Tag: Roald Dahl

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‘Those expressions are omitted…’

The major literary news story of the week was an announcement that Puffin Books would revise selected passages in new editions of books by Roald Dahl. The Telegraph provides a decent background of the reaction this has provoked.

One word that keeps cropping up is bowdlerising, a reference to Thomas Bowdler. Beginning in 1807, he produced a series of books titled The Family Shakspeare [sic] that removed what he considered to be improper language. The title page claimed: ‘Nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.’

It is also known that his sister Henrietta started the project and contributed to the subsequent volumes, although it’s not clear how evenly the work was split.

While the public largely agreed with the changes during its first hundred years, attitudes had changed by the early 20th century. This is when the verb to bowdlerise gained its modern meaning of making overzealous edits.

In the case of Dahl, I think the situation could have been approached differently. Perhaps a newly-written foreword to explain the historical context would have been more appropriate to help young readers understand the language choices.

However, it’s clear that Puffin is banking on solid sales, as hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds must have been spent on the changes. It remains to be seen in the long run whether the readers of the future agree that the text has been bowdlerised.

At the time

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Learning From Fiction

Growing up, I read a substantial chunk of Roald Dahl’s output. I liked them not just for the stories, but how he would explain concepts to his young readers. It was through his novels that I learnt why payments of royalties are made, how some fighter jets fired missiles through the propellor, and that finds of certain metals need to be reported to the authorities.

But learning from fiction is in no way restricted to children’s books. Anyone can glean or dispute historical stories from Dan Brown, or learn a little about the law from John Grisham.

A personal favourite is The Day of the Triffids, where a character talks about risk management by using an example from his family farm. It was explained that once in a while, the cows would bunch together and burst through the perimeter fence, yet it was so rare and unpredictable that it was quicker and cheaper to fix breaks as they occurred than to reinforce the whole fence.

And then I read Lee Child giving praise to Frederick Forstyth as The Day of the Jackal turns half-a-century old. The entire novel is almost a textbook for an assassination, such is the level of detail. The hitman isn’t a spiv with limitless resources. We see how he funds his operation and where his weapon and fake documents are obtained.

Yet the reader is never overloaded with lists of data. The key technique is to convey much of the detail via dialogue. At the very beginning, for example, a suspect begins to tell the police about the assassination plot, and the reader learns the details at the same time as the officers.

I feel compelled to leave a caveat here that anything learnt in fiction should always be cross-checked with a non-fiction source. That’s doubly true if you plan to include something educational in your own work.

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Adapting to Film, Adapting to Change

On Saturday, I went to see a performance of Benidorm at the Edinburgh Playhouse, based upon the ITV2 comedy of the same name. It even featured some of the actors.

The TV series is already rather theatrical in nature, like a Carry On film with a more modern attitude. As such, it transferred very well to the stage.

Sometimes, though, adapting a story from one medium into another is a hit-or-miss affair.

Those I enjoyed include the 2004 film Layer Cake, then I discovered it’s so closely based on the novel by J. J. Connolly that it even contains direct quotes. Similarly, The Thirty-Nine Steps worked as a mock radio adaptation performed on stage, even though the plot was stripped down to the bare essentials.

Yet I was disappointed by the film version of one of my favourite books, Starter For Ten, perhaps because it deviates from the first-person point of view. And the 2016 Dad’s Army movie opened to lacklustre reviews, with The Guardian asking why we needed a film version of a much-loved TV series.

One classic case of an author disowning a film version is Roald Dahl’s reaction to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He disliked the plot changes and musical numbers so much that no other screenplays of his work were authorised until after his death.

A few years ago, I posed a question to Irvine Welsh at a book signing about his thoughts on adaptation, considering how many of his novels have been on the big screen. He replied that he considered film to be a different medium and he accepted that changes sometimes had to be made.

‘And,’ he concluded, ‘it never hurts book sales.’

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Drop the Dead Entry.

When I talked about short-form writing last week, I failed to mention the My Two Sentences blog, where Edward Roads writes a complete story in that number of sentences. Most recently, it’s a timely argument around the Christmas dinner table.

Speaking of few words, it’s been another busy week and I haven’t had much time to think of an entry built around one theme, so let me give you a few.

On Friday, it was my office party. I always think it’s a good idea for a writer to have a ‘day job’. It started me thinking of a particularly brilliant piece of writing on this theme: the last episode in series two of Drop the Dead Donkey. The first half focuses on the party itself while the second deals with the aftermath the next morning. The episode is available on 4OD, and it quite rightly won Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin a BAFTA award.

Yesterday evening, I was listening to playwright Alan Bissett on Pulse 98.4, a community station broadcasting from East Renfrewshire. I’ve seen him live a couple of times, and he likes to put issues and controversies on the stage, so I half-expected the conversation to turn to politics straight away. It did, particularly regarding the question of Scottish independence.

