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Notes -
Next They Came for the Dead White Authors
Apparently, Ian Fleming is next on the list for posthumous editing by sensitivity readers.
I've read a bunch of Bond novels. They are hilariously and unironically racist and sexist. Much moreso than the movies, which were already notorious for being un-PC even in an un-PC era (remember Octopussy?).
The Bond novels are fun but schlocky; Fleming's output was wildly erratic in quality. Casino Royale was actually pretty good (the Daniel Craig remake was the most accurate-to-the-book Bond movie ever made), while Dr. No was just hilariously bad (and bore almost no resemblance to the movie).
I guess I don't need to say much that hasn't already been said or that most people here won't agree with.
I will point out that editing children's books to be more acceptable to modern readers is much older than Roald Dahl. For example, I read the original, unedited Dr. Doolittle by Hugh Lofting a few years ago. I was actually unaware of just how racist it was. Modern editions have removed the "niggers" and other slurs, and the plot about the little African prince who wants Dr. Doolittle to turn him white. I don't actually object to this, so long as the original is still around. In itself, this isn't some new practice that only started happening in the woke era.
But it appears increasingly that it will no longer be acceptable to acknowledge that attitudes in the past were different; a warning label won't be enough. I expect the march will continue with Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell's novel is a magnificent epic and a glorious, unapologetic paean to the Old South, and should be preserved in its entirety both for its literary merit and for being such a cringeworthy time capsule of Lost Cause mythology. The movie was actually toned down a lot even in 1939 (they removed the part where Rhett Butler literally joins the KKK, for example), but I would not be surprised if it's next on the block for expurgation.
Here is a good news/bad news thought for you to ponder: I think sensitivity readers will soon be out of a job. Why? Because scrubbing "problematic" texts out of old books seems like a really easy job for the next generation of ChatGPT.
Absolutely. Fleming was a raging snob and it comes through. They are pure escapist wish-fulfilment fantasy, and while they probably could indeed do with a good scrubbing, if you take that out of them you're not going to have much left. I think by now most people know Bond from the movies and very few read the original novels. There is a scene in one, I can't remember which, where Bond is tortured and it left me - a person never in the possession of testicles - wincing when reading it. It's got nothing to do with real world spies at all, it's the male equivalent of romance novels if I may put it that way. Impossibly suave secret agent leads life of globe-trotting glamour in exotic locales, wining, dining, and gambling at high-end casinos all on Her Majesty's tab, while romancing a succession of femmes fatales and gorgeous women who are not the girl next door.
Wasn't Fleming himself a former spy? I can't find the quote, but I believe at one point he referred to one of his Bond novels as "the latest volume in my autobiography" or something to that effect.
The rumor is that Fleming based Bond in large part on his friend and step-cousin, Sir Christopher Lee.
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