Roald Dahl rewrites: what would his characters say?

“What’s this?” asked Charlie.

“This,” said Wonka, “is my finest invention yet! I call it the Great Gross Editor!”

“But what does it do?” Charlie peered at what seemed like thousands of buttons on the wall, each one with a word written on it.

“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Wonka. “Why don’t you press a button and see for yourself.”

Charlie stared at the buttons and picked one that had the word “fat” written on it in big fat letters. He pushed it hard. The generously proportioned letters seemed to briefly glow.

“Nothing happened!” said Charlie.

“Really?” asked Wonka with a twinkle in his eye. He waved his hand across the distant town. “In homes across the land, people are right now waking up to discover that all their favourite books have had their texts subtly altered. There’ll be no more mention of fat little hobbits living in holes in the ground or fat ladies getting ready to sing. It will be happily rotund hobbits and respectable ladies comfortable with their BMIs preparing to let loose with a song!”

“That’s awful,” said Charlie. “How could you let me do that?”

“But it’s progress,” explained Wonka.

“But altering an author’s words is unethical! It’s altering an artist’s vision as well as…” his voice trailed off.

“As well as what?” asked Wonka, laying his hand on the young boy’s shoulder.

“As well as giving in to the wussy liberal woke snowflakes!” shouted Charlie, tears suddenly rolling down his face.

Wonka sighed and removed the large orange kerchief from his pocket and handed it to Charlie.

“My boy, I’m afraid you have much to learn about the editorial process and, indeed, the publishing industry. You don’t think Oompa Loompas just work my chocolate machines, do you? I have a whole department of editors and proofreaders who spend their days checking and amending text.”

“You do?”

“Of course, I do! And there’s good money to be made from it. And I don’t just mean by a family concerned that their literary inheritance might lose value in a changing political climate in which the xenophobic attitudes of their antisemitic grandfather seem increasingly unsuited to the modern educational environment. I mean simply because it is the nature of literary texts that they are always subject to change.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Charlie, sniffing. “The author’s word is final!”

“Consider Shakespeare,” said Wonka, smiling kindly. “You don’t wonder why Oxford University Press and Bloomsbury Publishing, who own the Arden imprint, charge a fortune for their latest editions of his plays written hundreds of years ago? If the text hasn’t changed, why do people keep buying these new editions? It’s the same with literary classics. Editors come along and alter the texts to keep up with the latest critical thinking. Why, they sometimes even change the punctuation!”

“Punctuation?” laughed Charlie, thinking the whole thing sounded ridiculous.

“Oh, you’re a little too young to read it yet, Charlie, but wait until you see what Penguin did to Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel, ‘On The Road’. The difference between the edited version and the original scroll version, released in its original format in 2008, is a fascinating insight into modern editorial process… And let’s not even talk about what Ezra Pound did to Eliot’s original version of ‘The Waste Land’. Though many say he contributed to its success, he was of course also a raging fascist and antisemite who was imprisoned in Italy after the war…”

A distant far-away look appeared in Wonka’s eye as his mind drifted off on some unspoken thought.

“You know,” he said after a few moments, “it’s like so much in life that involves ‘free speech’. The market will ultimately decide. When I launched my Scrumtumpunctilious bars, there was no market for a chocolate that would make people care about the small details in life. Humans are creatures of crude generalisation and woolly thinking. You shouldn’t worry so much, Charlie. If these new changes aren’t popular, nobody will buy the books. They’ll just buy other books more suited to their tastes.”

Charlie tutted. “Well, I say that sounds like a load of…”

Wonka’s arm flashed out and hit a button.

“… buttercups!” said Charlie.

“Phew, that was close,” said Wonka, who was always thinking of the primary school demographic.

Charlie looked puzzled. He was sure he hadn’t intended to say “buttercups” yet there he was saying “buttercups”.

“It is not, as you say, ‘buttercups,” replied Wonka. “It is the way it has always been. Books often change between their first and second printing as editors fix mistakes. There is no such thing as the one true text.”

Charlie looked confused but the usual smile had returned to Wonka’s face.

“Cheer up, my boy. Just remember that we shouldn’t be textual originalists about this. You see what trouble that has caused in America where a document written by ordinary humans is treated like it’s a document written by God?” Wonka took off his top hat and scratched his head. “I know it can be puzzling if you have a narrow worldview and believe that your culture is immutable, but language changes. Would you be happy going back to a world in which the word ‘the’ is written ‘þͤ’ or would you like the letter ‘s’ to look more like the letter ‘f’ as it did when typography used the so-called ‘medial-S’? Because that’s what you’d get…’

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” said Charlie, feeling slightly embarrassed. “It’s just Grandpa Joe says that taking the racist bits out of old books is the first step towards 15-minute towns where foreigners reprogramme us through chips in Covid vaccines and signals from the 5G masts…”

“Well, that’s because your Grandpa Joe is a…”

Charlie’s hand flew out and hit a succession of letters before Wonka could finish speaking…

“… seasoned individual of non-standard but populist ideas particularly on matters of ethnicity where, while we accept his right to hold such opinions, he is so clearly wrong…”

This time it was Wonka who looked puzzled. He was sure he hadn’t meant to say that. Suddenly he realised what had happened.

“Oh, crap!” he said, this time before Charlie could move his hand. He just hoped an editor would later come along and clean it up, as well they should.

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