Washington Post Opinion & alt free link: “A number of beloved novels, for both children and adults, are being “retouched” — updated to remove overtly racist, sexist or otherwise offensive language. Publishers and literary estates — including those of best-selling mystery writer Agatha Christie, children’s author Roald Dahl and James Bond creator Ian Fleming — argue these changes will ensure, in the words of the Dahl estate, that “wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today.” But it’s a threat to free expression, to historical honesty and, indeed, to readers themselves for contemporary editors to comb through works of fiction written at different moments and rewrite them for today’s mind-set, particularly with little explanation of process or limiting principles. The trend raises uncomfortable questions about authorship and authenticity, and it ignores the reality that texts are more than consumer goods or sources of entertainment in the present. They are also cultural artifacts that attest to the moment in which they were written — the good and the bad This is not to say that applying these principles is easy. Some changes are understandable, and publishers should consider how to address flagrantly offensive language, particularly in books young children might read. Doing so is not some new “woke” phenomenon, as conservative critics often insist; nor does it necessarily amount to “censorship,” as writers such as Salman Rushdie have contended. The original title of Christie’s “And Then There Were None,” first published in 1939, contained a racial expletive. The title appeared in Britain until the 1980s, but no American edition of the book has ever borne it…”