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Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

Even if it is it's not the sort of thing you can remove by changing a few words.

I liked his books quite a lot as a kid, and haven't prevented any children in my care from accessing them. But on revisiting as an adult there is a kind of... meanspiritedness to them. It's hard to describe but almost like, spiritual viciousness or a deep nasty pessimism about people.

Part of this may be why they appeal to children anyway. I didn't consciously notice as a kid but I suspect they registered as slightly transgressive in some way, and were alluring for that reason. Anyway none of the edits really address that, or could. To a significant extent that feeling is a fundamental part of the books and can't be removed.

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> there is a kind of... meanspiritedness to them. It's hard to describe but almost like, spiritual viciousness or a deep nasty pessimism about people.

Yes, I felt this way about his books when I was a kid. I did like the books despite it, but there was always an element of grotesque cruelty to his books that I didn't particularly care for.

Still, removing that from the books is wrong. Read different books, or write your own books. Editing his books to remove the author's distinctive style is just plain wrong. What's the objective, to trick kids into thinking Roald Dahl was a different sort of man? To what end? Whatever the problem, deception is not the answer.

> Part of this may be why they appeal to children anyway. I didn't consciously notice as a kid but I suspect they registered as slightly transgressive in some way, and were alluring for that reason.

Oh, yeah, that is absolutely why they were so popular. This is arguably an example of what TVTropes calls "Seinfeld is unfunny" (the inventor of a new style of media seems derivative or at least uninteresting to modern audiences); today it maybe doesn't stand out so much, but Dahl was probably the first modern childrens' writer to write stuff like this.

Yeah even his biographical books (Boy and Going Solo) had that style of writing.

Personally I didn’t mind it. A lot of British comedic writing and entertainment was similar in vein. There’s a lot of emphasis places on barbed wit in a lot of their media (even as far back as Shakespeare), and I think Dahl essentially took that and formed it into a kids book.

Even when I was a child though, I felt any mean spritidness was always directed in a way towards the antagonist or received from a bully. It was largely in adversarial relationships. Maybe I misremember though.

Either way, I think his overall stories are almost always so incredibly charming , coupled with Quentin Blake’s wonderful art, that they’re a must read for children.

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