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Post by andydecker on Mar 12, 2021 20:59:25 GMT
Now I fear these editions are also edited. Damn. I do not have a big problem with it, except of course on the level of principle. I have read unexpurgated Wheatley, and do not particularly miss whatever is gone in these editions. You are right. It is not hard to loose a third of these novels. Any good editor could do this, and if the reader doesn't know this beforehand he wouldn't get it. Some novels even would benefit from loosing some pages. But it is kind of a rewriting of history which never is a good thing.
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Post by bluetomb on Mar 12, 2021 21:23:36 GMT
I do not have a big problem with it, except of course on the level of principle. I have read unexpurgated Wheatley, and do not particularly miss whatever is gone in these editions. You are right. It is not hard to loose a third of these novels. Any good editor could do this, and if the reader doesn't know this beforehand he wouldn't get it. Some novels even would benefit from loosing some pages. But it is kind of a rewriting of history which never is a good thing. Robert Lusty, the managing director of Hutchinson, apparently once shrieked "Mr Wheatley's books are not to be read; they're sent straight to the printer" to a dubious junior editor assigned him. Wheatley was apparently a junior editor's job and he went through a lot of them. Mind you this comes from Giles Gordon's (publisher turned literary agent) memoir so things may have been gilded in the way that publishing people do go for.
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Post by helrunar on Mar 12, 2021 21:42:44 GMT
That's a marvelous story, bluetomb. Thanks for sharing.
I always have to crack a weary smile whenever the topic of Wheatley comes up. I've only ever read one or two short stories which were fine, I presume because no padding or phantasmagoria was called for. I had a cousin back in the early 70s who was addicted to reading Wheatley's occult novels. A few years later she told me at a family party that she'd gotten rid of all of them because she had decided they "weren't good for her"--I think alas she meant in a religious sense, not the awfulness of the writing.
I don't watch the Hammer film of Devil Rides Out all that often but when I do it's more for laughs than anything else. The art direction of that film IS really beautifully accomplished and the cast turn in great performances. Have yet to see The Lost Continent--it does sound like a lot of fun!
H.
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Post by Dr Strange on Mar 12, 2021 22:03:44 GMT
I read the expurgated Kindle edition of UNCHARTED SEAS. Which nevertheless contains two instances of the n-word. It says at the beginning of each of these editions that they have been edited "for style and pace," at the request of Wheatley's descendants. There's a bit more detail here - bloomsburyreader.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/reviving-dennis-wheatley/I am not sure I always follow the argument being made, e.g. - "My decision was to keep the dialogue intact – if characters are speaking to one another then the reader expects it to be a faithful representation of how people spoke at that time. However, there is something known as ‘authorial intervention’ in literature where the author, as omnipotent narrator, will chip in with a personal view not attributed to anyone within the fictional world of the story. This is a trespassing of thought into a narrative where it has no place". That last part seems to me to need some supporting explanation, rather than simply being asserted like this. But, bottom line, is that the editing seems to have been done for purely commercial reasons - in order to sell books that otherwise (in the editor's opinion) few people would want to buy.
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Post by helrunar on Mar 12, 2021 22:36:07 GMT
Isn't this the kind of thing that used to be called "abridged editions"? There used to be lots of those way back when. I had one of Bram Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars. I had ordered it from a catalogue (I think the firm was known as F & SF Books--this was back circa 1974-75) and had no idea until it arrived that it was not the complete novel.
H.
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Post by andydecker on Mar 13, 2021 12:33:54 GMT
However, there is something known as ‘authorial intervention’ in literature where the author, as omnipotent narrator, will chip in with a personal view not attributed to anyone within the fictional world of the story. This is a trespassing of thought into a narrative where it has no place". That last part seems to me to need some supporting explanation, rather than simply being asserted like this. But, bottom line, is that the editing seems to have been done for purely commercial reasons - in order to sell books that otherwise (in the editor's opinion) few people would want to buy. Thanks for the link, Dr. Strange. Very interesting. Frankly I read the piece with a lot of bias. After reading it I believe that they really didn't want to make the novels politically correct. But to work on the 'authorial intervention' is second guessing at best. I am not talking about obvious errors in judgement. If the writer indeed puts the same description or dialogue again and again on the page. A while ago I tried to read Tim Curran's Morbid Anatomy, and when he did the same description of the trenches - it is a WWI horror story - for the third time, I knew that the editor didn't do his job. (If there was an editor to begin with). This is lazy writing, and it just slows everything down. At the end it boils down to a question of skill or the lack of. So if you edit such things out, chances are that you make the text better. But this is not second-guessing the authors intentions. My hackles rise if I read about the wish to 'tighten up' texts. Not a brand new manuscript, but a text which had sold thousands of copies in earlier times already. This is pandering to an audience of whom the publishers think that it is intellectually unable to comprehend such a text, let alone enjoy it. You have to make it faster - or dumb it down - because otherwise they stop reading as it is so 'boring' or whatever. I am not saying that maybe this assumption is wrong in itself. But such behavior is just adding fuel to the fire. Either you re-issue a text as it is - warts and all - or you don't need to bother. You can claim as long as you like that this is a service for the current audience, but it is not.
