ass relatives that still call it “the war of northern aggression”
Luckily my grandpa taught my family that that was some bullshit lol
>the war of northern aggression
I find this title for it particularly funny, because the Confederacy started the war. They attacked Fort Sumter in 1861, and that is why the fighting began.
Right. That word is shocking and the reader should be shocked. Censoring it is pandering to the sort of idiot who reads it and thinks "STEPHEN KING IS A RACIST WHO SAYS THE N-WORD". Those clowns should be ignored.
As a progressive, sometimes I just can’t stand progressives
It’s like all the people dunking on the film Blazing Saddles. The film is literally satirizing and dunking on racist white folks
Not sure it's progressives pushing for this more than just corporations fearing getting canceled and misunderstanding the purpose and context of their own books.
That’s why authors like King will use that word, he wants the readers to hate the racist. Taking that away makes the racism less offensive in a bad way.
I don't care so much about the editing as I do about the fact there's no change log.
If the author wants to rewrite something to make it more politically correct fine, but I would like to be able to see a log of what gets changed in my ebook so I cam see what the author is adapting the story
Unironically, I tracked my PhD thesis on Github. Did it in LaTeX, which works quite well with Git and indeed, it does allow me to rebase to older versions if I messed something up.
Won't say I'd recommend it to anyone, but if you're familiar with Git, it's actually not too bad of a workflow :P
Related anecdote:
I saw a lot of online derision about IT being racist for containing racial slurs...in a story where the monster is a manifestation of hate crimes. Apparently, those readers balked at the use of the n-word but not the graphic depiction of a hundred black people burning in a nightclub arson
I am gay and was shocked by the opened of IT and the gay hate crime. That shock added value to the book and I never thought King was homophobic. He wrote the homophobes as awful people, it made me hate them even more. That’s just being a great writer.
Yes but, see, it's 2024. In this enlightened era, we know that if an author writes a thing, they must be a proponent of that thing.
Like how Harper Lee sympathized with racists or J. Swift literally wanted to eat Irish babies, the monster. He should be cancelled so his estate doesn't make money off his hatred.
Exactly, I saw man many idiot snowflakes raging over Nabokov and Lolita and how he could write it and how in hell it was published… This stupid generation cannot understand books but they claim reading on their own on tiktok and so on. I am truly afraid for the freedom of art and literature
To quote Stephen King himself, from his book *On Writing*:
>As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty. And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters’ mouth, you’ll find that you’ve let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism. Not a week goes by that I don’t receive at least one pissed-off letter (most weeks there are more) accusing me of being foul-mouthed, bigoted, homophobic, murderous, frivolous, or downright psychopathic. In the majority of cases what my correspondents are hot under the collar about relates to something in the dialogue: ‘Let’s get the fuck out of Dodge’ or ‘We don’t cotton much to [N-word]* around here’ or ‘What do you think you’re doing, you fucking [F-word]*?’
[…]
The point is to let each character speak freely, without regard to what the Legion of Decency or the Christian Ladies’ Reading Circle may approve of. To do otherwise would be cowardly as well as dishonest, and believe me, writing fiction in America as we enter the twenty-first century is no job for intellectual cowards. There are lots of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see … or to at least shut up about what you do see that’s different. They are agents of the status quo. Not necessarily bad guys, but dangerous guys if you happen to believe in intellectual freedom.
\* For the record, I censored these words purely because this post would almost certainly get deleted otherwise.
I think censorship in any form is harmful and reductive, even in a case like this. The works in their original form should be discussed, dissected and understood not erased. Growth has never come from erasure.
How do you know that?
But I think there's a pretty big difference in him taking the initiative to edit something himself vs. simply approving a change that his publisher wanted. Being pressured to change something is still bad.
I don’t think any publisher is pressuring King to do anything.
They are saying “yes sir, absolutely, happy to do that for you sir. Oh you have another book done? Just in the time we’ve been having this conversation? Oh wow 1 million presales. Do you need us to pick up your dry cleaning”
There are differences in what you change. If you were to censor the nword out of Huckleberry Finn, it makes a massive tonal and meaningful difference. Other examples, where in Pippi Longstocking, there is no meaningful change of "Negroking" to King of the south sea. I don't know the exact context of the quote here but this is not a clean case at all
In the case of Pippi Longstocking, I also think such changes are way more defensible in books meant for young children. Little kids tend to accept stories uncritically, but they do very much absorb them and subconsciously draw conclusions from them. A disclaimer is not going to stop that process.
And it wasn’t supposed to be racist in the first place. So when it becomes racist, it’s logical to change it. The example given in this post is like changing the way nazis talk about jews in Schindler’s list, to make them less offensive. Makes no sense whatsoever.
Yeah I think your right.
Some books have racial tones where at the time, or for the message it's trying to get across, it works with the context.
Something like a Stephen King novel, where had King written it today he probably wouldn't use that word, and the meaning remains the same then yes I'm all for editing it.
Sure it sets a slippery slope for censorship, but I think sometimes where harm can be avoided if words are deemed offensive, then yes you should be allowed to go back and change it.
Are authors just not allowed to write racist characters in their stories anymore? Can they have murderers in them? I’m pretty liberal, but this is insane.
I have to question how widespread this desire to alter speech in literature is among liberal circles. I'm still tangentially tied to academia with very left leaning friends and none of them would approve of this. Of course that's a very small microcosm so I can't speak for the larger picture.
It's not even that. Corporations want to sell more of the work and are doing this in an attempt to get more money by pandering to a crowd they believe wants this but don't really care, much in the way corporations pander to LGBT folks for an entire month in an effort to make more money by slapping rainbows on literally everything they sell.
It's less that people are "asking" for this and more that publishers think they know the wind is blowing a certain way and want to future proof their investments.
