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If IFP want to take the easy way out and simply replace each N word or other racist description/word, I guess that’s their choice. It’s a short term solution, and not a very effective one. I’d much rather keep the original text and contextualise it. In another 30 years the world described in these books will be further gone, some of the ideas possibly even more questionable (perhaps) and many of the details lost on most to history, at this point being a century old. You can’t sanitise and edit away this writing after a point for modern readers. This is a world where (simply put) America did not have the Civil Rights Act, half an avocado in a fancy restaurant was an acceptable dessert, and a kebab was some mind blowing culinary experience a cosmopolitan traveller like James Bond would never have experienced in his 38 years. Just preserve it and allow new readers to enjoy it for what they are, even if they are products of their time.
The most they should do is one line in the copyright section about how this book uses language some may describe as outdated or offensive.
I still think annotations of things like local history, maps, drawings etc is a wonderful idea.
That’s what I don’t want either! 😉 I’d just like annotations that describe what he’s going on about for readers who wouldn’t always fully get it, with these books being on the nearer side of 100 years old! And a good forward from someone who goes in depth about these books.
And honestly, if it’s of no interest, there should always be older versions. Or you could just not read the footnotes/introduction to newer editions.
That’s what I want too! But with such annotations you’d probably get some context which would reveal that, unfortunately yes, these books have things which could be considered racist or at least outdated. Most people reading Fleming have to confront that to some extent, no matter what their opinions on each book/instance is (and honestly, that’s a whole bunch of nuanced topics in themselves, certainly not always black and white).
Anyway, I thought you didn’t prefer warnings at the start of these books? I still don’t from what you’ve described ;)
I’ll put it this way - say if IFP released annotated series like the one you described with forwards. In those forwards everything about, say, LALD and DN was mentioned except for the criticisms of racism and Fleming’s depiction of ‘Chigros’. Like, it’s absolutely blanked. I’d think that a spineless decision, akin to the meek edits they did recently.
There's no nastiness, it’s just you have a history of trying to steer threads onto race issues and folks are wary. I think it’s been made clear what annotated books are several times in this thread and how they could be a lot of fun with Flemings. Sure, there might be a couple of footnotes giving some context or explanation to a couple of archaic terms he uses regarding race, but it would be about 1% of what could be talked about and the suggestion is not that would be the motivation for making these.
As often happens I find myself agreeing with 007HallY: it’s best not to ignore these things or pretend they’re not there but just treat them in a matter of fact way.