It seems fair to say both that book publishers are increasingly employing “sensitivity readers” in the editing process they use and that there is an equally growing backlash against this practice. The motives for its use seem fairly obvious: to avoid giving undue offense—or, in the more currently preferred formulation, to avoid “doing harm”—to any of the various cultural groups whose claims to accurate representation have become more assertive. The reason for the backlash is perhaps equally obvious, at least on the part of writers, some of whom feel that the desire to minimize harm has been pursued with undue zeal, ultimately encroaching on their artistic freedom or their speech rights.
This backlash has recently intensified as well among readers, with a series of high-profile examples of the application of sensitivity reading to the work of “classic” authors such as Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie, and P.G. Wodehouse. The response to what critics have called the “bowdlerization” of these works has generally been negative, with few commentators seemingly willing to defend such outright revisions of already-existing texts, perhaps because their authors are no longer around to give their consent to them. (Or perhaps the most fervent believers in the eradication of “harm” in literary works haven’t yet fully prepared the case for sanitizing the literary past.) One writer, Imogen West-Knights (who does not seem a zealot), has, however offered a qualified defense of sensitivity reading in the Dahl and Wodehouse controversies, arguing that at least voluntary submission to sensitivity readers can be a responsible act of seeking “accuracy” in a work of fiction.
Even if the writer has no wish to be insensitive to reigning social principles on matters of race, gender, or sexual preference, it remains unclear why the job of prompting the writer to be mindful of these principles is not left to the editor, who presumably wants to safeguard the interests of the writer and the publisher for whom both editor and writer are working. The rise of the sensitivity reader seems to imply a lack of confidence in editors, or perhaps this suggests that ultimately the practice isn’t really about improving the work of writers at all but is a mere cosmetic being applied to keep the publisher’s appearance up. But if the writer and editor working together can’t be relied on to maintain the integrity of the writer’s artistic conception as well as avoid giving gratuitous offense, what’s the point of the editorial process if you then try to cover up supposed imperfections with ersatz words and phrases that only call attention to their mostly feeble artifice?
In another recent article on the controversy, one experienced sensitivity reader says that “Authors and editors can. . .choose to accept her suggestions and implement changes, ignore them, or ask to discuss them further.” One wonders, however, if all readers and publishers are as flexible as this suggests. Surely the pressure on a writer to heed the sensitivity reader must be considerable, and while only a few writers have publicly complained about the process, others have presumably kept quiet for fear of alienating their publisher or causing unwanted controversy. At some point, a well-known and respected writer is going to run afoul of the sensitivity reading machinery and, unafraid of courting controversy, will call it out as the antagonist of artistic expression it can’t avoid becoming, whether explicitly if the writer is forced to submit to the machinery (which will happen, if it hasn’t already), or implicitly through intimidation (which surely has already happened).
Probably the most ominous threat sensitivity reading poses is that we will see continued efforts to deface already published literary works, extending perhaps not just to popular canonical works but to the previous work of still-living writers. No doubt many of these writers would not agree to such retroactive expurgation, but some might, and then the precedent has been set for regarding writers’ work as infinitely malleable—all fiction as fan fiction, except that the purpose is not to imaginatively extend the work beyond the boundaries of the text but to seize control of the text and make it conform to socially accepted standards. Of course this would be the negation of literature as art, the discreet creation of an individual artistic sensibility, but artistic sensibility seems to be regarded as the enemy at the moment by those trying to protect us from its unsupervised expression.
I have no doubt that the bowdlerization exemplified in the Roald Dahl case will be attempted with other writers from the literary past, writers who won’t necessarily exhibit quite the same problematic attitudes seemingly borne by Dahl but whose work will nevertheless be judged questionable (with his unrestrained comic vision, Dickens will be an inevitable target). There will be few writers whose “sensitivity” won’t be found lacking in some way, although there are certainly also writers whose insensitivity can’t be rationalized or ignored. If the preponderance of readers eventually find the racism and sexism of Ian Fleming to be intolerable, his books will no longer be read. But this is the way a writer’s work ought to fall into disfavor: through the collective judgment exercised by actual readers, not a mandate issuing from a process that usurps the authority of that judgment.
The outrage attending the publication of Dahl’s censored work may temporarily dampen the enthusiasm of the book business for outright redactions of published work, but sensitivity reading already seems an entrenched practice, and unless and until the literary moralizers begin to lose their hold on literary culture, it will probably remain in force for current and aspiring writers. Perhaps more writers will rebel and more readers will begin to resent the inherent condescension of the practice. If not, we will have conceded that artistic freedom must not be allowed to exceed the bounds of what the powers that be decide is right and proper.
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