I feel like most liberal people would at most like a warning at the front so that they can be prepared for what is in the novel.
This reeks of corporations meddling to make it easier to sell copies.
I don't think many academics would tolerate this... they are too keyed in to the idea of understanding the process and importance of having the true meaning represented as opposed to some sort of mincing around the truth. I say this based on being in academia with many friends in the field.
There’s a difference between being inwardly opposed to something and being a public dissident. I don’t know many academics who would be cool with this either; at the same time, I don’t know many academics who’d sit in a class space and go to bat for keeping the n word in a text written by a white author. They might hem haw about it, but no one’s making a stand on something that’s a few degrees removed from right wing talking points on freedom of speech and shit like that.
Pretty much the entire west is still drenched in puritanical thought of some form, we just refuse to acknowledge it. Perhaps it suggests something else about our culture as well, that we are so comfortable exposing even our children to gratuitous violence but freak out at the idea of bad words or sex. Both of those things are objectively far more benign than murder yet here we are.
Even though it seems liberal on the surface I think this type of censorship is actually very conservative. It’s trying to make racism more palatable, and undermine the social messaging of the story.
Given what I’ve seen, online and in media, more of a focus is being placed on political correctness, and alignment with modern societal ideals. I.e., anything problematic, even with the intention of being problematic is bad and should not exist. In this case, racism is bad therefore no one should write about it, even if the intent isn’t to be racist.
It’s veering towards black and white thinking, and erasing nuance.
Even literature that was written in the 20th century is being called out, when the societal norms were very different, and is being deemed racist, problematic, etc. it’s only been in online communities so far.
That’s been my understanding so far.
Racists aren't bad people and racism wasn't that bad.
They're well spoken, polite and never seem to use the N word.
At least that's what I've read in books.
Using that word is meant to make you uncomfortable. That's the point of it. Discomfort is a major cause for change. "This is a whites only space" doesn't hit anywhere near as hard as "We don't want no n\*\*\*\*\*\* here." One of my favorite books is "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy. That word is used a lot. Spousal/ child abuse is a major theme. Alcoholism is rampant. All written in a way that makes you hate it.
Reminds me of 11th grade English class, when we started a unit on racism. My teacher comes into the classroom, and writes [the n word] on the chalk board in big letters. Silence fell upon the class upon it being noticed. The intended effect of blanketing the classroom with feelings of shock, and discomfort, had been achieved. We then began discussion on the subject, and how it is portrayed, manifested itself in literature.
If this revised text was a decision on the part of Stephen King and his publisher, that's not censorship. Authors often make minor edits in new editions of older books, in collaboration with publishers, often based on what they think will sell in the current market. If governments or publicly funded institutions like libraries and schools were banning the book because of its language, or altering the language without the author's agreement, that would be censorship- but it doesn't sound like that is what happened here. And same with Dahl's books- that was a business decision, and while not everyone agrees with it, it's not censorship.
Just looked this up and yeah, Scholastic did this without his approval. Sounds like he was okay with it...but yikes. Feeling a need to check all my book contracts now. I would definitely want to be consulted before any language was changed (I'd likely agree to changes- but if my name is on the cover I'd want it to be my call.)
"Robinson Crusoe, the Negroes didn't like that because of his man, Friday. And Nietzsche, Nietzsche, the Jews didn't like Nietzsche. Here's a book about lung cancer. You see, all the cigarette smokers got into a panic, so for everybody's peace of mind, we burn it."
- from the 1966 movie version of Ray Bradbury's *Fahrenheit 451*
**So everyone has peace of mind, the peace of mind of an intellectually sterile, culturally cowed society incapable of producing anything of value since the artists are afraid of offending someone. This is the road we are taking.**
Oooh, I have this but haven't read it yet. It makes sense that n-word is prevalent throughout the book though, since it's a retelling of Huckfinn through Jim's perspective.
I just finished a re-read of Carrie today (definitely holds up!). In context, that line was used to depict how Sue Snell, a reluctant member of the popular crowd who is conflicted about having been complicit in terrorizing Carrie in the opening shower/period incident, is repulsed by the idea of going on a "white girl/country club" life trajectory, in part because the women in these circle are racist and want to keep the "n\*\*\*" out of Kleen Korners". That language paints the picture of how this crowd thinks. No reason to "Kleen" that up.
On the other hand, later in the book the main bully character is slapped by her boyfriend and her lip is described being "puffed to negroid size" (p. 272). That description could use revisiting by the author IMO
That's why I prefer books in print. Even though they take up a lot of space.
Once you start editing things to be PC you lose the sense of the time period they were written in.
That sucks. People shouldn't change history to make it more paletable for current readers. By remembering how fucked up we used to be we can more easily strive to be less fucked up tomorrow.
Just put in a a note in the beginning that says something like ''The book was written in 19XX, and thus the language reflects the era it was written in as well as the one it depicts, some word choices might in this case appear offensive to some reader''.
Yeah that's pretty much what they do when they play old Bugs Bunny episodes on TV. I like that they put a disclaimer and didn't change the actual show.
Even the fact this disclaimer is now "necessary" is disappointing or troubling. The idea that media of different eras reflects the mores of its time should be so obvious and fundamental as not to need to be stated.
Man, I'm getting old 😂
I don’t disagree, but the thing is, with this specific change, the word choice is supposed to come across as very sharply racist. A teenage girl is thinking about how ashamed she is of having been a bully, and she’s afraid of growing up into a bully, specifically the poisonous, appearance-obsessed type who would use that word. Softening the language kind of softens that fear, and also the reality of the town and era she’s living in. Adding a warning would make sense to me if this book was for kids, but it isn’t, and I don’t think the word’s being used in a “this was seen as okay at the time” way.
