Wait what? That's a pretty bizarre thing to change. Really does feel orwellian to change the authors being referenced.
I do think there's something a bit off in selecting an American writer instead of a Brit though. That and replacing ladies and gentlemen specifically with folks removes some of the Britishness and offends me as an American.
At the same time, these edits feel substantial and I don't think they should be pushed without consent of the purchaser. Otoh, I would love for ebooks to magically get mistakes fixed (and even more so, if I could report mistakes, so they could get fixed).
> This change I feel is one of the least objectionable, IMHO.
I think it's one of the most objectionable changes. Removing authors whose politics have gone out of style, and replacing them with more palatable ones, reminds me of Party members airbrushed out of photos with Stalin.
That it's done in a children's book is that much worse - a middle-man censor posing as Dahl and recommending what books to read, and presenting a false consensus on which authors were popular.
But, these changes aren't anywhere near changing the name of a main character. The author references are a tiny tiny part of a large work that never comes up again. It's not at all like when Wally was renamed Waldo, or when Wilma was replaced with Wenda.
Okay, in the next installment you would be fine to watch "Amazing Huggy Wuggy against Teletubbies". Because you know, spiders are scary and gremlins/mob bosses/mad scientists are scary too.
Do you think children in 1988 had a better understanding of who Joseph Conrad was than kids today? Maybe slightly, as I'm sure some parents bought Heart of Darkness after Apocalypse Now came out, but I certainly had no idea who he was at the age I read Dahl books.
Do you remember analyzing books in school? One of the things we were taught to keep in mind as a lens of analysis was the author as a person, and why they might have written what they wrote. I think this is a great example: Why did Dahl choose the authors he chose to mention? In Matilda, in many cases, I believe he did it to tacitly recommend those books and authors to his readers. To the age group that makes up Dahl's readership, most of them probably weren't well known even at the peak of their popularity. That's sort of the point: Dahl's saying--possibly--"go check this out, my young readers".
So yeah, I think it's pretty crass to just change it to a different author. Dahl is an author calling out fellow authors in his book. It happens in movies a lot, too, where filmmakers will put subtle (or not-so-subtle) nods to their peers and forebears and inspirations in their work. I think, as a rule, if the audience notices it, it was probably intentional. Most authors and filmmakers care about other authors and filmmakers a lot more than we do. None of them would be okay with somebody in the future mucking with their references because people aren't immediately getting the reference. They'd be like... "No! The whole point was to immortalize that person or work further by mentioning it in my work!"
Because 'namedropping' an author that the child may not have heard of is exactly the way they do start to hear of them.