Sure, Patrick, if you want to put up a blog post that quotes what I wrote, feel free.
I agree with you about the 'slippery slope'. This is why, when in doubt, I err on the side of not changing things for the sake of reader comfort. (I don't have any hesitation about fixing typos, obviously.) But if an author tells us he wants to make a change, having (along with society as a whole, thank god) become more sensitive about matters like racism and homophobia during the 30+ years since he wrote a book, we're of course going to respect his wishes; and if the author's not around to say one way or another, we'll look for indications regarding what the author most likely would have wanted (consulting an original manuscript if one exists, talking to an original editor or agent if one is still alive, etc.).
One thing to note: Many of the books we have, especially from smaller houses like Lancer and Monarch, were aggressively edited at the time of publication, with the in-house editors (incompetent and taste-free, by all accounts) inserting dialogue and in some cases entire scenes to make a book "sexier" or "funnier" or "tougher-sounding" or what-have-you. Lawrence Block, for instance, has identified some bits that appeared in his Lancer books as having been egregiously added by the editor -- and these bits often include the ugly, crude racial and sexual material that stops a modern reader in his tracks. ("You haven't had a sex scene in 10 pages," the editor might say. "How about that hippie jazz singer you mention there, why can't he just screw her?" And voila, a new page appears, with a reluctant, "frigid" singer getting "taken" by the narrator's forceful manhood.) So at least in some cases what you might think is bowdlerization is actually the reverse, the equivalent of washing graffiti off a work that never should have been defaced by it in the first place.
--Charles
--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "trentrey" <trent@...> wrote:
>
> Charles Ardai:
>
> Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I'm in agreement with you on much of it, in disagreement with some of it (I dislike editing uncomfortable racial language, because I worry about how far that could go--slippery slope sort of thing). But I understand where you're coming from and appreciate the explanation.
>
> Would you mind if I recycled it as a blog post? I think my readers would find it interesting, especially the stuff on Westlake. I consider a message board requiring a password to be private (silly in this day and age, I know), so won't without permission. Feel free to say no--I won't be offended in the least.
>
> Patrick King:
>
> Here's some of what I wrote on Blood's a Rover after I finished it.
>
> "...because Blood's a Rover isn't centered around huge historical events, it pales in scope in comparison to its predecessors. It feels more like a postscript to American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand rather than the culmination of events that began in the first book, which is what the conclusion of a properly structured trilogy should be. The following is not meant as a quality judgment but rather a comment on where it falls in the narrative and its relative importance: Blood's a Rover is to American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand what After MASH is to M*A*S*H."
>
> I thought it was a fine novel on its own (although I'm not sure some of the character development, Tedrow in particular, made sense), but, yeah, it just wasn't big enough to end an epic trilogy.
>
> I may well appreciate it more when I do a second reading some years from now. That certainly happened with The Cold Six Thousand.
>
> --Trent
> The Violent World of Parker
> violentworldofparker.com
>
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