
A New ‘Wrinkle in Time’ - benbreen
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-wrinkle-in-time-1429219305/
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chernevik
Anyone looking for L'Engle's views on politics and "security" should be
looking in the many passages she _did_ publish. They might start with "A
Swiftly Tilting Planet", set on the brink of a nuclear war.

This passage was well cut. The dialogue is clunky and Mr. Murry's views are
overblown and poorly thought out. Worse, Meg's stated desire for "security" is
completely out of step with her nonconformist character. She gets into fights
to protect her brother, she refuses to do math as her teacher prefers because
her way is better. She hates that she doesn't fit in, but she never tries to
be "girly" or take up the interests of the other kids. This isn't a person
with any sympathy for an overwhelming desire for security.

L'Engle may have been experimenting with this passage, maybe looking to
balance the book against the possibility that it might be read as an anti-
Soviet parable. Whatever the thought behind this passage, the book never
needed such balance. It's firstly a wonderful story, with a theme of the
dangers of conformities of all kinds.

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kordless
Fear is a slippery thing. You can't eliminate it. You can't ignore it. You
must bear it, when you have it. Bearing it causes suffering, of course.
Putting it off means you'll suffer later, perhaps more than you might if you
just handled it when it was smaller. I tell my daughter it's like piling up
laundry in the corner of her room. At some point you are going to suffer a lot
more by not having clothes to wear to school AND you still have to do a crap
load of laundry all at once.

Fear based security is stupid, wasteful and simply puts off what fears you
might have until some point trust is violated by those doing security. Then
the real suffering begins.

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noonespecial
Interesting, but well cut from the story. Clumsy, preachy, doesn't add. That's
what editing is for. If you skip the editing stage, you end up with Ayn Rand.

~~~
ckozlowski
Interesting. "Sounds too "Ayn Rand"" was exactly what I thought when reading
that passage.

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lkrubner
The implication here is that what was in the rough draft is somehow "true",
when in fact it was cut and therefore the writer thought it was "false".

Everyone writes garbage, all the time, including the greatest writers. Indeed,
when you do much serious literary criticism, one of the first things you learn
is the (perhaps surprising) extent to which great writers can write terrible
junk in their rough drafts. Sometimes terrible passages almost make it into
print, as, for instance, the first chapter of Hemmingway's book "The Sun Also
Rises", which had already been sent to the printing plant when Hemmingway, on
advice from Scott Fitzgerald, sent a telegram asking that the first chapter be
cut. You can find that cut chapter online, and everyone whose ever read it
agrees that it is terrible -- cutting it was a very good idea.

Likewise, there are some famous cuts from Tolkien that would have been awful
if they were included.

If the author decides to cut a passage, the author is saying "This isn't
really true for this story, this is garbage." You would be unwise to read deep
meaning into passages that get cut.

~~~
mariodiana
I read the book a few years ago, and have since read the excerpt. I think she
was right to cut it, but only because it breaks up the flow of the story and
seems rather heavy handed. In this sense it's "garbage." But I think it is
completely consonant with the themes of the book. It's obvious that the
dystopia in the book promises safety and security at the expense of a
totalitarian society, so I don't know how one could read too much into it.

------
ckozlowski
I first read this in grade school, and keep revisiting it decades later. My
wife and I bonded over it when we met, and growing older, I find the messages
even more apt.

I agree as well, the passage was best cut. It's a little too essay-like, a bit
too wordy, in what was a scene where Meg could finally catch up with her
father. But I'm really glad they found this and shared it, and it helps give a
new perspective on what was guiding L'Engle's thoughts when she wrote the
book.

~~~
jtheory
Loved this book when I was a kid, as well (and there were sequels, I think?).

It's curious -- nowadays the summary of the plot only rings a vague bell, and
"Camazotz" is not a name I recognize at all. I don't think I'd have remembered
this passage, had it not been cut.

But the name of the protagonist's little brother -- Charles Wallace -- gave me
a delicious little shiver. I doubt I've thought of this book much in 30 years,
but there's a whole section of pathways in my brain that unlocks.

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motbob
The point it makes adds to the story, but I think it's an awkward passage and
I understand why it was cut.

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skidoo
The thought struck at the weird synchronicity of new JD Salinger, new Harper
Lee, and now this. I'm not complaining of course.

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kghose
How do we know its not a fake?

~~~
jtheory
This is a nifty find, and might make a little bump in the popularity of an
acknowledged classic, but faking it would hardly be worth risking her career &
reputation.

The granddaughter's job is managing L'Engle's estate.

Plus, it seems to me that a fake would be quite possible to expose -- the age
of the paper/ink, uniqueness of typewriter characters etc.. It's one page of
an entire paper draft of the novel, typewritten (presumably on a single
machine) 50 or so years ago.

------
madaxe_again
It's just as well this passage was cut. Can you imagine this book having had
_any_ kind of readership in America had she dared be critical of the U.S. in
her writing at the height of the Cold War?!

The book would have been burned in McCarthyist witch-hunts, she would have
been arrested as a communist sympathiser.

She only had to substantially obfuscate the message of her book to manage to
get it published in a backwards, repressive regime which fancies itself as a
bastion of freedom.

~~~
gojomo
Your speculations about what "would have been" – book burnings! imprisonment!
– are ahistoric to the point of paranoid nuttyness.

The specific passages left out were a few slight intensifications of one
theme. Leaving them out didn't 'obfuscate' anything. As the literary critics
consulted by the WSJ suggest, the cuts arguably improved the book's narrative
flow and timelessness.

Also note that by 1962, when _Wrinkle in Time_ was published, the country was
already 8 years past the peak of McCarthyism, with McCarthy discredited and
dead. Even at the height of McCarthy's investigations, in the early 50s, the
only metaphorical "book burning" that happened was the State Department
pulling some books from its overseas outreach libraries.

That's an embarrassment, of course, but not the kind of persecution you're
implying that L'Engle would've faced.

For cultural context, _The Twilight Zone_ 's original TV run was 1959-1964. It
often featured the exact same kind of allegorical criticism of conformity and
paranoia. A few extra words in _Wrinkle in Time_ – about how even in
democracies, "the sick longing for security is a dangerous thing" – would've
been zero risk to the book's popularity or author.

~~~
astrodust
There have been a lot of "book burnings" since 1960. The subject du jour to
ban shifts slightly over the years, from racial issues to gender equality to
same-sex marriage, but parents often end up in a frenzy over one thing or
another.

~~~
gojomo
Nothing about these elided _Wrinkle in Time_ passages were especially
controversial, then or now.

Other parts of _Wrinkle in Time_ , in particular mentions of Jesus as sort-of
coequal with other artists and scientists or Buddha, or its not-quite-
Christian mysticism, have sometimes run afoul of some religious parents'
groups.

But a few generic warnings to the effect that "craving total safety can be
dangerous"? That's pretty much common wisdom, in any American era, and doesn't
trigger claims of insult or depravity.

