An obvious nod/Transatlantic publishing

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:36:34 +0300
>From: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>
>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.

The English paperback version of The Crying of Lot 49 commits the opposite 
(and equally heinous) sin: changes Pynchon's American wording into English 
ditto. Pynchon's "windshield" is changed to "windscreen", "toward" is 
changed into "towards", "gray" into "grey", etc. There are also more 
significant differences between the American and English paperback versions: 
whole sentences have been dropped from the English version - it is unclear 
whether this has happened at Pynchon's behest - and some really quite grave 
errors have been introduced: For instance, in the moving passage with the 
old sailor where Oedipa compares his DT's with the mathematical term delta-t 
and speculates that dt means "a time differential, a vanishingly small 
instant in which change had to be confronted at last for what it was", the 
English paperback has substituted "change" with "chance". For an already 
confused first-time reader of the novel, this sudden and incongruous 
reference to 'chance' must add to the confusion.

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