Bruce Beckham's Blog - Posts Tagged "marquis-de-sade"
Re-writing the past?
I'm currently reading Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh.
It was published in 1928 and deals with English high society of the time.
It is basically a comic novel - intentionally (I presume) implausible at times. However, I find myself continuing with it.
Part of the story takes place in a private school in Wales. Waugh is quite disparaging of the Welsh, in a stereotypically comedic (though patronising) manner.
However, this is nothing compared to the sequence in which a wealthy female parent (white, upper-class, English) turns up at school sports day with a younger male companion who is black.
The racist observations made by various characters are quite extraordinary - and unprintable here - though I have no doubt they reflect what were considered the norms of the time.
My Penguin copy is not dated. The decimal pricing of £4.99 on the back cover tells me it is post 1970s - so I'd guess late 1980s or after.
I wonder if I bought a more recently published version would the offending section be expunged - or at least edited? (I guess I need to look in a bookshop.)
But this of course begs the question: 'Should the past be recast to comply with today's values and standards?'
Isn't part of reading something like Decline and Fall an exercise in history - an opportunity to discover what were the mores and opinions of that era?
At an extreme, to take a modern scalpel to the Marquis de Sade would entirely undermine his stated intention to shock, and render worthless a piece of literary history (not that I would recommend it).
More prosaically, as fans of Agatha Christie will know, And Then There Were None is not the original title of this work, as published in 1939.
It's a tricky one.
It was published in 1928 and deals with English high society of the time.
It is basically a comic novel - intentionally (I presume) implausible at times. However, I find myself continuing with it.
Part of the story takes place in a private school in Wales. Waugh is quite disparaging of the Welsh, in a stereotypically comedic (though patronising) manner.
However, this is nothing compared to the sequence in which a wealthy female parent (white, upper-class, English) turns up at school sports day with a younger male companion who is black.
The racist observations made by various characters are quite extraordinary - and unprintable here - though I have no doubt they reflect what were considered the norms of the time.
My Penguin copy is not dated. The decimal pricing of £4.99 on the back cover tells me it is post 1970s - so I'd guess late 1980s or after.
I wonder if I bought a more recently published version would the offending section be expunged - or at least edited? (I guess I need to look in a bookshop.)
But this of course begs the question: 'Should the past be recast to comply with today's values and standards?'
Isn't part of reading something like Decline and Fall an exercise in history - an opportunity to discover what were the mores and opinions of that era?
At an extreme, to take a modern scalpel to the Marquis de Sade would entirely undermine his stated intention to shock, and render worthless a piece of literary history (not that I would recommend it).
More prosaically, as fans of Agatha Christie will know, And Then There Were None is not the original title of this work, as published in 1939.
It's a tricky one.
