The Battle Over Ulysses
 The
court case that changed the way Americans read.During a first-season episode of the excellent AMC TV series Mad Men, set in the
New York advertising world of the 1960s, several secretaries are seen gathered
around the office water cooler, whispering. Finally, one secretly passes along
a well-thumbed copy of the erotic literary classic Lady Chatterley’s Lover,
which was only approved for legal publication in the early 1960s.
The fact that a mere novel could hold such cultural power seems almost quaint
at this point in time.
However, such curious secretaries may never have had the chance to whisper about
D.H. Lawrence’s famous novel if not for a landmark legal battle that took
place 75 years ago. The case involved one passionate Irishman, challenged the
censorship of perhaps the greatest novel ever written, and changed the way Americans
read.
 A Time for Censorship
Censorship debates, of course, are still with us. Debates over free or “inappropriate”
speech seem to arise every other week, whether it’s controversial magazine
covers or shock jocks who, in the minds of some, “go too far.” Then
too, lyrics in music performed by gangster rappers or heavy metal rockers always
seem to offend somebody.
So it is easy to believe we did not have these rancorous debates in the good old
days, when it seemed that all entertainment was wholesome, everything was black
and white, the good guys always won, and jazz – which is now studied in
universities and played only on publicly-supported radio stations – was
the most provocative form of music.
But censorship was on everyone’s mind in 1933.
The most immediate and pressing issue, in the minds of Irish-Americans and many
other Catholics across the U.S., were gangster movies, among them The Public Enemy
in which James Cagney played Irish Chicago killer Tom Powers.
But even as cinematic gangsters were killing cops, corrupting women, and shipping
illegal booze, a different kind of censorship battle was unfolding in a Manhattan
courtroom.
At its center was, of all things, an 800-page novel with the strange title Ulysses,
by a brooding Irishman named James Joyce.
All in all, it took nearly 15 years of arrests, court fights, and even book burnings
before the battle over Ulysses was finally settled in the fall of 1933.
The Exiled Artist
Joyce had already left his homeland by the time he began writing Ulysses
around 1914. His brilliant story collection Dubliners had already been
published, followed by his autobiographical novel Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man. Joyce then turned solely to his monumentally ambitious
retelling of the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey. Joyce, however, would
have that epic unfold on a single day, June 16, 1904, in the lives of a tortured
young artist Stephen and a kindly, passionate Dublin Jew named Leopold Bloom.
Given Joyce’s ancient inspirations and complex wordplay, Ulysses seemed
unlikely to ruffle many feathers. In fact, as the novel grew longer and longer,
it seemed that few people would even bother to read it.
However, although Joyce’s previous books had not sold very well, he did
have an avant-garde following. It was also clear that while he had an interest
in mythology, linguistics, and politics, he did not shy away from sexual and scatological
matters, the kind of naughty stuff for which obscenity laws were written.
In 1920, after editor Margaret Anderson published a section of Ulysses in The
Little Review, U.S. Postal officials seized copies of the literary magazine. Among
the episodes which alarmed the likes of The Society for the Suppression of Vice
was one featuring Leopold Bloom sitting on a Dublin beach, fantasizing about a
fair maiden.
In 1921, Margaret Anderson was hauled into court. Copies of The Little Review
featuring Ulysses excerpts were either confiscated or, in some cases, actually
burned. On the grounds that the material might corrupt children or women (even
though it was the woman Margaret Anderson who saw the brilliance in Ulysses),
Joyce’s material was deemed obscene. His masterpiece, more than likely,
would never be published in the U.S. or Britain, which similarly deemed the book
offensive.
A Second Court Battle
One bit of good news for Joyce was that the battle over Ulysses garnered the book
plenty of attention. Sylvia Beach, who owned the Shakespeare and Company bookstore
in Paris, told Joyce it would be an “honor” to publish Ulysses, which
she did in 1922.
Soon afterwards, smuggled copies were making their way into the U.S. The book,
however, was still deemed legally “obscene” as the 1920s drew to a
close, much to the chagrin of Bennett Cerf, who had started a little publishing
business called Random House.
Cerf told Joyce that Random House would publish the book in the U.S. – but
only if the courts allowed him.
That’s when the plotting began. Cerf hired acclaimed obscenity lawyer Morris
L. Ernst to provoke a legal challenge to the initial obscenity ruling. In 1932,
a copy of Ulysses was shipped to the U.S. and Joyce’s American allies made
sure that customs agents seized it, setting the stage for an epic battle over
an epic novel.
The case – The U.S. vs. One Book Called Ulysses – began in July of
1933.
Is It Pornographic?
Ernst was happy to see the case go to Judge John M. Woolsey, known as a sophisticated
writer and thinker who loved books. That was important because now it was not
just racy excerpts on trial but the entire Ulysses novel – which features
scenes in a brothel as well as Molly Bloom’s famous, uh, climactic scene.
As The New York Times reported during the trial: “The principal question
[Judge Woolsey] had to solve … was whether or not Joyce’s purpose
in writing the book had been pornographic.”
Woolsey took the time to read Ulysses start to finish before the trial, which
began with arguments about some of the four-letter words Joyce chose to use.
Ernst argued that these words were offensive only because society chose to make
them taboo – and that, furthermore, they were more honest than evasive phrases
such as “sleep together.” Similarly, the coarse thoughts of Joyce’s
characters are rendered in realistic stream-of-consciousness, and thus marked
a legitimate contribution to the literary art form, Ernst argued.
Nevertheless, the prosecution had one seemingly airtight argument: certain sections
of Ulysses, when read on their own, were sexually explicit and inarguably obscene,
and thus illegal. What would happen if a child were to get his hands on such material?
