Friday, June 15, 2007

To Hell in a Handbasket

The unkindest cut is Dickens minus 40% - Opinion - theage.com.au: "My new-found evangelism for literature has been energised by the news that Britain's Orion Publishing Group has reissued some classic novels with as much as 40 per cent of the original text removed. This is an act of cultural vandalism.

The first six of these compact editions — Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss, Anna Karenina, Moby Dick and Wives and Daughters — will be available in Australian bookstores in July.

They are intended for trouble-free consumption by people with far better things to do than read the whole books."

5 comments:

Cap'n Bob said...

Sure to be as collectible as the Readers Digest condensed books.

pattinase (abbott) said...

See, I don't get it. It's not the length that makes these works difficult. It's the complexity of plot and language. Less might make it harder to understand.

Anonymous said...

Myb thy lft t th vwls.

Jrr Hs

Patrick Shawn Bagley said...

I'm not sure which scares me more: a) that a publisher would carve up some of the classics, or b) that some people will buy these books and claim to have read the actual works.

"Oh, yeah I read Anna Karenina. That's the one about the Russian chick trying to catch a train, right?"

Brent McKee said...

The big question is not so much that they're cutting up to 40% as what 40% they're cutting. What I really find annoying is the (hopefully) sarcastic statement "They are intended for trouble-free consumption by people with far better things to do than read the whole books."

Presumably when they cut that 40% of text they'll also cut the bits that some people somewhere object to. Paging Doctor Bowdler.