Rewriting for US editions

[kelber at mindspring.com]

The first Harry Potter book was HP and the Philosopher's Stone in the UK, and HP and the Sorcerer's Stone in the US.  Apparently, they felt they had to dumb down the title for US consumption.

The changes to the Dr. Doolittle books were made by  a descendant of Hugh Lofting.  The guy explained in a very nice introduction to the new addition that Hugh Lofting had been a product of his times and shared the language and attitude common to those times, but knowing Lofting as he did, he couldn't imagine that he would hold these attitudes now or would wish to offend anyone.  Seems reasonable, especially because the racism wasn't inherent to the plot.  But I think it would be preferable to preserve the original, with an explanatory introduction.

I read all the Nancy Drew books as a kid.  There were the blue-covered originals, full of Negresses, dark-complexioned foreigners, and Jewish pawnbrokers, and there were the yellow-covered additions, which eliminated all of this, along with all the atmosphere of the original books (her roadster was changed into a convertible, etc.).  The newer versions were total crap.

The extreme version of this is the banning of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by some school boards because of their racial content.  I suppose it's better than re-writing them, though.

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Oct 16, 2006 10:36 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: An obvious nod
>
>Transatlantic Publishing: Here's a related question about imports from the 
>UK: How common is it to change the actual text from UK spelling and 
>vocabulary for the US publication of a novel? I heard that this was done 
>with the Harry Potter books. True? What about authors like McEwan? What a 
>horrible, horrible idea. I remember with great affection reading the 
>Chronicles of Narnia as a child and enjoying figuring out, for example, what 
>a "torch" (flashlight) was.
>
>Michael Dirda: It happens sometimes. The Dr. Doolittle books were slightly 
>fiddled with in later years, partly for the American market but largely for 
>the implied racism of some of the episodes in Africa.
>The worst example I know is Lawrence Norfolk's Lempriere's Dictionary, where 
>a fifth of the book was lopped off the first American edition. It was felt 
>that these fantasy elements would get the book shelved as a genre novel 
>rather than an innovative mainstream fiction. Norfolk, being young and 
>produly pressured, went along with this, but years later did get his 
>preferred and fuller text restored for American paperbacks.
>I can't think of a good example just now but I am sometimes surprised when I 
>read British novels and discover American lingo--e.g. truck instead of 
>lorry. It happens. But really it seems shortsighted, as part of the charm of 
>"foreign" fiction is in going to a slightly strange place that isn't 
>America.
>
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27263-2005Jan21.html
>
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