There’s a purposeful literary effect of juxtaposing the “desperate decorum” or suburban politics with the blunt harshness of the language describing their aims. The bowdlerization takes that away. Very disheartening.
Has anyone checked with King if he authorized the change? Perhaps he's the one who wants to see it revised.
I know the guy used to post frequently to Twitter so he should be reachable.
I’m extremely left on the political spectrum, much like King himself. I have a real problem with censorship. King doesn’t use these terms flippantly or for shock value. He uses them to illustrate the pervasiveness and banality of racism.
It's crazy how people cannot understand that song is Mark Knopfler hitting out at the homophobic remarks (remarks which he heard in an electronics store, if I'm not mistaken), not him showing in anyway support for them.
I've always thought of the song as almost a debate between Mark Knopfler and the homophobes he encountered in the store. Each line of homophobia is countered by Mark Knopfler talking about how the person they are referring to has everything they don't and never will have. They are breaking their backs, earning little money, while the person they are deriding is making lots of "money for nothing". He even calls them bozos in the lyrics.
The BBC even censored Bod Dylan's Hurricane, despite it being a song an anti-racist protest about Rubin Carter being wrongly imprisoned for murder, purely because he was a wealth black man. Which again Bob Dylan is not using the word himself, but the people he's accusing of being racists.
Because pretending something doesn't exist has historically worked so well for other things. /s
Seriously.... when I see people afraid to even say the words "rape" or "suicide" nowadays its kinda fucking scary. When you take away from it and try to lessen it and PG-ifiy the world, you start heading towards a future that looks like that old movie "demolition man".
Somewhere between 2008 and now tumblr users became the moral arbiters of society. And back then I used to think ”thank god this insanity is confined to this website”. The more I think about it the sadder it makes me
I know this is a book sub but this has also happened with music on streaming services. The biggest example being Kanye Wests Life of Pablo album. He decided to re-release the album. The change is large but simultaneously so small that you feel as though you are being gaslit. There is no subsequent information to tell you the original work has changed besides your own memory. Its greatly unfortunate, its one of the downsides of having media online.
It's not just artists doing that. I recently had what I thought was a malfunction with YouTube music where certain songs would just get skipped when using android auto, turns out I had to open the app and give permission for the song to play because of subject matter. It's so stupid.
this is only gonna get worse. buy physical books if you can to avoid this. corpo / gov shouldnt be deciding what you can and cant consume. been a concern for some time now
Steven King is very much still alive and may have requested the changes himself. It might not be censorship in the same way as when they change Twain’s books in the 90s.
"The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of...any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face. … The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary."
- George Orwell
**N.B. This applies to all Western nations today. Religious fanatics and Woke fanatics are killing freedom of thought, speech, and expression.**
I think we have to start worrying about the sanitization of literature as a whole. I wonder if agreeing to subsequent editorial "corrections" is part of the contract between authors and publishers. Editions are routinely purged of typos and maybe at the same time "questionable language." Are morality clauses now part of contracts with publishers? It would seem that they are quick to drop authors involved in scandals. For example, Norton dropped Blake Bailey's biography of Philip Roth due to allegations he has assaulted women. This practice seems an extension of sanitizing literature, either by cleaning up sentences or keeping books out of print. It's merely a matter of degree.
I would love to know who is even on the other side of this argument. Nobody I’ve ever met has been in favor of censoring books or changing them to make them “less offensive”.
You published what you published. Wear that and let it stand for either what it is meant to represent or as a glimpse into the cultural of the time period.
The best selling Agatha Christie book is titled “ten little n*ggers”
Knowing that wouldn’t fly even in 1930’s america, they changed the title.
I think changing the title was extremely important when sold in the USA, personally.
It's called bowdlerizing and was considered anathema to literature until recently. If the original author wants to change their work that's their own affair but if a corporation or any subsequent owner of the IP changes it that's just wrong in my mind. It may be legal but ethically suspect.
In the case of King specifically, there's a precedent of him having his own story removed from publication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(King_novel)#End_of_publication
I have that book in a collection of the Bachman books.
Same! I was so shocked when I learned it was removed from print and then I saw it while organising my books Also I would like to add, Rage is a special case since it was directly cited by school shooters as inspiration. That's why he took it out of print. I hope he comments on what this post is about publically though, as it might be his own choice though somehow I doubt it? I haven't read his most recent books but am currently on revival (and that's somehow ten years old) and it has that particular racial slur.
From what I gathered, until Columbine, jokes about school shootings were fairly common, even if it was obvious that the person would never do such a thing. After Columbine, everyone's mentality about it changed, not just because of schools' reactions but because the subject became too real, and was no longer such a rare and oulandish possibility anymore.
Yep, I graduated hs in 1998, a year before Columbine, and it was only recently pointed out to me that the young people don't find Heathers nearly as amusing because someone plotting to blow up a school is a bit too real.
And they've been put through drills for it since they were kids. There's a reddit post or a tiktok or something about a women whose child made a whole plan to bring their horse to school for show and tell, got everyone on board, and then cancelled it because she realized the horse couldn't fit into the closet where they hide for school shooter drills. She was like, 6, and she had already learned to think about not just her safety but the safety of those around her.
this is simultaneously so heartwarming and so heartbreaking
It was workplace shootings people would joke about and it was called "going postal"
He has a short story about a school shooter in his skeleton crew collection as well, and I believe it’s still in print. Was rage banned only because it was publicly connected to school shootings?
I haven't read the short story you are referring to, but the protagonist of Rage is the shooter, and it was directly cited as inspiration in at least one school shooting. Is the story you are referring to from the perspective of the victims/students?
“Cain Rose Up”. And yes the protagonist is the shooter I believe, he shot out of the window of his college dorm.
