The current ebook of Carrie (which has the new Atwood introduction) has changed “of fighting with desperate decorum to keep the n****** out of Kleen Korners” to “of fighting with desperate decorum to keep the Kleen Corners white”.
I know this is a small change but it still sets a worrying precedent. If you weren’t aware there was a whole fiasco over the publisher editing Roald Dahl’s books in the UK.
by CyberGhostface
35 Comments
I think censorship in any form is harmful and reductive, even in a case like this. The works in their original form should be discussed, dissected and understood not erased. Growth has never come from erasure.
That’s not good. I recently read a book called “James” with the n-word all the way through. Books reflect life and shouldn’t be censored.
It’s called bowdlerizing and was considered anathema to literature until recently.
If the original author wants to change their work that’s their own affair but if a corporation or any subsequent owner of the IP changes it that’s just wrong in my mind. It may be legal but ethically suspect.
The biggest problem here is that it’s trying to use changes in diction to make racism sound less offensive. But, like, racism is offensive, so why take steps to make its description more palatable?
There are differences in what you change. If you were to censor the nword out of Huckleberry Finn, it makes a massive tonal and meaningful difference. Other examples, where in Pippi Longstocking, there is no meaningful change of “Negroking” to King of the south sea. I don’t know the exact context of the quote here but this is not a clean case at all
worm lunchroom tie attempt complete lavish market march snobbish jar
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thankfully, you can still buy actual books.
Why are major media organizations making decisions like this based on the outcry of a hundred terminally online teenagers on Twitter
The notion of censoring horror work is mind boggling.
If this revised text was a decision on the part of Stephen King and his publisher, that’s not censorship. Authors often make minor edits in new editions of older books, in collaboration with publishers, often based on what they think will sell in the current market. If governments or publicly funded institutions like libraries and schools were banning the book because of its language, or altering the language without the author’s agreement, that would be censorship- but it doesn’t sound like that is what happened here. And same with Dahl’s books- that was a business decision, and while not everyone agrees with it, it’s not censorship.
And this is why I keep my old paperbacks. No censorship to my version.
Are authors just not allowed to write racist characters in their stories anymore? Can they have murderers in them? I’m pretty liberal, but this is insane.
That’s why I prefer books in print. Even though they take up a lot of space.
Once you start editing things to be PC you lose the sense of the time period they were written in.
I know this is a book sub but this has also happened with music on streaming services. The biggest example being Kanye Wests Life of Pablo album. He decided to re-release the album. The change is large but simultaneously so small that you feel as though you are being gaslit. There is no subsequent information to tell you the original work has changed besides your own memory. Its greatly unfortunate, its one of the downsides of having media online.
this is only gonna get worse. buy physical books if you can to avoid this. corpo / gov shouldnt be deciding what you can and cant consume. been a concern for some time now
That sucks. People shouldn’t change history to make it more paletable for current readers. By remembering how fucked up we used to be we can more easily strive to be less fucked up tomorrow.
Just put in a a note in the beginning that says something like ”The book was written in 19XX, and thus the language reflects the era it was written in as well as the one it depicts, some word choices might in this case appear offensive to some reader”.
I’m extremely left on the political spectrum, much like King himself. I have a real problem with censorship. King doesn’t use these terms flippantly or for shock value. He uses them to illustrate the pervasiveness and banality of racism.
Leave the original text of ALL books alone. We big boys and girls and non-binaries can take it.
There’s a purposeful literary effect of juxtaposing the “desperate decorum” or suburban politics with the blunt harshness of the language describing their aims. The bowdlerization takes that away. Very disheartening.
I would love to know who is even on the other side of this argument. Nobody I’ve ever met has been in favor of censoring books or changing them to make them “less offensive”.
You published what you published. Wear that and let it stand for either what it is meant to represent or as a glimpse into the cultural of the time period.
Yeah, digital censorship is a HUGE fucking issue and has been for years. Disney is also pretty bad about it.
Using that word is meant to make you uncomfortable. That’s the point of it. Discomfort is a major cause for change. “This is a whites only space” doesn’t hit anywhere near as hard as “We don’t want no n****** here.” One of my favorite books is “The Great Santini” by Pat Conroy. That word is used a lot. Spousal/ child abuse is a major theme. Alcoholism is rampant. All written in a way that makes you hate it.
