All but one of Roald Dahl's works of fiction to be removed from history. Which one?

Cafe Society
#1

For reasons that may be summarized as me being a petty jackass, I have decided to reduce the level of beauty and joy in the world yet again. This time I’ll be hopping in the continua buggy and … oh, let’s just say persuading Roald Dahl to restrict his writing to intelligence reports. So once I’m done there’ll be no more Matilda, no Charlie & the Chocolate Factor, no James & the Giant Peach; no more Sometime Never or My Uncle Oswald. Even the short stories will be gone. By this time next Tuesday, none of you will ever remember loving anything he wrote.

With one exception, that is. I’ll be arranging for one–JUST one–of his tales–to survive. Y’all get to choose. You can pick any single novel, or any collection of short stories published before his death. What will you choose, and why?

#2

James and the Giant Peach. Please.

#3

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

Because it would confuse people.

#4

I need a reason, cat-maiden. And “we have the same middle name” doesn’t count.

#5

The answer should be obvious: “Lamb to the Slaughter.”

And please make sure you save the Hitchcock version starring Barbara Bel Geddes! :cool:

#6

*Danny the Champion of the World *was the first “real” book I ever read by myself, from beginning to end. So I’ll go with that.

If I had to choose his best, though, it would be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It warped my mind in all the right ways.

#7

Nothing. Tabula rasa. Think of how many different, amazing stories he would write if he had another career’s worth of writing to do instead.

#8

Boy. Dahl’s memoir of his childhood is more fantastic than all his fiction put together.

#9

I think you read a different OP than I wrote.

Silly rabbit. I was only planning on keeping him from writing fiction. Now that you’ve reminded me of that, you’ve placed it in danger as well.

#10

I can’t help but wonder how much of that is fiction.

#11

Oh gosh, you couldn’t persuade him to remove all of them?

#12

You don’t want to do that.

You can eliminate them going into the future, but you can’t go back in the past - it will cause tens of thousands of people to possibly live in agony.

After her stroke, while carrying their fifth child, Dahl’s wife, actress Patricia Neal dedicated the Patricia Neal Center for Rehabilitation in Knoxville, TN, which has, since 1978, helped many people cope with the after-affects of stroke, spinal cord, and other like injuries to the central nervous system.

One of which was my dad.

So… in a stroke of good fortune, I thwart your evil plan… but barely. All his books will be expunged in the future.

#13

I suspect that delphica may be referring to teeth.

#14

Actually, I was responding to the OP… sorry if that wasn’t clear, about 10 posts popped up between me starting to write my response and the actual posting of it.

#15

Y’know, his first published work was actually nonfiction. Only Dahl could make an account of suffering horrible burns over most of his body while crashing a fighter plane so hilarious.

#16

Ahh—gotcha. :slight_smile: I was just making a dumb joke anyway.

#17

It’s my favorite, the one that I’ve read and reread the most. It has awesome songs, second only to CatGGE (my second choice, but it doesn’t stand as well on its own as JatGP).

#18

Please, My Uncle Oswald! Forget that it doesn’t even hold a candle to the brilliance and wonderful storytelling of The Visitor (my favorite short story ever), but I wouldn’t even regard it as anything better than pornography. I know Dahl was a freak and a pervert, but this “book” was just over the top. What a letdown it was.

#19

As long as his screenplays for* Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang *and *You Only Live Twice *are gone, I don’t care.

#20

The collected short stories must survive. I don’t care about kid’s books, but I love the darker short stories with a touch of the macabre, many of which I read for the first time in Alfred Hitchcock anthologies. The above-mentioned “Lamb to the Slaughter”, “The Sound Machine”, “Royal Jelly”…oh, dang, I have to go out and get me some Roald Dahl and hide the works safely away, before it’s too late…