CELIA WALDEN---GEN Z WANTS ANYONE OVER 30 TO BE A WALKING APOLOGY FOR THE PAST

Opinion by Celia Walden ----Warning: this column may contain the language and attitudes of the author’s time. Readers sensitive to any thoughts that do not directly cohere with the accepted views of today, please take note.

You won’t have been surprised to hear that a trigger warning like this one has been slapped on a new edition of Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel, To The Lighthouse, intended for an American readership.

When I saw the headline in this paper on Sunday – Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Publishers – I just nodded numbly to myself. That’s where we are now. In a topsy-turvy land beyond outrage, where something that defies all sense… makes perfect sense.

“I mean she’s old, isn’t she?” I thought to myself as I began to read the article. “Also dead. So poor old Virginia’s probably committed some heinous posthumous crime against the perma-offended.”

Maybe she called one of the characters “fat”, like Roald Dahl in the recently scrubbed clean Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or made some “racist” reference to a character’s “brown” skin, as Enid Blyton did in her also now-censored Famous Five, or alluded to someone’s “lovely white teeth”, as Agatha Christie was condemned for doing in one of her Miss Marple mysteries.  MORE AT Gen Z want anyone over 30 to be a walking apology for the past (msn.com)