That’s so worrying. Books should never be censored…
To quote Stephen King himself, from his book *On Writing*:
>As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty. And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters’ mouth, you’ll find that you’ve let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism. Not a week goes by that I don’t receive at least one pissed-off letter (most weeks there are more) accusing me of being foul-mouthed, bigoted, homophobic, murderous, frivolous, or downright psychopathic. In the majority of cases what my correspondents are hot under the collar about relates to something in the dialogue: ‘Let’s get the fuck out of Dodge’ or ‘We don’t cotton much to [N-word]* around here’ or ‘What do you think you’re doing, you fucking [F-word]*?’
[…]
The point is to let each character speak freely, without regard to what the Legion of Decency or the Christian Ladies’ Reading Circle may approve of. To do otherwise would be cowardly as well as dishonest, and believe me, writing fiction in America as we enter the twenty-first century is no job for intellectual cowards. There are lots of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see … or to at least shut up about what you do see that’s different. They are agents of the status quo. Not necessarily bad guys, but dangerous guys if you happen to believe in intellectual freedom.
* For the record, I censored these words purely because this post would almost certainly get deleted otherwise.
Because the current climate cannot separate depiction from endorsement.
Related anecdote:
I saw a lot of online derision about IT being racist for containing racial slurs…in a story where the monster is a manifestation of hate crimes. Apparently, those readers balked at the use of the n-word but not the graphic depiction of a hundred black people burning in a nightclub arson
I think we have to start worrying about the sanitization of literature as a whole. I wonder if agreeing to subsequent editorial “corrections” is part of the contract between authors and publishers. Editions are routinely purged of typos and maybe at the same time “questionable language.” Are morality clauses now part of contracts with publishers? It would seem that they are quick to drop authors involved in scandals. For example, Norton dropped Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth due to allegations he has assaulted women. This practice seems an extension of sanitizing literature, either by cleaning up sentences or keeping books out of print. It’s merely a matter of degree.
Being unable to look at things through a lens of history teaches us nothing directly and we learn nothing from it at all.
Did he change it? Then no worries. It’s when other people think they can that it’s an issue.
Because pretending something doesn’t exist has historically worked so well for other things. /s
Seriously…. when I see people afraid to even say the words “rape” or “suicide” nowadays its kinda fucking scary. When you take away from it and try to lessen it and PG-ifiy the world, you start heading towards a future that looks like that old movie “demolition man”.
Has anyone checked with King if he authorized the change? Perhaps he’s the one who wants to see it revised.
I know the guy used to post frequently to Twitter so he should be reachable.
Steven King is very much still alive and may have requested the changes himself. It might not be censorship in the same way as when they change Twain’s books in the 90s.
I just finished a re-read of Carrie today (definitely holds up!). In context, that line was used to depict how Sue Snell, a reluctant member of the popular crowd who is conflicted about having been complicit in terrorizing Carrie in the opening shower/period incident, is repulsed by the idea of going on a “white girl/country club” life trajectory, in part because the women in these circle are racist and want to keep the “n***” out of Kleen Korners”. That language paints the picture of how this crowd thinks. No reason to “Kleen” that up.
On the other hand, later in the book the main bully character is slapped by her boyfriend and her lip is described being “puffed to negroid size” (p. 272). That description could use revisiting by the author IMO
“The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of…any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face. … The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.”
– George Orwell
**N.B. This applies to all Western nations today. Religious fanatics and Woke fanatics are killing freedom of thought, speech, and expression.**
“Robinson Crusoe, the Negroes didn’t like that because of his man, Friday. And Nietzsche, Nietzsche, the Jews didn’t like Nietzsche. Here’s a book about lung cancer. You see, all the cigarette smokers got into a panic, so for everybody’s peace of mind, we burn it.”
– from the 1966 movie version of Ray Bradbury’s *Fahrenheit 451*
**So everyone has peace of mind, the peace of mind of an intellectually sterile, culturally cowed society incapable of producing anything of value since the artists are afraid of offending someone. This is the road we are taking.**