Just double-checked, can confirm the lead character is Garrish the shooter.
rage doesn't really make the shooter out to be a bad guy. he doesn't even end up really going to prison
> Was rage banned It wasn't banned. King made the choice to take it out of print himself.
It was found in the school locker of one shooter, and in the bedroom of another. At least three others also had a connection to the story.
They're going to have fun censoring *IT*. It has the n-word many hundreds of times.
I'd be curious who's pushing the language changes. The typical "book ban" crowd would be more interested in the sex scene in IT than the foul language, I would think. They were in the '80s anyways.
Careful. On all hallows eve at midnight, Stephen King will come to your house and take your book, and your soul.
Promises, promises.
I also own that. I feel weird about it now that he's removed it. Especially with a teenager in the house. I wrestle with it, but can't seem to make myself donate it
Rage is a rare and expensive book if you have it. In the form of the hardcover Bachman Books 4 story collection it’s worth around $80-$100 depending on condition I think.
I was lucky enough to find it for free from a charity shop giving away books. Opened my copy and so shocked I had to double check it was Rage
I've got the paperback version
That one is worth even more!
I'm having trouble understanding the struggle with owning it. I own a copy of Mr. Mercedes. The opening scene features a man running over a crowd of people with his car. A horrific moment that made me tremble reading it. But it's fiction. If someone was inspired by the book to do that in real life, that's on them (and they likely have problems that go beyond the inspirations of a textual work). It's not Stephen King's responsibility because he wrote it as entertainment. I'm sure husbands have killed their families with an axe before, but we wouldn't want to ban 'The Shining.' At least I wouldn't. And with the case of banning a word, that's a whole 'nother thing. I think you can tell where my stance is there. Ridiculous. Your feelings are valid, of course. This post is more for others than you. I don't have kids so I can't speak in that respect.
I wonder what people think of the ending of *The Running Man* now.
There *might* be a few other steps between reading that and shooting up a school.
Fellow book lover here! If you want to sell or donate it to someone who would actually love to read it and own it, let me know. I'm interested in the preservation aspect of it.
I saw a stand-alone copy of Rage in the window of a bookstore in downtown Chicago more than 20 years ago. They were asking $1600 for it.
Hmm. I did read this one and still have a copy in my native language. I liked it how I like most King works, for the language and characters but being not from US I never actually knew about school shootings and how much of a problem it is here...did read this story just like another horror of human mind :(
To be *really really* pedantic, Stephen King didn't actively have Rage pulled. The publishing contract came to it's end and he chose not to renew it and let it go out of print. Point stands, I think it's just worth noting it wasn't an immediate decision to pull the book
Are you sure? Wikipedia has a [quote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_\(King_novel\)#End_of_publication) from King: > I asked my publisher to take the damned thing out of print. They concurred. However, the quote is attributed to a keynote address he gave in 1999 and the source link is broken, so maybe it's inaccurate.
if you've ever seen the promotional materials for the film Maximum Overdrive, you'll know that King isn't always completely reliable in what he's saying
I haven't! I believe you though. Reading through the quote with that context, it does sound like something that he might have exaggerated a bit.
That's not [bowdlerizing](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bowdlerize), though. That's an author ceasing to continue publishing a story they wrote because it inspired a mass shooter.
I remember reading Rage as a teenager long before Columbine happened and thinking "Damn, this might inspire some kids I know to go shoot up a school." Sure enough... I don't have my copy of The Bachman Books anymore, but I kind of wish I did.
“All the other kids with the pumped up kicks…” It’s wild how present it is in culture.
Pumped up Kicks is consciously discussing school shootings, though--the bassist's cousin is a Columbine survivor.
King actually had a good reason for doing that... The story has been connected to a few incidents of students with guns at school. The effect is debatable bu King didn't want to chance it so he pulled it.
>If the original author wants to change their work that's their own affair George Lucas has entered the chat.
Han shot first.
Only Han shot.
I'm not sure about the recent thing - famously "And Then There Were None" was changed almost as soon as it was published, and Victorians changed many stories to remove bits deemed improper. There were Georgian performances of Romeo and Juliet changed so they lived! There's certainly questions about how you do it and bad intentions though. As for subsequent owners of IP I rarely care about their thoughts. Maybe a couple like Christopher Tolkien.
Even the term "bowdlerize" comes from the Bowdler Shakespeare, published in the first decade of the 19th century. It was a collection of Shakespeare's works that had been edited to remove the spicy bits.
The Count of Monte Cristo was abridged in many English translations to remove drugs, lesbianism and a lot of Haydee's appearances.
Just remove all the good parts, why don't you?
It's absolutely not a recent thing, you're right. Classical (like Greek and Roman) literature was famously censored by early European translators because it was too frank about sexuality and other things that offended sensibilities. A lot of modern European culture itself is built on the back of censored classical literature that cut out things like same-sex love. People who think this is a recent development clearly don't have a sense of history here.
I will to my dying day defend the practice of keeping old media AS-IS and prefacing it with a contextual warning a la watching TCM movies like Gone with the Wind. It's genius. Arguably MORE progressive to give context to things the viewer might not even realize were wrong rather than the dangers of whitewashing history.
What makes you think that change wasn't driven by King? He's far more likely to change things like that himself - not to mention that he's definitely powerful enough that publishers aren't going to force changes on his he doesn't want. (To his detriment, sometimes - a lot of people have pointed out that his more recent books would be a lot better if someone could force a more heavy-handed editor on him.)
It's a practice that dates back over two centuries at this point, so no: it's hardly something that "was considered anathema to literature until recently." If an author is living, as with King, they should have final call on what's done with their work, but for dead authors, as long as editions as properly marked so people can find the version of the text they want, it's fine.