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Post by andydecker on Mar 13, 2021 12:39:17 GMT
Isn't this the kind of thing that used to be called "abridged editions"? There used to be lots of those way back when. I had one of Bram Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars. I had ordered it from a catalogue (I think the firm was known as F & SF Books--this was back circa 1974-75) and had no idea until it arrived that it was not the complete novel. H. The old Reader's Digest Select Edition was published till 2019.
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Post by cromagnonman on Mar 13, 2021 13:15:26 GMT
The cynic in me suspects that "pacing" is a carpet under which the censorship brigade can conveniently sweep any number of literary sins without appearing to compromise their liberal scruples. But even taking the explanation at face value - and like Andy I see no reason not to in this particular instance - streamlining old texts to make them more palatable/accessible to modern perspectives seems to me little removed from those special junior versions of classics which used to be produced and maybe still are for all I know, where problematic content was excised and wordage density diluted for ease of adolescent consumption. Slightly different from general abridgements which were largely dictated by length. I suppose the hysterical way the oversensitive react nowadays to historical attitudes its unsurprising if publishers are inclined to regard everyone as being similarly immature.
I confess bemusement at this alleged problem of authorial intrusion into a text. Overt didacticism was a large part of what Wheatley was about. Yes, it may seem strange to a modern eye to have a text suddenly come to a screeching halt while the author gets on his soapbox to lecture us on some particular issue or other, but Wheatley's approach strikes me as more honest than merely setting up a strawman character through which to channel his views. I think my favourite example is from THE KA OF GIFFORD HILLARY where - if memory serves (and it is a long time since I read it) - Wheatley brazenly breaks the fourth wall to tell the reader to skip the next umpteen pages if they're uninterested in his pontifications upon NATO Cold War defence strategy.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Mar 13, 2021 14:21:01 GMT
I confess bemusement at this alleged problem of authorial intrusion into a text. Overt didacticism was a large part of what Wheatley was about. Yes, it may seem strange to a modern eye to have a text suddenly come to a screeching halt while the author gets on his soapbox to lecture us on some particular issue or other, but Wheatley's approach strikes me as more honest than merely setting up a strawman character through which to channel his views. I think my favourite example is from THE KA OF GIFFORD HILLARY where - if memory serves (and it is a long time since I read it) - Wheatley brazenly breaks the fourth wall to tell the reader to skip the next umpteen pages if they're uninterested in his pontifications upon NATO Cold War defence strategy. Unlike, it seems, everyone else, I have actually read a large number of these supposedly edited versions, and they still read like Wheatley to me. The passage you mention from THE KA OF GIFFORD HILLARY is still very much there, for instance.
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Post by kooshmeister on Mar 13, 2021 15:32:13 GMT
I seem to have unintentionally stirred up some trouble with my comments about the book's racial elements. I apologize.
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Post by helrunar on Mar 13, 2021 15:53:11 GMT
Hi Kooshmeister,
No apology needed at all as far as I am concerned. The discussion has been and continues to be lively and engaging. So I for one am glad you mentioned it.
Yesterday when I looked at the phrase "abridged editions" on a popular internet search engine, a couple of articles came up about audiobooks or "audibles." I find the popularity of these quite strange--guess I'm wired differently from most. I do occasionally enjoy hearing a book read aloud IF the reader has a voice with what I would consider a good timbre, has what I consider to be good diction, and can bring some nuance and flair to the reading. Most of these things, judging from the few I have had to encounter, are read either by Midwestern Americans with voices so banal you long for sleep but are unable to find it due to the insistent braying of phonemes, or, if it's a UK production, one of the most ghastly examples of "estuary English." Just not my flagon of mead.
The most extreme example I recall seeing yesterday was an "audible" edition of Tolstoy's War and Peace that had been "abridged" down to around 3 or 4 hours. The full length reading runs fifty-some hours. The only reason I can imagine somebody acquiring the "abridged" version and sitting through it on their commute would be so that they could brag at parties (or Zoom events nowadays) that "oh, of course I read War and Peace" before moving on to the next soundbyte.
cheers, H.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Mar 13, 2021 16:00:02 GMT
I seem to have unintentionally stirred up some trouble with my comments about the book's racial elements. I apologize. I am not interested in apologies. I want cash.
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Post by kooshmeister on Mar 13, 2021 16:48:56 GMT
Will you take a check...?
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Post by Dr Strange on Mar 13, 2021 16:49:24 GMT
It's 30+ years since I read any of Wheatley's novels, but I quite enjoyed them at the time. I probably even enjoyed some of those "chunks of undigested research" - I may have even thought these were "educational" - but things change, and I doubt I would have much time for that sort of thing now. Generally speaking, I don't have a problem with "abridged" or otherwise "edited" versions of books as long as people know that's what they are - and that the original versions are still available to those who want them.
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Post by andydecker on Mar 13, 2021 18:50:07 GMT
I seem to have unintentionally stirred up some trouble with my comments about the book's racial elements. I apologize. No need to. This is an interesting discussion and I for one like it.
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