The journalist Janice Turner hitting the nail on the head above.
It’s at times like this when I feel like Cassandra, fated to prophesise truth but never be believed. Not just me but all the authors who’ve been shouting in the wind for the Society of Authors and its chair, Joanne Harris, to stand up for us and our work. Rather than dredge everything up again (feel free to read all my old posts on the subject), let’s just summarise it thus: The authors who called for greater protection from our union with regards to freedom of expression, and who called for Joanne Harris to stand down as her partiality was incompatible with her powerful position and incompatible with free expression, were denounced as bigots, Nazis, racists, transphobes and fascists.
In the speech given by Julia Williams at the Society’s AGM in November supporting the free expression resolution, she said:
The Society also needs be proactive in dealing with the increasing use of compelled sensitivity readers. An author shouldn’t be afraid to explore a character for fear of offending one reader, just as no historical author should be compelled to relay history through the prism of current morality.
The speech ended with the words:
We must stand and fight for our union, and for all writers – including those with whom we may disagree. Otherwise, we are lost.
As with the resolution calling for Joanne Harris, to stand down, it was voted down by Society members. And, as with Cassandra, the future we could see so clearly and which we were fighting to prevent is coming to pass. One of the most beloved children’s authors of all time has had his work censored and bastardised. One good thing that has come from the subsequent industry and public outrage over it is that Puffin, Roald Dahl’s publisher, has today, under the face of widespread industry and public outrage, made a statement agreeing to keep the classic non-censored versions in print alongside the vandalised ones. The outrage that forced this U-turn only proves how deeply readers loathe being told what they and/or their children can or cannot read and how there is pretty much zero public appetite for being force fed anodyne, sanitised books. This is something publishers would do well to remember but, let’s face it, they probably won’t, not when the seniors are too terrified of the juniors to say no to them. While the tail continues wagging the dog, many authors will continue to self-censor and many will submit, out of fear, to letting the offence-finders who call themselves sensitivity readers loose on their books.
However, as welcome as Puffin’s statement is, it must not detract from the fact that there was, naturally, tumbleweed from the Society of Authors on the subject. Luckily, its chair, the great champion of free expression, made her views known via her favoured medium of Twitter.
I know, I know, you’re shocked that Joanne Harris, the chair of the Society of Authors, sided with business over the people whose interests she’s supposed to champion. In fairness to her, she sent that tweet before Puffin’s spokesman insisted (before today’s U-turn) that it has a ‘significant responsibility’ to protect young readers (nothing mentioned at all about ‘saleability,’ but as Dahl continues to sell only an average of a million books a year, she might have been onto something). I suppose that should now read had a responsibility seeing as Puffin’s going to continue publishing those spiky, brilliantly crafted books in all their nasty, fabulous glory, and let the parents – gasp – take responsibility for deciding which version their children read themselves. Bit risky that, eh? Letting parents decide? Whatever next? Letting parents decide a suitable bedtime for their children? Judging the appropriate age in which they can experiment with makeup? It’s a slippery slope, I tell you. They’ll be committing wrong-think before you know it.
But I digress. Back to Joanne Harris’s tweet. As a commentator at The Bookseller said, ‘It’s a curiously old-fashioned view of censorship – that it’s only when the state gets involved that we should worry. It’s also concerning that the chair of the trade union for writers does not feel moved to protect the work of all authors on principle.’
My thoughts exactly. Concerning, but not surprising.
I hate to say I told you so but I told you so. We told you so. In voting for Joanne Harris to remain as chair of the Society of Authors, I’m afraid my fellow authors were turkeys voting for Christmas.
With all this in mind, I now hand over to Michelle Styles, the historical author who was prevented from giving her speech at the Society of Authors AGM but in that speech had intended to say Throughout the Chair’s tenure, she has failed to take sufficient notice of the rise of ‘cancel cultural’ and the new scourge of ‘presentism’. Michelle will now explain what Presentism is and why it is a scourge for publishing and most importantly for authors.
The Scourge of Presentism and Publishing
By Michelle Styles
To begin with we must accept the past is a different country, seeped in traditions which we do not fully understand, morals which are not necessarily ours and customs which make no sense. It is why it is the past. Society alters in ways which we cannot fully comprehend. In fact, as Thomas Sowell said – today’s problems are often a result of yesterday’s solutions.
Because society does alter and morals change, many times things written in the past become problematic when judged through today’s eyes. There are two ways of dealing with those problems – presentism and contextualization.
Contextualization puts the book into the context of the time in which it was created. This could be through an introduction which details the problems and concerns and discusses how society was then. It does not seek to erase but to explain and to illuminate. It can be a tool to ring the changes and to explain old mores. End notes or even a glossary can be added to explain what terms meant. It can be used to give a window into a vanished era and can help give some idea of the messy complexity which exists in every society in human history.
By contrast, presentism judges the past through a prism of the current prevailing mores and says that anything which gives offense to today’s sensibilities should be altered in order to cease giving offense. It is the modern day equivalent of putting curtains around the bare legs of a piano or fig leaves on statues. At its worse, it evokes iconoclasm – we must erase the past because it was so sinful and wicked that no one should be allowed to look on it or consider the ideas as valid. Never mind that people who forget the past are doomed to make the same mistakes. Never mind that everyone is a flawed individual and that it is a rare person whose morals do not shift someway as they mature. Under presentism, all this counts for nothing. In that world view, the concepts such as universalism and the ability of humans to feel the same sort of emotions throughout history vanish. There is only what is right now and the wickedness of those who do not see the purity of their intentions. It has nothing to say about what future generations will think about those morals and those who espouse them.