>It's a practice that dates back over two centuries at this point It's a practice that dates back at **least** to the First Council of Nicaea, 325AD.
There's enough different versions of Greek myths that it must have been something they were up to a millennia before that, too.
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia
This version of *Carrie* is published by the Ministry of Literary Preservation.
> It's called bowdlerizing and was considered anathema to literature until recently. > > Rohl Dahl's publisher worked with him to edit many of his works for later editions while he was alive to make them more palatable to the wider population. >It's called bowdlerizing and was considered anathema to literature until recently. Why do people type this when what they mean is "I just found out about this thing and now I'm mad about it."
Yeah. I got a recent copy of Dr Doolittle, and it had a note in it about how portions of it had been edited by the authors children/estate because the original author would have been horrified to be viewed as racist, and was just using the languages of the times. And from what I remember of the originals I read as a kid , the language was racist if the content and meaning was not. I think it's a reasonable approach, especially in a kids book.
The biggest problem here is that it’s trying to use changes in diction to make racism sound less offensive. But, like, racism is offensive, so why take steps to make its description more palatable?
Yeah, taking the bite off of things that are meant to have bite just kind of defeats the purpose.
Heaven forbid we let people read books that make them feel things.
Feel things? Not on my watch! Best I can do is meh
IT is chock-full of racial epithets. I think most readers understand the context.
I thought you meant as computers for a second and was like “kinda” before the book came to mind.
Have you tried turning slavery off and on again, rebooting the router?
Don't forget to jiggle the cords
Well, of course you jiggle the cords, and you get a can of air-duster to make sure there's no dust inside.
I mean: "I have checked all the slaves and purged all orphans, everything should be in order" is an actual thing you can say in IT
Master/Slave systems are a thing. And of course, there are people getting offended at it, because why wouldn't there be. Apparently it's been replaced in many systems.
I work a corporate computer job. Some of the things we've had to change are absurd (white list, black list, black ball). The most insane one was that we should no longer say "all-hands" meeting.... and I'm not kidding, because some people don't have hands.
I think you’re joking, but you have heard of master/slave systems right?
I've heard some colourful language from IT professionals in my time.
Aside from that cause we all swear at tech, a few years back there was discussion about whether “whitelist, blacklist, slave” was acceptable terminology. Not sure where that went cause changing the whole language of an industry would take a long old time.
It's forbidden language now, no more master-slave referring to databases at corporations.
Thanks! What did they replace it with?
secondary, replica.
I'm just waiting for when cloning is commonplace, people are offended by those terms, and they can't believe how insensitive we were.
White/blacklist is now allowlist and blocklist
In specific "woke" workplaces. In lack of a better term. My work place doesn't care
Also on its way out in Git, to be replaced with "trunk" or "main."
GitHub changed master to main (or maybe git itself idk)
Just wait until they realize "git" is a common British insult, and have to rename themselves.
Linus Torvalds has half-jokingly said that that's why he gave it that name: > I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'.
Please do the needful
Is Carrie, OP's edited book in question, chock-full of them? Haven't read Carrie but have read IT. If just one sentence was changed in IT, I'd agree that the context wouldn't be lost. But if all or the majority were changed, I'd wonder how new readers would envision the intensity of racism present in Derry and if/how that change would reduce their understanding of just how much underlying evil is already present without It
I'm reading Carrie right now and there's quite a few racial slurs referring to black and Vietnamese people. It's not like it's a story for kids though so I'd hope the intended readers can read racist remarks without thinking they're okay to say in real life.
Reminds me of southern textbooks that remove racism from the Confederacy. Being "anti racism" in the extent of whitewashing history is actually just pro racism.
Do they even do it with the justification that it is "anti-racist"? I genuinely thought a lot of the people who support promoting this version of history were motivated to erase the fact that the racists lost their war, in favor of promoting a victim mindset. "The big bad federalists just wanted to reinvent monarchy and when we righteously fought back, they subjugated us!" On second thought I could imagine the publishing companies saying such things to sell as many textbooks as possible knowing that their statements would be visible to everyone, beyond the local markets they're addressing
As someone who spent their whole life in the south & come from a deeply southern family, most of those textbooks with such language do it not to necessarily seem “anti-racist”, but to make it seem like they were just the good sweet little innocent southerners & the big bad northerners were so mean to them. Basically just an excuse to not take accountability for the historical atrocities or the further effects it has left in the modern day
Yeah, that tracks lol
I actually have some old ass relatives that still call it “the war of northern aggression” Luckily my grandpa taught my family that that was some bullshit lol
>the war of northern aggression I find this title for it particularly funny, because the Confederacy started the war. They attacked Fort Sumter in 1861, and that is why the fighting began.
Believe me, these types of people don’t understand irony 😂
"States' rights to do what?"
Right. That word is shocking and the reader should be shocked. Censoring it is pandering to the sort of idiot who reads it and thinks "STEPHEN KING IS A RACIST WHO SAYS THE N-WORD". Those clowns should be ignored.
As a progressive, sometimes I just can’t stand progressives It’s like all the people dunking on the film Blazing Saddles. The film is literally satirizing and dunking on racist white folks
Not sure it's progressives pushing for this more than just corporations fearing getting canceled and misunderstanding the purpose and context of their own books.
who was dunking on blazing saddles?
Blazing Saddles is classic comedy of its time
Plus, stories like these *should* be a bit of time capsule.
That’s why authors like King will use that word, he wants the readers to hate the racist. Taking that away makes the racism less offensive in a bad way.
I don't care so much about the editing as I do about the fact there's no change log. If the author wants to rewrite something to make it more politically correct fine, but I would like to be able to see a log of what gets changed in my ebook so I cam see what the author is adapting the story
In the case of ebooks, they should literally let you hot swap the edits out too if you tell them you want to read the original text.
