reading for morons

[Fez]

the publishing company orion has launched a ranged of abridged classic novels for reasons only known to themselves; presumably the meeting was held in the pub and seemed like a laugh after four pints of stella. every novel has been gutted to last no more than four hundred pages, probably using really big text, and is aimed at the market of god know's who. i can't understand the reasoning at all; people who don't read will continue not to, people who do will go for the full length novel.

i know there is a percentage that are put off by reading anna korenina for example, because it is so damn long, i was one of them, but where's the interest of reading half the story? who would buy a ferrari without an engine? who wants to see monte if half the canvas was covered in masking tape? the argument seems to be reading the short version will inspire them for the real thing, but surely this is such a small corner of the publishing market it wont turn a profit.

plus there are more substancial problems with this butchered literature; there are no editor's details so who can guess at why sometimes whole chapters have been striped out, none of the foreign texts state who the interpreter was, and cataclysmicly some of the texts have been robbed of the very things that gave them life. there's no train at the beginning of anna korenina despite the fact it is the central symbol of the whole novel, tens of thousands of words have disappeared from moby dick - crucially the bits where the hunt for the whale is the metaphor for the experience and power of writing.

the whole enterprise is madness, they've destroyed the greatest novels through history for an audience of readers that doesn't exist. the directors of orion should be beaten with typewriters, stabbed with pens and suffer death by a thousand papercuts for this traversty.

[johnriley1uk]

The same thing happens when novels are turned into films. Almost everything has to go.

I prefer to read original editions of older books, before the ditors make even small adjustments. The most insidious is the editing "to make them more easily understood by the modern reader"

[mr_e]

The thing that really irks me about that is that some people will either not realise they're reading the abridged versions at all, or not get the full experience from some books without properly knowing what they were missing.

It reminds me of the edited version of Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est, which cuts the "obscene as cancer" line out.

[Mike]

It is a damned shame to cut classics. I don't agree with as it seems like a total waste of time. Why would you want to read a version edited by someone other than the original.

I am told that some translated novels use the same dodgy editing as words are not quite the same and meanings are subtly changed. I like reading the prelude essays for this reason as it helps set the scene very well.

[johnriley1uk]

There is a dilemma of sorts here. Take Edward FitzGerald's trnslation of Omar Khyyam. This is not a literal translation by any means, but a transformation of the ideas and passions of the original Persian into an English poem that has emotional content for Western minds.

There are more literal translations, but they have no soul and have not been a success.

Is the feeling and the passion more important than the bare essentials of the words?

I'm not arguing for inaccuracy in translations, more for translations that evoke the real underlying meaning more than the literal words themselves. I suppose I feel that if we cannot read the original language we are scuppered as regards ever really understanding it in its truest form.

[mr_e]

Even literal translations are often open to the whims of the translator, as often several alternatives exist for one word, or there are no direct equivalents in English. People forget how important language is, the way it shapes our perception of things, mostly without us realising it. It's only when we translate and try to understand other languages that we become aware of this.

In short, I'm with you on this: bring on the sensitive, more meaningful translations as opposed to the cold, literal ones! It's always nice to have a translator's commentary on such works as well, so you know what compromises have been made, but we can't always have that.

[Andy]

I personally don't agree with it because if I had produced something that was considered to be a classic then I wouldi want it to stay classic. There is the argument that it is getting people to read but then again nobody has ever had the sense to counter-argument that and say ''if you read rubbish then your vocab will be rubbish and you will not be made aware of the various authorial techniques such as pathetic fallocy, creation of suspense''. So many parents have said to me ''he reads all the time at home'' and when the question of ''reads what'' has been posed to them, the answer ''PS2 magazine'' or other such drivvle has been spouted back to me. Therein lies the reason for my posting - leave them the bloody same and let the people who want to read it, read it. If they don't want to read it, then they won't read a smaller version.

[Fez]

my problem with the interpretation or these books is the same as the editing - we simply don't know who did what and for what reason. sympathetic translation by a credible source, like mr fitzgerald, is fine, but with these orion husks [they certainly can't be deemed novels] there's no knowing who butchered what - maybe this is why they didn't put their name to it?

[Mike]

It would be interesting to read a full original and then the amended and shorter version to see what the differences are. I honestly do not think that whole scale cutting out of the chapters is a good thing but I sort of suspect this is what happens.

[mr_e]

Is anyone going to admit to buying an abridged version? Fez could always buy the abridged War And Peace to see if they've cut that harvesting bit out. Personally, I'd rather they cut whole chapters than start altering phrases and vocabulary. At least that way what remains is definitely the original author's work.

[Mike]

That would be weird though could you imagine War and Peace without the war chapters?!

[johnriley1uk]

That would ne discarding the War and taking the Peace.