The Fantastic Mr. Dahl (2016) | Hacker News Reader

The Fantastic Mr. Dahl (2016)

smithsonianmag.com

51 pointsindigodaddy22 comments

I like the stories in, "Over to You" - especially about going to Cairo to pick up prostitutes!

But other than those young escapades, he doesn't come across as the most pleasant of people. He did basically make a living writing story after story of children in abusive relationships.

Probably because he had his own share of abuse as a kid:

“From 1929, when he was 13, Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire. Dahl disliked the hazing and described an environment of ritual cruelty and status domination, with younger boys having to act as personal servants for older boys, frequently subject to terrible beatings. His biographer Donald Sturrock described these violent experiences in Dahl's early life. Dahl expresses some of these darker experiences in his writings, which is also marked by his hatred of cruelty and corporal punishment.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl

It's interesting that the Wikipedia article on "fagging" — as the practice was known — paints a much rosier picture of the practice. When I grew up it was definitely presented as being demeaning and having no particular merits

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagging

"Dahl expresses some of these darker experiences in his writings, which is also marked by his hatred of cruelty and corporal punishment."

It's interesting that in his children's books it seems he still believes in moral reformation through cruelty and corporal punishment, as he frequently has the underdog do cruel things under the guise of knocking the other person down a notch, or otherwise cowing them into improvement. He doesn't just present it as justice or revenge, but as a kind of education, and specifically it's okay if the victim doesn't understand why they are being punished or that it is punishment at all. (I'm thinking of Matilda, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the BFG, and probably others)

I suppose it's no surprise that even when you hate your upbringing, it still becomes part of you and your moral vision of the world.

Getting revenge is something that almost everyone in those situations wants to do; it satisfies deeply. What you describe is by many people called "hitting back," which is hard to see as something negative, and definitely not equivalent to what he went through as a child.

"Bully beats victim," "Victim retaliates;" one is obviously less bad than the other. It's not like the victims in his story are hurting random, innocent people.

My point is that there's an underlying moral lesson to the bullying he received: the idea that the pain and abuse will lead to positive results in the child. And further that the abuse isn't just punishment, but that abuse itself can lead to virtue. That's why it's applied to every young boy systematically.

In his books Dahl doesn't just describe revenge, but describes it as a way to actually correct behavior, as a way for the universe to give the powerful a lesson. He's certainly turning around the power dynamic, but the moral justification for abuse remains intact.

After reading all the classic Ronald Dahl stories as a child I more recently discovered “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”. The titular tale is great entertainment, especially in light of the current trendiness of meditation. Another story in that book “The Hitch-hiker” is also good fun.

On the other hand I would not particularly recommend “Skin and other stories” which I also discovered recently but did not connect with.

You might enjoy this book about his pursuits during WWII, The Irregulars [1]

1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FA0HXY

I discovered Skin as a teen and it rocked my sensibilities. I still find it to have the best adult dark humor short stories. What did you not like in Skin?

I saw him speak at the Oxford Union. He told stories of his childhood and was both dark and funny. He answered questions afterwards. Almost all the answers he gave insulted or ridiculed the questioner.

He was also a spy.

https://www.google.com/search?q=roald+dahl+spy&oq=roald+dahl...

He also endorsed antisemitism:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160912-the-dark-side-of-r...

> “Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”

> If Dahl had been a nice man, I don’t suppose he would have been able to inflict such refreshingly transgressive views on his young readers. Christopher Hitchens once wrote an essay examining the truth of the accusation that Dahl was an adulterer, bully and anti-Semite. “Of course it’s bloody well true,” he concluded. “How else could Dahl have kept children enthralled and agreeably disgusted and pleasurably afraid? By being Enid Blyton?”

From "Roald Dahl’s troubling legacy - much-loved author stands accused of racism" - https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/roald-dahls-t...

> By being Enid Blyton?

Who, interestingly, had her own issues, which are far more visible in the actual books (I think it'd be hard to find anti-semitic themes in most of Dahl's kids' books): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Blyton#Racism,_xenophobia...

(Blyton probably wasn't that much worse than was standard for her time, but largely lacked Dahl's redeeming qualities)

I truly wish that people didn't swing between extremes on this topic. Surely we can acknowledge the truths of history while also not endorsing genocide. Is that too much to ask?

When U.S. publishers altered his spelling, he demanded: “Do they Americanize the Christmas Carol, or Jane Austen?”

Do they really?

We need to remember that childrens books are mostly not bought by children, but by adults for children.

Dahl is often in the "most read" lists, because adults keep buying the books. But when we ask children what books they love he stops appearing. (Sadly, this info is buried in old reports from "What kids are reading", which is hard to find now). https://web.archive.org/web/20140603135101/http://whatkidsar...

If your child enjoys reading Dahl that's great, keep buying them. But there are so many books that are just better than Dahl and that don't come with all the baggage.

>If your child enjoys reading Dahl that's great, keep buying them. But there are so many books that are just better than Dahl and that don't come with all the baggage.

I agree there's a lot of baggage, but I'm interested in what books you think are "just better"?

Anything in the Carnegie Medal short lists (and probably the long list too). For younger children anything in the Greenaway short lists.

My dislike for this class of censorship where we try and remove the works of authors for views they held and thoughts expressed working to make a society where we remove everything that makes us slightly uncomfortable in a manner that would make Captain Beatty proud, aside.

I was unable to find neither the 1019 or 2018 report but I did find the 2017 report. https://doc.renlearn.com/KMNet/R60818.pdf

Year 2 - Girls: The Magic Finger, Rank 9 up from 17.

Year 3 -

Overall: The Magic Finger, Rank 2 same as previous year.

Overall: Fantastic Mr Fox, Rank 5 up from 6

Overall: George’s Marvellous Medicine, Rank 7 up from 9

Overall: Esio Trot, Rank 20 up from 37

Year 4 -

Overall: The Twits, Rank 1 same as previous year.

Overall: George’s Marvellous Medicine , Rank 1 up from 4

Overall: Fantastic Mr Fox, Rank 1 same

Overall: The Magic Finger, Rank 4 down from 2

Overall: Esio Trot, Rank 5 same

There are more listed, I don't have time to go through the entire thing but the reports seem to show that kids LOVE his works...or they did 3 years ago.

Thank you for finding that report.

Please actually read it. It supports what I say: Children read Dahl because other people buy the books for them to read. So he always appears in "most read" lists. Children do not enjoy the books, which is why when you ask children what books they enjoy he doesn't appear in those lists.

The report you've linked contains both types of lists. For "most liked" you need pages 26-28, and appendix H tables 34 to 42b. Dahl doesn't appear once in the "most liked" tables. That's striking because he is so heavily read - he appears in all the "most often read" tables.

I was thinking Ryan Dahl.

"Wow, first he did Node.js and then also Deno! How does he do it?!"

But, yes, the other Dahl is much more exciting! Thanks :)

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