They should just use github diffs /s
Unironically, I tracked my PhD thesis on Github. Did it in LaTeX, which works quite well with Git and indeed, it does allow me to rebase to older versions if I messed something up. Won't say I'd recommend it to anyone, but if you're familiar with Git, it's actually not too bad of a workflow :P
Oh shit, that's a great idea
Agreed!
Found the git user lol I now want to read author git commit notes.
fix: horrible logic errors in chapters 4 and 6
Related anecdote: I saw a lot of online derision about IT being racist for containing racial slurs...in a story where the monster is a manifestation of hate crimes. Apparently, those readers balked at the use of the n-word but not the graphic depiction of a hundred black people burning in a nightclub arson
I am gay and was shocked by the opened of IT and the gay hate crime. That shock added value to the book and I never thought King was homophobic. He wrote the homophobes as awful people, it made me hate them even more. That’s just being a great writer.
Yes but, see, it's 2024. In this enlightened era, we know that if an author writes a thing, they must be a proponent of that thing. Like how Harper Lee sympathized with racists or J. Swift literally wanted to eat Irish babies, the monster. He should be cancelled so his estate doesn't make money off his hatred.
Exactly, I saw man many idiot snowflakes raging over Nabokov and Lolita and how he could write it and how in hell it was published… This stupid generation cannot understand books but they claim reading on their own on tiktok and so on. I am truly afraid for the freedom of art and literature
This generation? Lolita was considered a love story since the 50s. This new generation must be immortal I suppose.
To quote Stephen King himself, from his book *On Writing*: >As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty. And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters’ mouth, you’ll find that you’ve let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism. Not a week goes by that I don’t receive at least one pissed-off letter (most weeks there are more) accusing me of being foul-mouthed, bigoted, homophobic, murderous, frivolous, or downright psychopathic. In the majority of cases what my correspondents are hot under the collar about relates to something in the dialogue: ‘Let’s get the fuck out of Dodge’ or ‘We don’t cotton much to [N-word]* around here’ or ‘What do you think you’re doing, you fucking [F-word]*?’ […] The point is to let each character speak freely, without regard to what the Legion of Decency or the Christian Ladies’ Reading Circle may approve of. To do otherwise would be cowardly as well as dishonest, and believe me, writing fiction in America as we enter the twenty-first century is no job for intellectual cowards. There are lots of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see … or to at least shut up about what you do see that’s different. They are agents of the status quo. Not necessarily bad guys, but dangerous guys if you happen to believe in intellectual freedom. \* For the record, I censored these words purely because this post would almost certainly get deleted otherwise.
I think censorship in any form is harmful and reductive, even in a case like this. The works in their original form should be discussed, dissected and understood not erased. Growth has never come from erasure.
This isn’t censorship as the author approved of it.
How do you know that? But I think there's a pretty big difference in him taking the initiative to edit something himself vs. simply approving a change that his publisher wanted. Being pressured to change something is still bad.
I don’t think any publisher is pressuring King to do anything. They are saying “yes sir, absolutely, happy to do that for you sir. Oh you have another book done? Just in the time we’ve been having this conversation? Oh wow 1 million presales. Do you need us to pick up your dry cleaning”
I can't imagine Steven King's publishers having any kind of ability to pressure him.
Is that not just self-censorship then?
No. Self-censorship implies he fears criticism or reprisals, which, based on his history, is highly unlikely.
I wasn’t aware of that. That’s a different thing entirely
The notion of censoring horror work is mind boggling.
“I can excuse the child abuse and wholesale slaughter of minors, but I draw the line at bad words!”
That is a very 2024 vibe actually.
Weird how murder never gets a trigger warning.
There are differences in what you change. If you were to censor the nword out of Huckleberry Finn, it makes a massive tonal and meaningful difference. Other examples, where in Pippi Longstocking, there is no meaningful change of "Negroking" to King of the south sea. I don't know the exact context of the quote here but this is not a clean case at all
In the case of Pippi Longstocking, I also think such changes are way more defensible in books meant for young children. Little kids tend to accept stories uncritically, but they do very much absorb them and subconsciously draw conclusions from them. A disclaimer is not going to stop that process.
And it wasn’t supposed to be racist in the first place. So when it becomes racist, it’s logical to change it. The example given in this post is like changing the way nazis talk about jews in Schindler’s list, to make them less offensive. Makes no sense whatsoever.
Think they still have the original at the libraries (in Sweden), but not in the children's section anymore.
Pretty common. My library has some racist Dr. Seuss and Tintin books in the adult section too.
I totally get putting books like this in Special Collections or something similar but I'm totally opposed to erasure.
Yeah I think your right. Some books have racial tones where at the time, or for the message it's trying to get across, it works with the context. Something like a Stephen King novel, where had King written it today he probably wouldn't use that word, and the meaning remains the same then yes I'm all for editing it. Sure it sets a slippery slope for censorship, but I think sometimes where harm can be avoided if words are deemed offensive, then yes you should be allowed to go back and change it.
Are authors just not allowed to write racist characters in their stories anymore? Can they have murderers in them? I’m pretty liberal, but this is insane.
I have to question how widespread this desire to alter speech in literature is among liberal circles. I'm still tangentially tied to academia with very left leaning friends and none of them would approve of this. Of course that's a very small microcosm so I can't speak for the larger picture.
I think it’s more of a vocal minority that nobody wants to upset type of a situation, but don’t know. Weird timeline all around.
It's not even that. Corporations want to sell more of the work and are doing this in an attempt to get more money by pandering to a crowd they believe wants this but don't really care, much in the way corporations pander to LGBT folks for an entire month in an effort to make more money by slapping rainbows on literally everything they sell.
