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Oh gosh, it's just 'he said' 'she said' now. We're going around in circles. As I said, there is evidence that he was okay with them being altered for other markets, there's not much evidence to say he put his foot down over it. Dr No got a different title in serialisation etc. and that was the sixth one in. So the balance tips towards 'might have accepted it'.
Maybe, but your point was that "IFP has also yet to produce any convincing evidence that its profits will rise or be affected", that's what I was replying to, and their profits are none of our business.
Okay found them: as I said, they don't have 'James Bond' on the cover. Which was to my original point. Yes I know the new IFP ones don't either, but they hardly downplay it as much, and I do still wonder how the trademarking works. You don't have to answer, it's a rhetorical question.
Also the new original fiction was what I meant by half-hearted: no-name authors in a short story collection and little else.
That's what I said, yes.
That's great, and illustrates my point, yes.
Right: that's what I mean about being disingenuous then. When you said "Why stop at racism?" and "by this logic those passages should be removed" you don't want that, and changing the conversation to complain about something that you don't want to happen not happening is just pointless.
Nonsense. If folks have previously bought the ebooks then they've bought them from Penguin, not from IFP. IFP will have no access to ebooks distributed by Penguin. But regardless, I have copies of the ebooks which aren't tied to purchases and live entirely offline, and those are easily findable.
And as I said, there are so many books which people can't buy any new editions of because they're out of print. These books simply haven't disappeared.
You're just arguing each individual response rather than remembering the context. My point was that people enjoy printed books as a product experience, they are more than the text.
Nothing suggests he was upset about alterations either. And as I said, books are products. Fleming even designed the original cover of CR himself, so that is his actual work.
Of course Fleming did try and censor his work when he said he didn't want TSWLM reprinted: are we happy about his preferences being ignored there?
Only if they've memorised them, come on. If the book I read last week had a paragraph taken out I doubt I'd notice if I read it again next week, I would be amazed if that was different for 95% of people.
That is purely anecdotal for you though. Your experience is not universal.
A lot of the reasons this stuff has made the news is for the culture war rubbish which has taken over a lot of our public discourse recently: the media and right wing want people to be incensed by culture wars because they know they don't have a lot else to stand on. And there's nothing more likely to outrage people than being told that the new generation want to throw you away, that the things you liked aren't okay anymore; because it speaks to that most triggering fear of all: that of mortality.
Yes, which is why I'm wrapping this conversation up, from my end at least.
Not strong evidence, since serialization is a different kettle of fish from the full published novel. Changes are universally expected in serialization, but they don't affect the text of the published novel.
Yes, my point was that IFP is pursuing a business practice of unproven worth and of dubious wisdom.
I don't see why that's of much consequence, except for marketing purposes. Fleming is public domain in Canada and non-IFP editions are openly sold by the country's biggest book chain. I look forward to this happening in the UK and USA, whether or not the covers say "James Bond."
Questioning why IFP's product is inconsistent with its own stated purposes isn't disingenuous. It's pointing out the obvious flaws in the project's rationale. If, as IFP's director says, the books are being "updated," the update is half-assed and flawed by its own standards, regardless of my own desire for the books to not to be updated at all.
But not all the ebooks are from Penguin, at least not in the US.
My point is that people primarily buy books to read them.
The text of the book wasn't censored, and though Fleming's wishes were disregarded, at least this was done to make the book available rather than suppressed.
So you wouldn't notice if the long conversation between the African American couple in Harlem was cut? The racist passages in the books stand out for obvious reasons, so one easily notices their absence.
If it did, I doubt it was made a profound or even permanent impression. The text of the book is more likely to shape our ideas, since readers employ their own imaginations on it.
I doubt it's a minority experience either.
Yes, the right wing enjoys stoking the culture wars. But the principle that a book shouldn't be retroactively edited by someone beside the author is one held by readers on the left and right, and it's why people on both sides objected when hearing of Dahl, Christie, and Fleming being retroactively edited. Salman Rushdie is hardly on the right, and neither am I. The issue goes beyond the surface noise of the culture wars, regardless of how it's exploited.
Now I would never talk about a Black person (or POC) using these words (I wouldn't know why I'd even have to mention their skin color), but it should be remembered that the oldest existing Black civil rights organizations are still called National Associaton for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and United Negro College Fund. Two words that seem to be out of bounds today, it seems. But does it really help to leave certain terms to the haters? I don't think so.
I could continue regarding words, or even abbreviations, in the German language which are literally burnt because the Nazis used them for their purposes. I still think we should recover those words and abbreviations for a normal use, since surrendering them to the Nazis means a symbolic victory for them. But this probably leads too far here.
So if you started watching Reservoir Dogs I assume you wouldn't be able to finish that either..?
Well, I really dislike that movie for many reasons, but go figure- I like Pulp Fiction a lot! And Jackie Brown. Anyway, I was just stating my reading preferences when authors use the word casually; use of the N-word is fine with me as used in movies as long as it's not to crush black spirit and lives with glee.
That's fair enough, I think I'm wrapping up too.
Not strong evidence, no: I didn't say it was: I said "So the balance tips towards 'might have accepted it'." All I'm saying is that there's marginally more evidence that he may have accepted it than there is evidence that he wouldn't. I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to say.
