# Should "old" Books Be Re-Written **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 12, 2009, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774 "2009-07-12T18:46:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/21 "2009-07-13T04:07:05Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > This subject came up when I was in library school. Some old children’s books have been rewritten to bring them into line with modern values (mostly removing elements now considered extremely racist)… Reminds me of Winston’s job in _1984_. Like revising history to match what it should have been if they had been as smart as we are now. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/22 "2009-07-13T04:15:40Z")
> [@NinjaChick](#): > > No, they shouldn’t. Books should be translated into different languages to make them available to people who otherwise wouldn’t be plausibly capable of reading them (eg, I would not have been able to read Goethe’s Faust without extensive prep study had someone not translated it). Books should not be ‘translated’ into more modern language simply to make them easier to read. The author wrote it the way they did for a specific reason; any change dilutes it and that shouldn’t be done frivolously. On the other hand, they didn’t write them to be slogged through by people who had to puzzle out what they were saying. Yes, change dilutes it; but the changing of language over time has done that already. I don’t think there’s any ideal solution here, personally. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/23 "2009-07-13T12:26:16Z")
> [@kitemaker\_chuck](#): > > I hear there’s a re-write called Jonathan Livingston Sequel. > (Just kidding!) Maybe you’re kidding, but there really is a Jason Fforde book called, “First Among Sequels”. I think it is mistake for most modern readers to read Shakespeare silently. It improves remarkably when read out loud and even more so when acted. Rewriting is insane. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/24 "2009-07-13T13:05:23Z")
Old books should not be rewritten. Old books should be annotated by experts, to give readers the information they need to appreciate and understand the original. Cf. _The Annotated Alice_, _The Annotated Sherlock Holmes_, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/25 "2009-07-13T13:46:22Z")
I can see redoing for dialect / spelling; the translations of the Bible that we use in Spanish are pretty recent, usually; I can understand the Poem of Mio Cid in the oldest preserved spelling but it’s a lot easier when the spelling has been modernized (in this case, you get the old version on one page and the modernized one across it, and the poetry isn’t lost at all). But I hate, hate, hate versions of Little Red Riding Hood where at the end the Big Bad Wolf is dancing with Grandma, ok? When I was little, I used to dream of being Wendy and flying away; I didn’t really like Peter Pan a lot, but he wasn’t so different from the boys I was always taking care of in real life. I didn’t find a pre-Disney version of the book until I was 20: Peter is a complete moron! ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/26 "2009-07-13T13:48:28Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > Old books should not be rewritten. Old books should be annotated by experts, to give readers the information they need to appreciate and understand the original. Cf. _The Annotated Alice_, _The Annotated Sherlock Holmes_, etc. Years ago, a local theater group presented a series of Shakespeare plays. Hey–no royalties & he’s still packing them in! I’d never read or seen _King Lear_, so I purchased a Cliffs Notes edition. It included the full text of the play, with definitions & other explanatory notes on each page. Plus some old engravings for atmosphere. It was fun to read & probably helped me get into the play. But the production was excellent & caught me up, anyway: “Aah, he’s going to put out his eyes!” There’s also the approach used by [Shakespeare Retold](http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Retold-Bill-Paterson/dp/B000OY9VFW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1247492446&sr=8-1), in which the BBC produced modern stories based on Shakespeare. Not really translations, but plays on the plots (that Willy stole in the first place). Great fun for someone with knowledge of the originals. The excellent cast helped a great deal. Shakespeare is worth just a bit of trouble. Spenser, not so much… ETA: I could get behind removing dreadful “dialect”–try to communicate a different speaking style, but spell correctly! ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/27 "2009-07-13T14:00:01Z")
I’d have no problem with somebody rewriting _Ethan Frome_ to make it less effing boring. ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/28 "2009-07-13T14:01:24Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > On the other hand, they didn’t write them to be slogged through by people who had to puzzle out what they were saying. Yes, change dilutes it; but the changing of language over time has done that already. I don’t think there’s any ideal solution here, personally. I guess I feel that an author writes a book (or play, or poem, or whatever) in precisely the way they mean to write it. Is it easier to read a modernization of the Canterbury Tales than the original? Sure. Is it therefore better? Not at all. There’s a difference between literature and a crappy mystery novel you pick up in the airport: literature _should_ make you work for it. If you don’t need to think, then you’re not going to get anything from the book your reading. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/29 "2009-07-13T14:06:21Z")
I feel that there is substantial good to be gained by rewriting. Consider an old work that was written in English and translated to Spanish. The English readers have little choice but to struggle with archaic language; however, the author probably never intended the language to be anything but contemporary. The Spanish readers are probably at an initial disadvantage because they aren’t reading the original work, but two hundred years later, they are likely reading a fresh translation, while the English readers slog on. Of course, the PC angle is an entirely different, but inseparable issue. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/30 "2009-07-13T14:08:39Z")