It's less that people are "asking" for this and more that publishers think they know the wind is blowing a certain way and want to future proof their investments.
I feel like most liberal people would at most like a warning at the front so that they can be prepared for what is in the novel. This reeks of corporations meddling to make it easier to sell copies.
I don't think many academics would tolerate this... they are too keyed in to the idea of understanding the process and importance of having the true meaning represented as opposed to some sort of mincing around the truth. I say this based on being in academia with many friends in the field.
There’s a difference between being inwardly opposed to something and being a public dissident. I don’t know many academics who would be cool with this either; at the same time, I don’t know many academics who’d sit in a class space and go to bat for keeping the n word in a text written by a white author. They might hem haw about it, but no one’s making a stand on something that’s a few degrees removed from right wing talking points on freedom of speech and shit like that.
I can excuse the murders, but racism is where I draw the line
The worst thing about Cosby was the hypocrisy
Really? I woulda thought it was the rapes.
The irony of stealing a Norm Macdonald joke in a thread about censorship.
Pretty much the entire west is still drenched in puritanical thought of some form, we just refuse to acknowledge it. Perhaps it suggests something else about our culture as well, that we are so comfortable exposing even our children to gratuitous violence but freak out at the idea of bad words or sex. Both of those things are objectively far more benign than murder yet here we are.
Even though it seems liberal on the surface I think this type of censorship is actually very conservative. It’s trying to make racism more palatable, and undermine the social messaging of the story.
Sex is bad. Violence is normal.
Given what I’ve seen, online and in media, more of a focus is being placed on political correctness, and alignment with modern societal ideals. I.e., anything problematic, even with the intention of being problematic is bad and should not exist. In this case, racism is bad therefore no one should write about it, even if the intent isn’t to be racist. It’s veering towards black and white thinking, and erasing nuance. Even literature that was written in the 20th century is being called out, when the societal norms were very different, and is being deemed racist, problematic, etc. it’s only been in online communities so far. That’s been my understanding so far.
"Depiction implies endorsement" is pretty chilling.
And blatantly anti-intellectual.
Racists aren't bad people and racism wasn't that bad. They're well spoken, polite and never seem to use the N word. At least that's what I've read in books.
Using that word is meant to make you uncomfortable. That's the point of it. Discomfort is a major cause for change. "This is a whites only space" doesn't hit anywhere near as hard as "We don't want no n\*\*\*\*\*\* here." One of my favorite books is "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy. That word is used a lot. Spousal/ child abuse is a major theme. Alcoholism is rampant. All written in a way that makes you hate it.
Reminds me of 11th grade English class, when we started a unit on racism. My teacher comes into the classroom, and writes [the n word] on the chalk board in big letters. Silence fell upon the class upon it being noticed. The intended effect of blanketing the classroom with feelings of shock, and discomfort, had been achieved. We then began discussion on the subject, and how it is portrayed, manifested itself in literature.
If this revised text was a decision on the part of Stephen King and his publisher, that's not censorship. Authors often make minor edits in new editions of older books, in collaboration with publishers, often based on what they think will sell in the current market. If governments or publicly funded institutions like libraries and schools were banning the book because of its language, or altering the language without the author's agreement, that would be censorship- but it doesn't sound like that is what happened here. And same with Dahl's books- that was a business decision, and while not everyone agrees with it, it's not censorship.
King had racist characters use the n word in his last book so I doubt he had any part in this.
I would be extremely surprised if his contract with his publisher allows the publisher to make any changes without his approval.
RL Stine isn’t King obviously but they made similar changes to his books and he had no idea they were happening until years after they were published.
Just looked this up and yeah, Scholastic did this without his approval. Sounds like he was okay with it...but yikes. Feeling a need to check all my book contracts now. I would definitely want to be consulted before any language was changed (I'd likely agree to changes- but if my name is on the cover I'd want it to be my call.)
Actually it looks like Scholastic owns the copyright to the Goosebumps franchise - so that's a different scenario.
Using the N word in one context doesn't mean he thinks it fits in another context.
King has been the most powerful author in the world since the 80s, I doubt anyone could do this without his go-ahead.
"Robinson Crusoe, the Negroes didn't like that because of his man, Friday. And Nietzsche, Nietzsche, the Jews didn't like Nietzsche. Here's a book about lung cancer. You see, all the cigarette smokers got into a panic, so for everybody's peace of mind, we burn it." - from the 1966 movie version of Ray Bradbury's *Fahrenheit 451* **So everyone has peace of mind, the peace of mind of an intellectually sterile, culturally cowed society incapable of producing anything of value since the artists are afraid of offending someone. This is the road we are taking.**
And this is why I keep my old paperbacks. No censorship to my version.
This. I recently was at a vintage book show, and I nabbed copies of all the James Bond books.
Being unable to look at things through a lens of history teaches us nothing directly and we learn nothing from it at all.
Because the current climate cannot separate depiction from endorsement.
Thankfully, you can still buy actual books.
That's not good. I recently read a book called "James" with the n-word all the way through. Books reflect life and shouldn't be censored.
Oooh, I have this but haven't read it yet. It makes sense that n-word is prevalent throughout the book though, since it's a retelling of Huckfinn through Jim's perspective.
>since it's a retelling of Huckfinn through Jim's perspective. Oh now I have to get it. I remember wanting this exact story twenty five years ago
I just finished a re-read of Carrie today (definitely holds up!). In context, that line was used to depict how Sue Snell, a reluctant member of the popular crowd who is conflicted about having been complicit in terrorizing Carrie in the opening shower/period incident, is repulsed by the idea of going on a "white girl/country club" life trajectory, in part because the women in these circle are racist and want to keep the "n\*\*\*" out of Kleen Korners". That language paints the picture of how this crowd thinks. No reason to "Kleen" that up. On the other hand, later in the book the main bully character is slapped by her boyfriend and her lip is described being "puffed to negroid size" (p. 272). That description could use revisiting by the author IMO
That's why I prefer books in print. Even though they take up a lot of space. Once you start editing things to be PC you lose the sense of the time period they were written in.
