Because it is the artists decision to make, not a committee by force of pressure from a small but aggressive and vocal group. For instance, Dahl changed the Oompa Loompas description in the original book from African Pygmies to what they are today. Regardless of if there was pressure to do so, it was his choice as the artist. He doesn't exist any longer and his will makes no mention of editing his works. So doing so is a crime essentially.
Most traditionally published authors don't really get to decide these things entirely on their own - their publishers will have a word.
In the case of deceased authors, ensuring your work is treated the way you want is why you put a literary executor in your will. In the absence of direct instructions, the literary executor gets to decide, and it's not relevant if there's no mention of changes in the will.
I don’t care about the legal aspect. I care about the authenticity. It isn’t the authors work anymore after it has been changed without their consent. It’s abhorrent.
Dahl made a choice not to lay down restrictions in his will and not to appoint literary executors who he'd ensured would refuse to change things. He may or may not have disapproved of any given set of changes, but the absence of any such terms is implicit consent for his estate to do as it pleases.
I have published books. They'll likely never be worth anything. But the absence of any terms about them in my will is intentional: Once I'm gone, I don't give a shit what my inheritors do with the rights for them. That's their business.
As for authenticity, the originals still exist. Nothing has erased them. Deposit laws means the original editions will be on file at relevant libraries even if every customer got rid of theirs. I'm all for ensuring original editions remain at least somehow accessible, but this obsession with changes to books now just strikes me as comical given how long abridged, simplified or simply reimagined versions of classics have existed.
Though chances are good that what you've read and consider "authentic" wasn't the original anyway, but one of the earlier revised editions. E.g. the version most people will have read was revised to change the Oompa-Loompas from African pygmies.
He made those changes though. Possibly under pressure yes but he still made them.
Any alteration to his work after his death is no longer his work.
I should add: that may or may not be important to someone. To me it is. I don’t consider the altered version his work any longer but rather a derivative work or more accurately, a vandalization of his work.
I don't understand the existence of two markets here.
I may be simple-minded but I would have thought that people either want to read a book or they don't. But now is there really a market for people who want to read a book but only if that book's content is made different from what it actually is? (I'm worried if that's the case).
This isn't a new thing. Abridged versions and children's editions and versions with updated language go back a long time. There is far more than two distinct markets here.
When I read the unexpurgated Gulliver’s Travels as an adult I was shocked. I knew I had read them in school, but certainly did not remember all those naughty bits. The children’s versions are heavily censored.
So long as the original remains available, I'm okay. Yes, I think there have always been people who'd prefer a 'sanitized' version of things --though maybe that wish wasn't always available or fulfilled.
And I certainly think that the original ought to remain. I'd hate for people to come down and revise Plato or Sun Tzu, etc., because some aspect or passages hurt their sensibilities. I feel the same about modern works as well. The Original must remain but it's okay to have a 'sanitized' or bowdlerized version as well.
One thing that seems dangerous is the practice where sanitized/bowlderized versions don't note that they are sanitized or abridged (sometimes significantly) so the readers think that they have read the classic book but have not really, as critical passages (especially those which are heavy enough to warrant discussion with others) were missing from what they read. Readers have to right to know if they are getting the original or not, so that the choice is informed and not accidental.
Actually, I think it's not OK to have 'sanitised' versions. No-one is forced to read a book but if you do you 'confront' the content. Sanitising everything, as seems to be the trend, is cowardly and weakening minds.
On the other hand, I fully understand that the aim of a publisher is to sell more.
The most common form of "sanitation" is probably abridgement, and I think there is a strong argument that abridgement is a net positive because it allows people who would never be able/willing to read the full book to get the gist of the story and still participate in / understand at least some of the cultural significance of that story. Not terribly unlike reasonably faithful film adaptations.
But what the publisher did in this case was not like that; these modifications weren't designed to make the books more accessible to people with low reading skill ('fat' is not a hard word.)
Maybe, but another alternative is that (mass-market) authors feel compelled to only write bowdlerized versions of what they had in mind to write and then you're left with fewer options.
Abridged and various adaptations of books exist, as do things like Kidz Bop and CleanFlicks (or at least its derivatives). Not to say that this is or isn't good but I don't think it's weird that various forms of the same "work" exist and that some people prefer a modified one over the original.
People have been willing to pay for this kind of thing for a long time.
It's a little different now in that it's the original rights-holder doing it but money talks and why argue over fair use when you can do it yourself?
This is like the 90s Christian companies that would strip out violence/language/sexual themes from movies and repackage them for families. I'm sure there's a market for woke-washed books, but I can't help but sense the same puritanical forces at play here.
> So long as the original is also available, why not?
You're making the assumption that rightsholders will continue to publish or allow others to publish the old edition. Maybe this time when it becomes a big deal in a news cycle, but the next time it happens, it won't be as big a deal. The tenth time it happens, nobody will know or care:
"Old news. Fascists trying to make a big deal out of something that happens every day. You didn't see them crying when they censored all of the atheist books, so why are they crying now when we're censoring all the Nazis? This is just foreign propaganda trying to exaggerate the differences between us, most normal people are united in their support of The Homeland against Eastern Mind Control." --comment on RedditHN circa 2035.
The thing that alarms me most is that these are people censoring extremely successful masterworks from revered authors. The stuff being written today, by nobody-yets, is being pre-corrected.
Music (used to?) do something like this. One version for Al Gore’s PMRC and one version for everyone else.
So long as the original is also available, why not?