A Wrinkle in Time: On Security

... fascinating. I just came across this article from a couple of weeks ago, about a three-page cut that was made in A Wrinkle in Time and which was recently unearthed. The article's worth reading (and note the link to the actual cut pages), but the upshot is that the cut pages were *not* her best writing, but are more starkly political -- and more screamingly relevant to the modern day -- than most of what did make it into print. It specifically calls out the longing for security as "the greatest evil there is", "like a disease germ that it has let loose on our land". It is *specifically* talking about the desperate desire for security as being corrosive to the US, and suggests that that desire was the origin of the hellish world of Camazotz.

From an editorial POV, I'm not at all surprised they cut the passage -- it's hit-you-on-the-head moralizing, even by the sometimes-unsubtle standards of Wrinkle in Time. But I will say, my respect for L'Engle goes up yet another notch: it concisely points out one of the great political dangers, that too few people (and *far* too few politicians) are ever willing to acknowledge...