It's gotten to the point that I've had to do a search and replace on my kindle files and fix it.
Wait a sec. People are rewriting books to their own specifications now?
Am I the only one who gets a bit of a chill at that idea?
I had no idea you could do that. I may have to reconsider my vow never to own one of those things. Typos and grammar mistakes, when not intrinsic to the character/story, drive me NUTS. There is really no excuse for a book to hit the shelves in such a state.
Sure, some fan edits can be creative, but altering Tolkien's meticulously crafted prose to replace a period-appropriate "ere" with a more ordinary "before"? That's not creativity, that's just bowdlerization.
I do agree, as it shows a different attitude to the text - an attitude I think very comparable to the modernizing of other older literature - which I would criticise as limiting the getting of one form of full and proper experience out of a text. However modernisation or contemporisation of a text does helps comprehension sometimes despite de-mystifying and de-literarising the text. I think the changing of 'ere' and possibly other words will reflect that latter choice possibly for Ben Sisko of comprehensibility and offsetting some kind of wall forming when reading. I would never do it with Tolkien, but I can condone it, because I have to do this myself for other texts.
In this case, I find uniform changing of the word wrong. I couldn't condone it, since 'before' lacks the nuances of 'ere' that Tolkien might have been using in each individual circumstance? * And yes, it robs Tolkien of his poetry, his period and my own personal attraction to first Middle English and thence to Old English. But I know for many that loving world-building is not only annoying, but incomprehensible.
Anyway, compare the following:
if Crystis body be dewed with euerlasting ioye, þe seruise of Corpus Christi imad be frere Thomas [Aquinas] is vntrewe and peyntid ful of false miraclis. And þat is no wonder, for frere Thomas þat same time, holding with þe pope, wolde haue mad a miracle of an henne ey, and we knoewe wel þat euery lesyng opinli prechid turnith him [Cryst] to velanye þat euere was trewe and withoute defaute.
and
if Christ’s body is endowed with everlasting joy, the service of Corpus Chirsti made by Friar Thomas is untrue and painted full of false miracles. And no wonder, for Friar Thomas, agreeing with the Pope on this matter, would have made a miracle of a hen’s egg, and we know that every lie which is publically preached is a disgrace to him [Christ] who was always faithful and without fault
I prefer the former, it is authentic c.1400 language, it even contains its thorns [þ=th]; the latter is what I would give to a person who doesn't care for middle english prose or its wonderful period-ness.
----
* From the OED:
A. adv.1
1.
a. in Old English (late WS.): Early, at an early hour.
b. since 15th c. only Sc. (forms air, ear): Early, soon: opposed to late.
†2. Sooner, at an earlier time. Obs.
†3. Sooner, rather, in preference. Obs.
†4.
a. Before, formerly, at a former time, on a former occasion; often preceded by ever, never. Also in of ere (see of prep. Phrases 1b). Also: A little while ago, just now.
b. First; before something else, or before anything else is done.
B. prep.
1.
a. Before (in time). Also in comb.† ere-yesterday n. Obs. the day before yesterday.
[and etc, for those who can access, see
here]
This all reminds me of the question of where to draw the line when thinking up different versions of the Old/New Testaments. Or how the original versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales differ so greatly from the modern-day sanitized versions.
I have a copy of Canterbury Tales, and have read some of it for fun. I've had the book since my college days 30 years ago, when my English instructor read us the Prologue in the correct period accent. That got me absolutely hooked, and I realized it wasn't as hard to understand when, like Shakespeare, it's read
aloud. Some writing is just meant to be heard, rather than merely read.
A copy of the book - ink, paper and glue - the author wrote is yours. A digital file of a book the author wrote, though...is it really yours? Do you own the book, or just the hardware it is displayed on? Is it acceptable to edit a file of a book that the author had intended to be a finished piece?
You own the physical object known as The Book - which in anthropological terms would be the "artifact."
The
author owns the original arrangement of numbers, letters, characters, and images that make up the manuscript of the book. That's the "mentifact" - which could also be considered the legal version of the artifact.
