Those publishing bastards
That’s it, I am never, ever going to buy a book by a UK author on an American imprint.
I read in the newest Atlantic Monthly that certain key lines (having to do with adolescent sexuality) were removed from Pullman’s series The Golden Compass. Now, first of all, I totally respect those novels, if only for their wild atheism. But it happens that I could never finish the series. I quit with about 100 pages to go. I am now wondering if the bowdlerized extractions might have kept me going.
I remember when I read about the tweaks to Harry Potter for the stupid American reader — and at that time I thought: Why do this? Why remove the Englishness since that is arguably part of the “topic” of the Potter novels? As lite as they are, their Englishness is one of their virtues.
It used to be that solid American bookstores would have a couple of bookshelves of UK imprints. But not anymore. I guess I’ll have to go to amazon.co.uk, which I have done for CDs, etc.
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