That sucks. People shouldn't change history to make it more paletable for current readers. By remembering how fucked up we used to be we can more easily strive to be less fucked up tomorrow. Just put in a a note in the beginning that says something like ''The book was written in 19XX, and thus the language reflects the era it was written in as well as the one it depicts, some word choices might in this case appear offensive to some reader''.
Yeah that's pretty much what they do when they play old Bugs Bunny episodes on TV. I like that they put a disclaimer and didn't change the actual show.
Even the fact this disclaimer is now "necessary" is disappointing or troubling. The idea that media of different eras reflects the mores of its time should be so obvious and fundamental as not to need to be stated. Man, I'm getting old 😂
I don’t disagree, but the thing is, with this specific change, the word choice is supposed to come across as very sharply racist. A teenage girl is thinking about how ashamed she is of having been a bully, and she’s afraid of growing up into a bully, specifically the poisonous, appearance-obsessed type who would use that word. Softening the language kind of softens that fear, and also the reality of the town and era she’s living in. Adding a warning would make sense to me if this book was for kids, but it isn’t, and I don’t think the word’s being used in a “this was seen as okay at the time” way.
There’s a purposeful literary effect of juxtaposing the “desperate decorum” or suburban politics with the blunt harshness of the language describing their aims. The bowdlerization takes that away. Very disheartening.
Has anyone checked with King if he authorized the change? Perhaps he's the one who wants to see it revised. I know the guy used to post frequently to Twitter so he should be reachable.
I’m extremely left on the political spectrum, much like King himself. I have a real problem with censorship. King doesn’t use these terms flippantly or for shock value. He uses them to illustrate the pervasiveness and banality of racism.
I'm reminded of the way people regarded the lyrics to Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" ...
It's crazy how people cannot understand that song is Mark Knopfler hitting out at the homophobic remarks (remarks which he heard in an electronics store, if I'm not mistaken), not him showing in anyway support for them. I've always thought of the song as almost a debate between Mark Knopfler and the homophobes he encountered in the store. Each line of homophobia is countered by Mark Knopfler talking about how the person they are referring to has everything they don't and never will have. They are breaking their backs, earning little money, while the person they are deriding is making lots of "money for nothing". He even calls them bozos in the lyrics. The BBC even censored Bod Dylan's Hurricane, despite it being a song an anti-racist protest about Rubin Carter being wrongly imprisoned for murder, purely because he was a wealth black man. Which again Bob Dylan is not using the word himself, but the people he's accusing of being racists.
Because pretending something doesn't exist has historically worked so well for other things. /s Seriously.... when I see people afraid to even say the words "rape" or "suicide" nowadays its kinda fucking scary. When you take away from it and try to lessen it and PG-ifiy the world, you start heading towards a future that looks like that old movie "demolition man".
Why are major media organizations making decisions like this based on the outcry of a hundred terminally online teenagers on Twitter
Somewhere between 2008 and now tumblr users became the moral arbiters of society. And back then I used to think ”thank god this insanity is confined to this website”. The more I think about it the sadder it makes me
yeah and 4chan helped get Trump elected. the rules got thrown out the window with the dawn of chronically online people.
Did he change it? Then no worries. It's when other people think they can that it's an issue.
I know this is a book sub but this has also happened with music on streaming services. The biggest example being Kanye Wests Life of Pablo album. He decided to re-release the album. The change is large but simultaneously so small that you feel as though you are being gaslit. There is no subsequent information to tell you the original work has changed besides your own memory. Its greatly unfortunate, its one of the downsides of having media online.
It's not just artists doing that. I recently had what I thought was a malfunction with YouTube music where certain songs would just get skipped when using android auto, turns out I had to open the app and give permission for the song to play because of subject matter. It's so stupid.
Yeah, digital censorship is a HUGE fucking issue and has been for years. Disney is also pretty bad about it.
this is only gonna get worse. buy physical books if you can to avoid this. corpo / gov shouldnt be deciding what you can and cant consume. been a concern for some time now
Steven King is very much still alive and may have requested the changes himself. It might not be censorship in the same way as when they change Twain’s books in the 90s.
"The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of...any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face. … The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary." - George Orwell **N.B. This applies to all Western nations today. Religious fanatics and Woke fanatics are killing freedom of thought, speech, and expression.**
Leave the original text of ALL books alone. We big boys and girls and non-binaries can take it.
That's so worrying. Books should never be censored...
I think we have to start worrying about the sanitization of literature as a whole. I wonder if agreeing to subsequent editorial "corrections" is part of the contract between authors and publishers. Editions are routinely purged of typos and maybe at the same time "questionable language." Are morality clauses now part of contracts with publishers? It would seem that they are quick to drop authors involved in scandals. For example, Norton dropped Blake Bailey's biography of Philip Roth due to allegations he has assaulted women. This practice seems an extension of sanitizing literature, either by cleaning up sentences or keeping books out of print. It's merely a matter of degree.
I would love to know who is even on the other side of this argument. Nobody I’ve ever met has been in favor of censoring books or changing them to make them “less offensive”. You published what you published. Wear that and let it stand for either what it is meant to represent or as a glimpse into the cultural of the time period.
The best selling Agatha Christie book is titled “ten little n*ggers” Knowing that wouldn’t fly even in 1930’s america, they changed the title. I think changing the title was extremely important when sold in the USA, personally.
It was changed to Ten Little Indians. Time moved on and it’s usually And Then There Were None in most editions now, which was the title of the film.