I felt, had Nabokov wanted it abridged, he would have written it shorter, and I suggested to his son Dmitri that he might insist we record it as written.
The asterisk is often used in writing to show that there is a comment at the bottom of the page or that something has been omited. He added an asterisk to the first page.
But for those who are interested — I did release an uncut version of this video on Nebula that does contain a more uncompromising vision of the kind of scene I had in mind.
One of the more interesting aspects of Winston Churchill's books about this, and you need the unabridged version if you really want to see what's going on, because part of it, remember, is a defense of himself.
But we will put a redacted version of this letter up on the blog post and on social media for this episode, if any of the listeners want to go take a look.
But, you know, in the past, if you read Dickens, for example, you often see terms like God censored, much in the way that we do today with swear words using asterisks.
In fact, their attorneys, Michael, are threatening a defamation lawsuit against Cheryl and her campaign over the suggestion that they were part of any conspiracy to smear her with the unredacted documents.
Fahrenheit 451 itself was censored by the publisher in 75 places over the years, without the author's consent, because concerned parents wrote in about the swear words or depictions of drunkenness.