Leave the f-bomb, take the cannoli

A cancel-cancel:

The bestselling author Joanne Harris has turned down a US book deal after the publishers demanded she take out an “f-bomb” from the novel.

Well done that woman.

The Chocolat author, who lives near Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, tweeted on Saturday: “Today I turned down a book deal in the US because they wanted to edit out my use of ‘the f-bomb’. I refused for two reasons: one, because I don’t use words accidentally. They matter. And second, because I don’t believe my use of the word ‘fuck’ harms anyone.”

Exactly so. I do a bit of writing myself and I don’t use words accidentally. I thought we’d agreed as a society or a grown-up reading public that the word “fuck” doesn’t harm anyone several decades ago.

Which reminds me of a thing. My first ever bad edit, and in this case I was not given the option of rejecting it. My senior year at the tiny girls’ school I’d attended since kindergarten I won the story contest so my story was published in the yearbook – and when the yearbooks arrived shortly before graduation I found that a word had been changed. I was enraged, and my English teacher who was also the yearbook supervisor was annoyed too if I remember correctly. It’s hard to figure out what gave a company whose job it was to put a book between hard covers the right to change the content without asking. We were the editors, not the company. Anyway, the word – I’d had a character exclaim “Shit!” in anger or shock, and they changed it to “Shoot!” It’s not just that it’s ooh no swearing, it’s that the substitution is terrible. A character exclaiming “Shoot!” is just stupid. So, yeah, rock on Jane Harris.

Harris added: “I gave it some thought, and the decision was mine to take. That’s how publishing works, and I’m happy with my choice.

“In context it was a characterisation device, and would have sounded weak if I’d taken it out.”

Exactly.

She’s not annoyed at the publisher though.

Harris said that she did not feel offended by the request from the publisher, which she described as a house with a strong “cosy” branding, adding, “I understand, but that’s not me”.

“I made my choice and so did they,” she said. “I don’t remotely feel as if I’ve been ‘cancelled’.”

Fair enough.

Harris said she chose to make the decision public on the back of a discussion on social media prompted by John Boyne, the author of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, criticising the increasing use by authors and publishers of “sensitivity readers” to ensure that they are representing certain groups correctly or to avoid causing offence.

Harris was quoted in the media on her thoughts, and expanded on them on her blog, where she wrote: “I think a lot of people (some of them authors, most of them not) misunderstand the role of a sensitivity reader. That’s probably mostly because they’ve never used one, and are misled by the word ‘sensitivity’, which, in a world of toxic masculinity, is often mistaken for weakness. To these people, hiring someone to check one’s work for sensitivity purposes implies a surrendering of control, a shift in the balance of power.”

I think it’s a little more complicated than that…

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