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What are your thoughts about authors revising their older works to make them more modern? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by Melenduwir@alien.top to c/books@metacritics.zone

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Probably the best example I can think of is Diane Duane reworking her Wizards series to make it modern-day, but there are others, including owners of a literary estate altering books left to them to make them compatible with current standards.

What do you think? Does it matter if it's the original author or an inheritor?

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[–] Fun-Dentist-2231@alien.top 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Interestingly, I read an original this year when I expected the revised.

I got “The Five Love Languages” from a little free library. Somewhat interesting concept that people still talk about, despite being written in the early 90s.

Well, I read it and thought it was utter crap. It was full of antiquated gender roles (think 1950s house wife) and religious proselytizing. To the point that I thought “how could anyone take this crap seriously?” Ex: a woman was struggling with her marriage. The husband was angry and mean and abuse was heavily implied. The author suggested she try having sex with her husband 3 times a week to make him love her again. YUCK. Also, several instances of “Jesus says you can’t get divorced.” Fine for some, but problematic for the masses.

It was so bad, I started googling why anyone would read this book or discuss its concept. Apparently, the original book was a bit successful with a lot of backlash, so the author edited it to remove the harmful old-fashioned gender roles and erased all the religious teachings. So, most people have read the revised version, which is not wildly offensive and misogynistic like the original version.

[–] cantoization@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I really appreciate this perspective. I work in software, and it's an understood that the editing process continues after delivery to customers. The users know whether the content is valuable or appropriate to their situation, and their feedback can make the original work so much more applicable and useful with good listening and thoughtful, customer-focused edits. In these cases, the knee jerk "I want my original to be untainted and unaffected" doesn't make sense to me.

Removing unnecessary and casual fatphobia, misogyny, and racism means that more people can get more value from a work, and that work will be better suited to its population.