Max Nemtsov, editor of my wife Nonna’s Russian translation of my new novel, notes that a British publisher is redacting racial slurs and politically incorrect wording from a bestselling writer’s old books.
Did somebody predict this? I think so! In my satirical novel, The Insurrectionist, a Chicago newspaper forces a troublesome reporter to spend his workdays weeding such expressions from 172 years’ worth of digital archives. Which is why Max tagged me on Facebook. He writes, “As they say, life is more shameless than literature.”
The Guardian newspaper reports that Scottish writer Val McDermid was annoyed to be assigned a “sensitivity reader” to remove offensive language from her earlier works. She has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide and is known for her authentic dialogue, the paper notes.
“The books she wrote in the 1980s and 1990s featured characters in law enforcement who used racial and homophobic slurs to reflect attitudes that were prevalent at the time. … McDermid, referred to as the queen of crime, said it was dishonest to make authors change their previous work to ‘conform’ to modern-day sensibilities,” The Guardian states, citing a Times of London report.
In my book, after a clash with a top editor, reporter Ian Landquart is sent to work not in Paris, as promised, but in a local news bureau in a nearby county. His new boss, Krystal Brufke, assigns him to head up a purge of the archives:
Trigger warnings, she said, had already been posted atop every page of the digital archives. The section editors had each recorded a video apology for offensive language of the past and explaining [the redaction project] to readers. Those were going up today.
“So,” Brufke concluded, “since you’re not contributing to the daily, [the Metro editor] thinks it would be a good use of your time — ”
“No.”
“ — to take on — ”
“Krystal, no.”
“ — the oversight of this project.”
“‘Never, never, never, never, never,’ to quote Lear. Worthy though the project is — and I support it! — I won’t do this. You can’t make me.”
“Ian, I don’t think you understand your position here. This is an assignment. You refuse, it gives [the editor] the pretext she needs to fire you. Whereas if you accept, you have the opportunity to play an important role — ”
“Aren’t there interns who can do this sort of thing?”
“They’re all busy writing stories about what’s trending on TikTok and Twitter.”
As I told Max on Facebook, my greatest concern in writing The Insurrectionist was that some newspaper would actually start censoring its archives before I got the novel published, and everyone would just think I was a copycat. Now my greatest worry is that newspapers will assume my novel was meant as an instruction manual.
I just know we’re going to find out The New York Times has a plan to censor its own archives.
The Elephant Box 