In a bold stance against the growing trend of revising classic literature, renowned Scottish crime writer Val McDermid has spoken out about her experience as the subject of a “sensitivity reader” tasked with removing potentially offensive language from her earlier works.
McDermid, who has sold over 19 million novels worldwide, revealed that as her Lindsay Gordon mystery series from the 1980s and 1990s was being prepared for re-release, she was required to have a sensitivity reader comb through the texts to flag any content that could be seen as insensitive by modern standards. The author, often referred to as the “queen of crime,” argued passionately that altering these works to conform to present-day sensibilities would be “dishonest.”
Speaking at the Out in the Hills LGBTQ+ festival in Pitlochry, McDermid expressed her frustration with the process. “I had to have a sensitivity reader to tell me the things that I couldn’t say now. I argued the case that these books were of their time and that it’s dishonest to try to make them read differently,” she said, as reported by The Times.
The author noted that in most instances, she was able to successfully defend the integrity of her original writing. However, she conceded that there were a few examples where she “didn’t win [her] point,” particularly when it came to issues of race.
McDermid, 70, emphasised the importance of preserving historical context in literature, asserting that “a book set in 1987 can’t suddenly have the sensibilities of a book that’s going to be published now.” She argued that these earlier works serve as valuable windows into societal evolution, allowing readers to “understand how far we’ve come and how different it is now.”
The writer, who is also a national year of reading ambassador, met with the Queen earlier this week during the launch of a reading initiative at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. Her career began in 1977 as a newspaper journalist in Glasgow, working for the Daily Record.
While McDermid acknowledged that there are certain depictions in her work, such as the portrayal of graphic violence and a transgender serial killer in her 1995 novel “The Mermaid’s Singing,” that she would likely handle differently today, she remains steadfast in her belief that altering the past to suit the present would be a disservice to literary integrity and historical understanding.