I know that's not enough to act on, and I do generally agree with the principle that the text shouldn't be changed, but sometimes principles bend in real world applications.
Maybe, I guess it's hard to know the inner workings of a company. Maybe they've seen data that suggests it is needed; I agree with you that seems unlikely, but who knows. From the outside we can't know for certain, and we can't expect them to produce anything to prove to us; certainly not their profit margin. And of course they've never actually published the books before so their profits will be different no matter what!
As I said, it was just rhetorical; I didn't say it was of 'much consequence'.
It's something we don't want to see, so there's not much point in calling for it. Also, race is very incidental to the Bond books, whereas attitudes to women are far more ingrained, and are part of the character of Bond rather than the narrator's voice.
Again, that's irrelevant as publishing houses won't have any access to ebooks published by other publishing houses.
We don't have to argue every single thing, surely.
Yep, primarily yes. But part of the pleasure is having the designed object.
This speaks to my point: many of these hard and fast lines which must not be crossed turn out to have many little qualifications to ways in which it is actually okay to cross them, and they have been crossed before.
I honestly wouldn't. It's been years since I read it last: you could take out a whole chapter and I probably wouldn't spot it. I'm not saying anyone should, just that perhaps your expertise in the books means you know them better than most people. That's not unreasonable to say is it?
Yes, I think that's fair to say, but it certainly has been exploited to the maximum and a lot of the reaction has been stoked up by that way beyond what is reasonable in some cases (I'm not talking about yourself). As I say, I'm not in favour of this, but I think perhaps there is some reasoning behind it which makes it more understandable, if not desirable. Certainly I can't imagine that IFP wanted to do it, or wanted this fuss; so I have to think that they have thought long and hard about it and have their reasons for it, some of which I have tried to understand.
As we're coming to the end of this, I don't think I've been unreasonable through this conversation, I hope you would agree too and I've enjoyed our civil exchange of points; I'm just challenging some of those hard and fast reasons why things can never be altered and that a lot of them aren't as unprecedented as some would say.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/12/books-editing-retouching-free-expression/
"Historical honesty" and "Cultural artifacts" are very good descriptions for the argument against this insidious butchery.
'Sensitivity readers' need to become a thing of the past. And quickly.
I absolutely agree, @LeonardPine. I don't need anyone to "sanitize" the author's words. If they hurt contemporary readers, then so be it. We can only learn from that. Pretending the words were never used doesn't clean up the past or make the pains of history suddenly go away. Wounds don't heal by erasing the memory of them; you face the scars and tells stories about them so that younger generations avoid getting them.
https://www.gbnews.com/news/pg-wodehouse-trigger-warning-cancel-culture#:~:text=Each Wodehouse new addition will,which you may find outdated.”
https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/10/26/actor-brian-cox-hits-out-at-rewriting-of-classic-works-including-james-bond-books
Arf! Try 60 years ago :D
Yes, I thought that had already happened to be honest.
Racism is an opinion, a position one can take in which one feels superior to others on the basis of biological perceptions alone. Words can't do that. They can, however, when they're put in that order, transfer that intent to the reader.
So, is Fleming's work racist? Do we feel, in any of the texts, that his writing was meant to position himself, or people with whom he'd identify himself, above others?
Personally, I don't think so. Yes, he used terms that are often used by others in a way I discribed above, but that doen't make those words racist. Or the intent of the writer using the same words.
Are the passages about the coupe discussing in a sothern twang with a lot of new york meant to show their inferiority, or were they meant to give readers an idea of a culture they otherwise wouldn't know about?
Personally I never read Fleming's work as deregatory of any people. He's discriptive in a way that isn't always quite complimentary, but that doesn't mean it's meant to put the subjects down or present them as inferior.
So, taking away passages or words that don't have a racist intent is just distorting the work of art it is. Like watering down wine to appeal to the palate of more people. Is that the way to go? We might end up with only water.
It's certainly possible. I myself often make jokes that go over most sane people's heads. ;)
I didn't get the joke in this post. Is there one?
That's good. That means you are sane and do not possess the sick and twisted mind of a evil genius with a black cat on his shoulder and a thousand-yard stare. >:)
Read Between the Lines.
I hope this version isn’t edited.
Maybe this one will be written in code instead? We'll need a Spektor decoder to translate it. :)
FRWL isn't a story about code breaking. The Spektor Decoder is little more than a McGuffin and could have been literally anything. It looks like the cover to a Le Carre novel or, more likely, a comparatively boring Cold War spy novel, not a James Bond adventure. It doesn't even look pretty.
I think they're trying to recall the classic green Penguin crime/spy novel covers of yesteryear with this latest release. It's an OK design I suppose, but not the most exciting cover this novel has ever had. Exciting covers and Penguin Books have never really went hand in hand though, at least historically. They're usually pretty bland, often with only the titles changing between books in a particular series. Compare classic Penguin covers to classic Pan covers and you will immediately see the difference.
Yeah, all true. Still, I do think it's a bit misleading having a cover based on code breaking with this particular novel. It's just not about that. Bond novels are far more interesting!