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This is overly reductive. For example, I just read American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition, a version changed from its original. Using this reductive model

This is overly reductive. For example, I just read American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition, a version changed from its original. Using this reductive model, that's wrong. However, it was changed by the author, which seems perfectly acceptable. Those two things are in contradiction. Either changing books isn't categorically wrong, or Neil Gaiman was wrong for changing his own book. Taking a bit of a detour, is it wrong to engage in death of the author style interpretations of text?

jstarfish 4y ago
> or Neil Gaiman was wrong for changing his own book. I'd argue so. Given enough edits, you've written the Book of Theseus.
prepend 4y ago
I think an artist making a derived work from their own work is totally different than a company changing an artists’ work to purely make more money. Also, there are multiple versions of American Gods in print and readers can choose which one to read. They are clearly marked. In this case the publisher is changing the only versions in print and no longer making the original versions. I think that people changing artists work is usually wrong. If a mural artist changes their mural, that’s very different from McDonalds deciding to add in milkshakes. That doesn’t mean that changing art is categorically wrong. It just means that the latter case is wrong.
faeriechangling 4y ago
People regularly crap on authors for changing their own work, “Han shot first” is an outright meme, and I’m going to predict there’s an overlap between people who don’t want authors to change their own work and people who don’t want other people to change author’s work post-humously. It’s just especially egregious to change a work when you aren’t the author because fundamentally any such editor is somebody who isn’t good enough to make their own classic but is arrogant enough to think they can improve an existing one. People see how people are abusing their legal right to something that’s part of the culture in the interest of their own greed and narcissism and see that as particularly egregious.
JohnFen 4y ago
> it was changed by the author, which seems perfectly acceptable. Yes. It's the author's work, and the author has every right to say what is the "definitive" form of their work. Nobody else has that right. I think it's fine to alter and publish other people's work (setting aside copyright issues), as long as it's clear that the work isn't what the author intended.

jstarfish 4y ago

> or Neil Gaiman was wrong for changing his own book. I'd argue so. Given enough edits, you've written the Book of Theseus.

prepend 4y ago

I think an artist making a derived work from their own work is totally different than a company changing an artists’ work to purely make more money. Also, there are multiple versions of American Gods in print and readers can choose which one to read. They are clearly marked. In this case the publisher is changing the only versions in print and no longer making the original versions. I think that people changing artists work is usually wrong. If a mural artist changes their mural, that’s very different from McDonalds deciding to add in milkshakes. That doesn’t mean that changing art is categorically wrong. It just means that the latter case is wrong.

faeriechangling 4y ago

People regularly crap on authors for changing their own work, “Han shot first” is an outright meme, and I’m going to predict there’s an overlap between people who don’t want authors to change their own work and people who don’t want other people to change author’s work post-humously. It’s just especially egregious to change a work when you aren’t the author because fundamentally any such editor is somebody who isn’t good enough to make their own classic but is arrogant enough to think they can improve an existing one. People see how people are abusing their legal right to something that’s part of the culture in the interest of their own greed and narcissism and see that as particularly egregious.

JohnFen 4y ago

> it was changed by the author, which seems perfectly acceptable. Yes. It's the author's work, and the author has every right to say what is the "definitive" form of their work. Nobody else has that right. I think it's fine to alter and publish other people's work (setting aside copyright issues), as long as it's clear that the work isn't what the author intended.