> [@minor7flat5](#): > > I feel that there is substantial good to be gained by rewriting. > > Consider an old work that was written in English and translated to Spanish. The English readers have little choice but to struggle with archaic language; however, the author probably never intended the language to be anything but contemporary. The Spanish readers are probably at an initial disadvantage because they aren’t reading the original work, but two hundred years later, they are likely reading a fresh translation, while the English readers slog on. > > Of course, the PC angle is an entirely different, but inseparable issue. There are plenty of old & dreadful translations floating around. Please–explain “the PC angle.” ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/31 "2009-07-13T14:12:05Z")
I don’t like the idea of rewriting the old books, but I have no problem with new interpretations of them. For example, Larry Niven’s _Inferno_ makes no attempt to replace or rewrite Dante’s (in fact, it becomes curiously self-referential), but it’s a good story all by itself. _Grendel_ tells the tale of _Beowulf_ from a different point of view without attempting to rewrite the original. Modern interpretations of classic stories abound, and I think that’s wonderful. It was a movie (I can’t remember the name of it at the moment) based loosely on the story of the _Odyssey_ that got my kids interested in reading Homer. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/32 "2009-07-13T14:35:28Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > Old books should not be rewritten. Old books should be annotated by experts, to give readers the information they need to appreciate and understand the original. Cf. _The Annotated Alice_, _The Annotated Sherlock Holmes_, etc. +1 Actually, I love Shakespeare as audio performances, they were originally plays, and should be watched more than read. My english prof in high school had us watch the plays with the text books at hand. He also had us read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales out loud in class to help study it [if you allow for the shift in pronunciation, it is actually fairly comprehensible when read out loud.] I love books written with dialect or slang, half the fun is puzzling it out - such as Clockwork Orange, written in some bastardization of soviet and brit slang that Burgess invented. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/33 "2009-07-13T14:40:50Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > I don’t like the idea of rewriting the old books, but I have no problem with new interpretations of them. > > For example, Larry Niven’s _Inferno_ makes no attempt to replace or rewrite Dante’s (in fact, it becomes curiously self-referential), but it’s a good story all by itself. > > _Grendel_ tells the tale of _Beowulf_ from a different point of view without attempting to rewrite the original. > > Modern interpretations of classic stories abound, and I think that’s wonderful. It was a movie (I can’t remember the name of it at the moment) based loosely on the story of the _Odyssey_ that got my kids interested in reading Homer. _O Brother Where Art Thou_ was based loosely on the _Odyssey_. Very loosely! [Homer’s Daughter](http://www.amazon.com/Homers-Daughter-Robert-Graves/dp/0897330595/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_3) by Robert Graves was his own (erudite, ingenious) take on the story. Neither of these works would be a good substitute for reading the text for a class. But they are both great fun if you’ve already done the work. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Lurker\_Above](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dc4da7/32.png) [@The\_Lurker\_Above](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Lurker_Above)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/34 "2009-07-13T15:25:18Z")
> [@NinjaChick](#): > > I guess I feel that an author writes a book (or play, or poem, or whatever) in precisely the way they mean to write it. Is it easier to read a modernization of the Canterbury Tales than the original? Sure. Is it therefore better? Not at all. There’s a difference between literature and a crappy mystery novel you pick up in the airport: literature _should_ make you work for it. If you don’t need to think, then you’re not going to get anything from the book your reading. I agree that good literature require work on the part of the reader, but that doesn’t mean that any increase in difficulty has to increase the value to the reader. In fact I think that the harder the work is to decode the _less_ work the reader can put into appreciating what makes it good literature in the first place. Language changes and eventually it only makes sense to treat an older work as if it were in a foreign language. Though I expect there will be great disagreement on whether or not any particular work has crossed the may-as-well-be-in-Greek line. ---
**Author:** ![Redwing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/dfb087/32.png) [@Redwing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redwing)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/35 "2009-07-13T16:10:17Z")
> [@NinjaChick](#): > > The author wrote it the way they did for a specific reason; any change dilutes it and that shouldn’t be done frivolously. While I won’t argue about frivolity, the rest of that sentence is so much poppycock. The end result of this little idea is that any editing is diluting the work, and I’m fairly confident that you think that editing is still a useful thing in the production of any written work. Not every author writes as a stylistic exercise, and only a very few choose the dialect they use deliberately. When the dialect becomes so obscure that one needs significant scholarship to understand it, modernization seems to be reasonable, and required if the work is to be understood outside of the scholarly world. > [@NinjaChick](#): > > I guess I feel that an author writes a book (or play, or poem, or whatever) in precisely the way they mean to write it. Is it easier to read a modernization of the Canterbury Tales than the original? Sure. Is it therefore better? Not at all. There’s a difference between literature and a crappy mystery novel you pick up in the airport: literature _should_ make you work for it. If you don’t need to think, then you’re not going to get anything from the book your reading. If you don’t want to think, then you’re probably not getting everything out of even the “crappiest” piece