Presently reading John Higgs’
Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century. This is, I believe the first time I’ve teared up at a work of non-fiction.
The except I’ve just read describes the United States' reaction to the publication of Joyce's
Ulysses in 1933:
Quote:
Joyce intended his work to be difficult. We can see this in his reaction to the obscenity trial that resulted from an attempt to publish Ulysses in Prohibition-era America.Ulysses was originally serialised in a New York magazine called the Little Review, alongside the poetry of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. The baroness’s poems may now seem more overtly sexual, but it was Joyce’s work which was singled out for obscenity.
A later trial, United States Vs. One Book Called Ulysses, in 1933, ultimately decided that the work did have serious intent and that it was not pornographic (for, as Judge John Woolsey pointed out, ‘In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of [Joyce’s] characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.’) In order to argue for the serious nature of the work, however, Joyce was called on to explain it, and in particular the way its structure echoed the ancient Greek myth it was named after. Joyce was extremely unhappy with this prospect. As he said, ‘If I gave it all up [the explanations] immediately, I’d lose my immortality. I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.’
Joyce wanted to be studied. As he said in an interview with Harper’s magazine, ‘The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.’ In this respect there is a touch of tragedy in his dying words: ‘Does nobody understand?’
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