So yeah, you can do whatever you want with a physical book. Read it, use it for a paperweight, swat a fly with it, use it for a coaster... I've done all these with my books. But only the author owns the actual
book - that is to say, the manuscript, the legal artifact.
I admit to being unapologetically old-school about this. I've spent too much time staring at a blinking cursor, trying to come up with the right word or phrase, not to cringe at the idea of readers second-guessing me when it comes to my own books. The way I see it, Dave Mack or Tolkien or whomever chose the words they used for a reason, possibly after careful thought and consideration, and it's not my job as a reader to rewrite their books for them.
But not all authors spend a lot of time searching for just the right word. Some authors are downright lazy, and plop in the same word/phrase they've used 892 times before, even in the very same novel (read any of the nuDune crap by Kevin J. Anderson/Brian Herbert, if you don't believe me).
Sorry for the double post, but ... erf, rambling mode.
To expand on the above, one interesting avenue to head down on is to talk about whether audiences have an obligation to respect the creator's preferences for what circumstances they should receive a work in. For example, maybe an author doesn't want me to have the convenient encyclopedia access an ebook provides because he doesn't want me to do lookups while I'm reading; instead he wants me to turn the page, keep the pace up.
If an author doesn't want you to look stuff up while reading, he/she ought to make any confusing stuff
not-confusing within the context of the story. It's damn irritating to have to constantly refer to a glossary or
dramatis personae to know what's going on.
However, if one is to actually argue that point, then I hope they never watch a movie on television, because very few filmmakers make movies to be seen on a television set.
For sure that's not how Star Wars was intended. People ridicule and belittle it (the original, in its original, unchanged form), but how many people here have seen it in its original form, in the theatre? Probably more than in the average group of people, but still there are a lot of Star Wars fans who didn't, and don't understand the point of view of we older fans. Luke's dive into the "trench" of the Death Star gave me chills in the theatre; does that happen if I see it on TV? Nope.
In the David Lynch version of Dune, if you see it in the theatre, the Prophecy Theme portion tends to produce a relaxing effect that calms the audience down and helps create the awareness that there is something
mystical and unexplainable going on in the story. You just don't get that same effect watching the movie on TV, surrounded by all the other sensory distractions of home.
In that sense, you have never seen Lawrence of Arabia until you have seen an actual 70mm projection of it.
Depends on the movie. I admit I don't really see the point of watching
2001 on TV, especially after watching it in Cinerama back in the sixties. And, yeah, seeing
Lawrence of Arabia at the Zeigfeld years ago was amazing.
I bet Ben-Hur was mind-blowing in the theatre, given that I'm riveted to the TV screen throughout that whole chariot race section.
And then, of course, there's colorization . . . which also depends on the movie, IMHO. Colorizing "Casablanca" or "Cat People" is sacrilege, but old Gilligan's Island episodes or Flash Gordon serials . . . well, I can't get too worked up about that.
Colorization... gah! There's a thread somewhere in the Media forum here from a few years ago, where somebody said he couldn't stand black-and-white movies just because... they were black-and-white. So when I found out there was going to be a Hepburn/Tracy film festival on TV the coming weekend, I decided to watch it. And I
loved it! Those movies don't need to be colorized at all. They also don't need to be "remade."
One of the worst examples of colorization I've ever seen was the Richard Greene TV series of Robin Hood (from the late 1950s). It's an enjoyable (if silly) TV series in black-and-white. But colorized... good _____(insert deity of your choice) - MEN JUST DO *NOT* WEAR THAT SHADE OF GREEN! They didn't even wear that shade of green in
Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which was a spoof of
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Would I change stuff in a physical book? Yes. I have done so, when finding typos, spelling mistakes, grammatical errors that bother me, etc. And then I think about offering my services so I'd actually get PAID to fix stuff that should have already been fixed. In an e-book? I don't know, since I've never owned an e-reader. I suspect I would.
But change a story otherwise? That's what fanfic is for.