of genre fiction. On the other hand, I don’t really have the time to spend teaching myself Old English, should I just skip Beowulf? I’m not going to understand the text to the depth Tolkien did, but I’m still going to get more out of a translation than I would out of the original text, in that sense that I will get _something_ out of the translation. I believe, very strongly, that making something accessible is a good thing. There’s enough depth to Chaucer that using only words found in Merriam-Webster leaves enough to understand him. Such a “translation” allows those of us are not able to spend years of our lives studying the language of a given era a view through the same window as those who can devote time to such an endeavor, even if our window is less clear than yours. Would you rather keep that view to yourself, limited to only those who possess the gnosis of the language and history that you have access to? Or would you share the view, and perhaps inspire some few others to reach of the clear view? This isn’t to say that most modernizations fail to be anything other than insipid. There’s a difference between using words I can find without being a scholar of the English language, and having the tale tellers in the _Decameron_ drinking a Coke. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/36 "2009-07-13T16:31:39Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > There are plenty of old & dreadful translations floating around. > > Please–explain “the PC angle.” And the good thing about bad translations is that they can be translated anew with limited fuss (unless they are treated as the One and Only Perfect Translation) By the “PC angle” I mean what folks were talking about up-thread: do you perform editing based on modern social norms, softening offensive racism, for example. I imagine the answer to that one will usually be “It depends…” ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/37 "2009-07-13T16:49:10Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > _O Brother Where Art Thou_ was based loosely on the _Odyssey_. Very loosely! > > [Homer’s Daughter](http://www.amazon.com/Homers-Daughter-Robert-Graves/dp/0897330595/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_3) by Robert Graves was his own (erudite, ingenious) take on the story. > > Neither of these works would be a good substitute for reading the text for a class. But they are both great fun if you’ve already done the work. _O Brother Where Art Thou_ is what I was thinking of. The great thing about it, as I mentioned above, is that it made my son want to read the _Odyssey_–and he enjoyed it! > [@NinjaChick](#): > > I guess I feel that an author writes a book (or play, or poem, or whatever) in precisely the way they mean to write it. Is it easier to read a modernization of the Canterbury Tales than the original? Sure. Is it therefore better? Not at all. There’s a difference between literature and a crappy mystery novel you pick up in the airport: literature _should_ make you work for it. I respectfully disagree. I don’t believe that most good literature was originally written to be inaccessible or to make readers work hard at it. I think Shakespeare, for example, was pretty darned easy for the people of his time–it’s only difficult now if you aren’t familiar with the language and customs from back then. I feel that great literature _at the time it’s written_ should be clearly-written, not obtuse. Books written specifically so that they will be hard to follow strike me as vaguely elitist–although sometimes they can be a great deal of fun to puzzle through. ---
**Author:** ![Darkhold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@Darkhold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkhold)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/38 "2009-07-13T17:03:14Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > I think the words should be left alone, but I’d be okay with tweaking the punctuation. I dumped _Wuthering Heights_ in the first few pages. The excess (IMO) colons, semicolons, and commas disrupted the flow. My wife recommended **Wuthering Heights** to me. I tried to read it but didn’t get far. When she asked me what I thought I replied “Too many goddamn semicolons” After a dozen pages I was actually counting them to see how many the average per page was. She honestly had no idea what I was talking about. She has re-read the book a dozen times and never noticed it. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/39 "2009-07-13T17:51:24Z")
\*\*Annotation \*\*is a great idea. “Translating”/updating and, god forbid, bowdlerization are unacceptable. Note the quotation marks–when a language has evolved to the point where the old version no longer intelligible to a current native speaker, then translation is acceptable. (\*Beowulf \*should be translated; \*The Canturbury Tales \*should be annotated.) ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/40 "2009-07-13T19:10:22Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > \*\*Annotation \*\*is a great idea. “Translating”/updating and, god forbid, bowdlerization are unacceptable. Note the quotation marks–when a language has evolved to the point where the old version no longer intelligible to a current native speaker, then translation is acceptable. (\*Beowulf \*should be translated; \*The Canturbury Tales \*should be annotated.) I disagree. It’s a chore to read something and have to keep looking back and forth between the main text and the margins, bottom of the page, or (God forbid) end of the book. It totally messes up the flow, especially with poetry. What annotation is good for is _enhancing_ one’s appreciation of a work, **not for making the unreadable readable**. (How would you annotate the Uncle Remus paragraphs I quoted earlier?) It’s like watching a DVD with the commentary track on. A good annotation might explain the occasional unfamiliar word or phrase, or explain a once-familiar reference so that modern audiences can get the joke or understand the point. **Sigmagirl** mentioned _The Annotated Alice_ and _The Annotated Sherlock Holmes_. These are books that are already written in a clear, fairly modern and uncomplicated style, so that the annotations aren’t needed to appreciate the books. The annotations are fun and helpful, but they’re not there to make up for impenetrable style, vocabulary, or dialect. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774.md?page=3)