Presentism possesses no crystal ball but confidently predicts its mores are on the right side of history. Many other movements confidently predicted this as well but no longer hold sway. One could make the point that many of the children in the US who confidently signed temperance pledges at school in the 1910’s and 1920’s were the hard drinkers in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Some people in publishing argue that the new found focus on presentism with its emphasis on microaggressions and policing of language is precisely what should be happening and that corporate censorship is a good thing as it makes ‘good business’. Following the dictates of presentism is supposed to inoculate the corporation from cancel culture and the Thought Police. But have they ever considered that if you alter the word but not the corrosive sentiment behind it, that sentiment merely corrodes the new word or metaphor?
Presentism takes aim at literature in several ways. First it targets great works which have spoken to people throughout the ages. The wordsmiths who created these books found some magic alchemy which meant their words were able to transcend space and time. They spoke to the universal human experience in ways which most wordsmiths can only dream about doing. Why does Jane Austen resonate while Frances Burnley, a direct contemporary of Austen’s, is remembered by few? Why Dickens? Why are people concerned about Dahl and not so much about Blyton? I suspect a number of PhD’s have been done on the subject.
However, because their work also reflects the society and milieu they inhabited (even if you are writing about the past, your concerns and the way you approach the work are coloured by what is happening in today’s society). An author is the constant prisoner of their eternal present. What you as a reader in the 21st century pick up about Austen or indeed Agatha Christie may be different from the under currents someone who was living in the time they describe picked. Even if an author is writing about the past, they are confined by their own time. Sir Walter Scott describes a medieval period which owes much to the early Victorians. Georgette Heyer brings an Edwardian sensibility to the Regency. Basically historical fiction writers hold up a dark mirror to the past in order to make a statement about today. Contemporary authors like Austen, Dickens or Dahl write in the eternal present.
If you are writing in the eternal present or the dark mirrored past, invariably as time marches forward and society alters, certain aspects of any writer’s work will become less relevant to the reader as all the mores espoused do not reflect modern society.
What Presentism seeks to do is to flatten the experience. It denies universality and seeks to assert that there was only ever one true set of morals, the ones which the censors deem appropriate. The time which should exist is their time and their mores.
They either seek to erase these works by saying that they should not be read, or more sinisterly seek to alter the words to something which might be palatable to them and to hide the fact of the alteration on the copyright page, rather than proclaiming it to be an abridged edition. In essence, they are acting as a Ministry of Truth and altering the narrative without the author’s consent.
The people who are making these decisions are called Sensitivity Readers. Now, they are supposed to bring their lived experience to a work so that the author can create a richer world. Who could ask for a sweeter and more reasonable thing – a wish to make the work better. However, there is a steel fist within that velvet glove if the author is not able to make the final decision. What if the author actually has a different life experience to that of the sensitivity reader? What if the author knows the word or words complained of do not have the root meaning which the sensitivity reader has given them? How can they ‘fact check’ the sensitivity reader when the reader is only giving their truth?
Equally, sensitivity readers are most often used when an author is creating minorities characters. It means that minority authors are the ones most at risk of being put under the sensitivity reader’s gaze and perhaps not being able to speak out or up.
Presentism also means that publishers are less likely to publish stories where authors have taken risks and have included characters who may not fit whatever the prevailing view happens to be. It makes publishers risk adverse and authors rapidly get the message. The result is a turgid sludge which is supposed to offend no one but equally fails to excite anyone.
In addition, you can end up with a Hamline University situation where one fundamentalist student was able to get a lecturer fired and impose a blasphemy law on a 14th century depiction of the Prophet – all because those in the administration DEI department did not have the wit to realise that like the other great world religions, Islam is not a monolith and different strands have different beliefs. What is offensive to one might not be offensive to all in the same religion.
What is problematic for one sensitivity reader trying to justify their freelance sum may not be offensive to the group they claim to represent. For example, is it necessary to remove the word ‘black’ from the BFG? Can’t inanimate objects be black without giving offense? Most people would recognise that the colour of my Simply Reader lamp is black. It is what the store had in the shop. It does not have a deep inner meaning or attempt to make a statement about racial relations. I do appreciate the light it brings to my desk. My husband would appreciate it if I dusted it more often. It is sophomoric in the extreme to try to elicit any deeper meaning than that. Not everything in a book is a political statement or should be examined to see if there is a lurking microaggression.
As with most things in life, if someone is looking for offense, they will probably find it. Sensitivity readers are not editors, nor are they authors, instead they are outrage merchants, seeking to conflate pinpricks of possible harm into a whirlwind of outrage. Or, rather, to point out how that outrage might manifest itself. The emphasis is on might. The Sensitivity Reader can’t know because they are an individual, not an avatar for an entire minority. Reading is personal.
The effect can be for authors to indulge in self-censorship and not to take risks, not to create truly memorable characters who sometimes end up becoming short for a certain type of behaviour. Dolores Umbridge, anyone? Until JK Rowling created the character, people knew that sort of person but did not have a quick reference. Now they do. But the reference only came about because Rowling took the risk and created her and she leapt off the page. It is a talent Roald Dahl had as well. It is a shame that presentism seeks to emasculate such talent.
In short giving into presentism does not give a publisher a cast iron guarantee of not causing offence or indeed creating works which last for generations. On the other hand, contextualization can result in a richer understanding of what society was like when the book was created.
Finally, I do think John Steinbeck did say something which resonates in this discussion back in 1962: Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches--nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tin-horn mendicants of low-calorie despair. It was true then. Let’s keep it true in today’s industry.
Outstanding. Especially liked the Tweet from Janice Turner. Had previously read Styles' piece on Presentism, but it is good to see it again. Very on point across the whole of Western Civilization.