English: Screenshot of Jimmy Stewart and Donna...
Screenshot of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tonight, I’m seeing the classic It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen for the fourth time. This will be the black and white version, which satisfies my inner purist, although the artificially coloured version I saw is incredibly well done. You might not be aware how many films are based on short stories, as filmmakers can still extract almost as much as they can from a novel. Total Recall and Brokeback Mountain are two such examples, and the source for Frank Capra’s masterpiece is a story of 4400 words.

Later in December, I’m off to see a stage adaptation of James and the Giant Peach. I haven’t read Roald Dahl’s book since I was a child, so I’ve forgotten much of the plot and I’m looking forward to being surprised.

Someone asked me recently which authors I liked to read when I was younger, and I could only name him and Enid Blyton. With a little thought, I added Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole series. I did used to read quite a bit, but from all over the place. My grandad used to take me to the library: I would pick books I liked the look of, and I can’t remember any of the authors’ names. I’ll report back if that changes.

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Happy World Book Day: A Response to @MostlyYummy.

It’s a rare occasion that Mostly Yummy’s blog topics will intersect in any way with mine, but today it’s happened.

I didn’t realise until this morning that World Book Day was such a big deal among the nation’s schoolchildren. They’re encouraged to dress up as their favourite fictional character.

The theory of this is quite sound. A child’s imagination can be sparked and expanded by his or her early reading choices. The other part of the theory is peer pressure. If a child knows that everyone else will be dressing up, they’ll likely want to do the same.

Like many children, I loved Roald Dahl’s slightly twisted novels, but I also enjoyed the stories from Antelope Books. I can’t find any relevant references to Antelope online, so do comment if you remember these guys.

But as Yummy points out in today’s post, the reality of the aforementioned theory can be very different. She tells us how she tried to cobble together outfits for two of her children, while making a valid point that the dressing up can overshadow the intention of World Book Day which is to read.

I must’ve mentioned this before, but being asked to do anything artistic scares the bejesus out of me; even seeing the words Daler Rowney brings me out in hives. I disliked the subject at school since I could never make the final product look anything like what the teacher asked. I did know what I wanted to draw, paint, or construct, but it became lost somewhere between my head and my arm. In essence, I sympathise a great deal with my fellow blogger.

I’ve been upfront from the start that I’m a latecomer to writing fiction. I didn’t pen a single piece between my last high school English class, when it was mandatory, and just before I turned 27. Despite the long gap, I find writing comes naturally to me, although I still had to learn the rules and conventions of the craft, whereas expressing myself with a paintbrush just isn’t me.

I recognise that some people won’t be able to relate to this as they have the exact opposite talents. I would like to learn, as it could complement my writing. Perhaps someone suitably gifted could put together a Complete Ninny’s Guide for me, and throw in a copy for Mostly Yummy.

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The Shock of The New.

Even although I’ve had stories published, I’m very keen to keep expanding my horizons. DamyantiWrites made this very point in her recent entry Do You Swim Free?, where she discusses authors who are happy to sit on the well-worn cushions of their comfort zone, rehashing the same ideas for years.

To this end, I’ve joined a Life Writing (LW) class at the University of Dundee. Thus far, the vast majority of my scribing has been about fictional characters in fictional situations, but LW is all about the self: memoirs of a specific event you experienced, an autobiography of your entire life, or a biography of someone else’s.

In last week’s class, we wrote a passage about a recent holiday; in my case a boat trip up the River Forth in Edinburgh. Part of our homework involved rewriting the passage using reference material such as photographs, maps and articles. The next class is on Tuesday, when we’ll be discussing the LW we have enjoyed and/or disliked.

I hope to expand my horizons in other ways too, such as poetry, and the performance type in particular; I intend to come back to that subject in the future. I’ve also written a stage play and I’m kicking about an idea for a screenplay.

There are authors who can carry off taking the same path over and over again. Read almost anything by Agatha Christie and it follows a familiar pattern where everyone ends up in the drawing room while Poirot or Miss Marple whittles them down to reveal the murderer. And I dislike Dan Brown’s style, but looking past that, he is another good example. Historical facts, symbolic minutiae and conspiracies spill out onto every page of every book, and the public lap it up.

I really yearn to pull something unexpected out of the bag. P D James is one author who did just that. For years, she penned detective books, then at the age of 72, wrote the science fiction novel Children of Men. And Roald Dahl is famous for his children’s books, but additionally wrote macabre short stories for adults, and the script for the James Bond film You Only Live Twice. That’s like Cliff Richard releasing a hip-hop album.

To that end, I’ll attempt to wring every possible benefit out of the LW course, and not just from the teaching in class. Being a student allows me into the university library, where I’m writing this, and into the cheap campus bar. And that means it’s easier to take Ernest Hemingway’s slightly dubious advice to, “Write drunk, edit sober.”

But I’ll need to squeeze it all in before December, when the course ends and I’ll lose these privileges.