The opportunity to edit the LENS past often proves irresistible. Stalin erased Trotsky; Nixon erased his 18 minutes; Japan’s textbooks pretend nothing bad happened in Nanking.

Ernest Hemingway’s grandson recently decided to issue a “restored edition” of “A Moveable Feast.”

“I think this edition is right to set the record straight,” Sean Hemingway told The Times. The original portrayed Sean Hemingway’s grandmother, Ernest Hemingway’s second wife, in unflattering terms. So, Sean reworked the original text, reordered the chapters, and this summer Scribner published a new edition in which Sean’s grandmother appears in a more sympathetic light.

A.E. Hotchner, a friend of Hemingway’s who helped assemble the original manuscript, excoriated the changes.

“With this reworking as a precedent, what will Scribner do, for instance, if a descendant of F. Scott Fitzgerald demands the removal of the chapter in ‘A Moveable Feast’ about the size of Fitzgerald’s penis, or if Ford Madox Ford’s grandson wants to delete references to his ancestor’s body odor,” he wrote in The Times.

Such temptations prompted Wikipedia to change its editing policies. Before, it was not difficult for someone to insert false information into a Wikipedia entry. In March an Irish student inserted a false quotation attributed to the French composer Maurice Jarre after Mr. Jarre’s death. The false remark was reproduced in several newspapers.

Such revisions have prompted Wikipedia to add a layer of review for articles about living people, altering the online encylopedia’s philosophy that everyone has an equal right to edit entries.

“There was a time probably when the community was more forgiving of things that were inaccurate or fudged in some fashion - whether simply misunderstood or an author had some ax to grind,” Michael Snow, the chairman of Wikipedia’s board, told The Times. “There is less tolerance for that sort of problem now.”

Apparently, the editors of a British documentary about Muhammad Ali are less troubled by such changes. When the “Thriller in Manila,” about Ali’s match with Joe Frazier, came out this year it was criticized for being biased toward Frazier. When the DVD was released in June, a 10- minute segment dealing with a previous fight in New York in 1971 in which Frazier floored Ali, had been cut in half and the filmed action replaced with still photos.

“Even after all these years, someone wants to save face for Muhammad Ali,” one reviewer said in The Times.

The urge to manipulate is not always pernicious. Sometimes technology creates a new kind of fun. Fans of old movies can buy a product that puts a greenscreen in every living room. Greenscreens are the cornerstone of special effects in many movies, allowing actors to appear in outer space or ancient Rome while never moving from in front of the screen.

Now, for $170, anyone can buy a greenscreen with accompanying software and insert themselves into a movie scene.

So, if you think you could do a better job than Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in “Gone With the Wind” telling Scarlett O’Hara “I don’t think I will kiss you, although you need kissing badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed and often,” then this is your chance.

That is, of course, until the next editor comes along.


FROM “A MOVEABLE FEAST: THE RESTORED EDITION” BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY [SCRIBNER] / Rewriting the past is contagious. A grandson of Ernest Hemingway re-edited the manuscript of “A Moveable Feast,” left, marked up by the author.


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