Ernst’s response: “Adult literature (should not) be reduced to mush
for infants.” On December 6, Judge Woolsey delivered his opinion.
“His Locale Was Celtic”
“I hold that Ulysses is a sincere and honest book,” Woolsey wrote.
“The words which are criticized as dirty are old Saxon words known to almost
all men, and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally
and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life, physical and
mental, Joyce is seeking to describe.”
Woolsey even suggested that readers should keep in mind Joyce’s Irish setting.
“In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds
of his characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and
his season Spring.”
Woolsey agreed with Ernst that adult readers should be distinguished from children.
“I am quite aware that owing to some of its scenes Ulysses is a rather strong
draught to ask some sensitive, though normal, persons to take. But my considered
opinion, after long reflection, is that whilst in many places the effect of Ulysses
on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.
Ulysses may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.”
Woolsey concluded: “If one does not wish to associate with such folks as
Joyce describes, that is one’s own choice.”
The Big Winners
In the end, there were many winners in the epic battle to publish Ulysses in America.
First, of course, was Joyce himself. Literary scholars – and now a federal
judge – had deemed his work a masterpiece. His reputation as a genius –
and one with a comic-smutty streak – spread far and wide. Not that Joyce
needed the reassurance. He once boasted: “If Ulysses isn’t fit to
read, then life isn’t fit to live.”
Bennett Cerf, along with partner Donald S. Klopfer, also came out of the case
well. Their publishing firm Random House printed Joyce’s book and went on
to become one of the world’s dominant publishing houses. Another big winner
was the American reader, who could now alone decide what was bad and what was
brilliant.
Perhaps the biggest winner in all of this, however, may well have been the lawyer
who represented Ulysses, Morris Ernst. Yes, he had the satisfaction of helping
to change America’s cultural landscape, and brought a great work of literature
to the masses.
But he also agreed to take payment for the case only if he won. What was his payment?
Five percent of the royalties on the first 10,000 published copies of Ulysses,
followed by two percent of all later printings.
Needless to say, Ulysses is still in print, 75 years after Ernst won the Ulysses
obscenity case.
 Joyce’s
Irish-American Ally
During the first American obscenity trial against Ulysses in 1920, Joyce’s novel
was defended in court by the famed Irish-American lawyer and patron of the arts
John Quinn. In fact, the link between Joyce and Quinn – born in Ohio, the
grandson of Irish immigrants – has endured for decades. Just a few years back, a
Quinn descendant discovered a handwritten Ulysses manuscript and sold it through
an auction at Christie’s. Joyce had given Quinn extensive sections of the
manuscript, to express thanks for his support.
Quinn, who earned a fortune as a Tammany Hall lawyer, even helped finance The
Little Review, the literary magazine which published excerpts of Ulysses and
which Quinn ultimately defended in court during the 1920 obscenity trial.
That all being said, Quinn’s relationship to Joyce – and the Dublin author’s
circle of avant-garde admirers – was far from perfect. In fact, though Quinn had
a long history of supporting innovative arts movements, he also maintained a
strain of his conservative Catholic upbringing, which led him to view some
radical art with a skeptical eye, even as he understood its aesthetic
importance.
Quinn died at the age of 54 in 1924, and was not around for the 1933 trial,
which saw Joyce win the right to have his work legally published in the U.S.
Born to poor parents in 1870, Quinn became a prominent New York lawyer after
attending Harvard. His life story was chronicled in the Pulitzer Prize-winning
1969 biography The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends by Benjamin
Lawrence Reid.
Quinn was a driving force behind the famous 1913 art exhibition known as the
Armory Show, which introduced American audiences to European art such as
Impressionism, post-Impressionism and Cubism. But books and authors had a
special place in his heart. He collected early works by Heart of Darkness author
Joseph Conrad, supported W.B. Yeats and Cuala Press which was set up in 1904 by
the poet and his sister Elizabeth, and the experimental poet Ezra Pound, who
introduced Quinn to Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, owners of The Little
Review. When that magazine was dragged into court for publishing supposedly
obscene sections of Ulysses, Quinn was a natural to defend the magazine.
Though all involved believed Ulysses to be a true work of art, Quinn, Anderson,
and others disagreed on how to go about defending the work.
Quinn even expressed doubts about the literary merits of Ulysses.
“I myself do not understand Ulysses; I think Joyce has carried his method too
far,” Quinn once said (as quoted in Edward de Grazia’s highly useful 1992 book
Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius).
Margaret Anderson lamented: “Quinn’s strategy in defending us was to argue that
Ulysses was not indecent, merely disgusting.”
When the trial was over, and Anderson and Heap were dragged off to be
fingerprinted and fined, Quinn said to Anderson: “Now for God’s sake, don’t
publish any more obscene literature.”
De Grazia and others have speculated that Quinn chose not to appeal the 1920
ruling against Ulysses because he did not believe the censorship of literary
material was as pressing an issue as limiting political speech.
Either way, it’s clear that John Quinn played a profound role in bringing James
Joyce and his works to the U.S. Without Quinn’s legal and financial support, it
is possible that American readers might never have gotten a chance to be
dazzled, and baffled, by Joyce’s magical prose. – Tom Deignan
 Ulysses
in Philadelphia
In 1924, Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach purchased the Ulysses manuscript. The expert
bookman half of Philadelphia’s Rosenbach brothers, “the Doctor” had a keen eye
for important books. Ulysses had been an immediate success when published in
1922, but it was still less than two years old when Dr. Rosenbach made his
purchase. The manuscript had been put out for auction by John Quinn, a New York
attorney and collector of modern literature. According to Rosenbach, a 1960
biography of Dr. Rosenbach written by Edwin Wolf, the Doctor paid the then
princely sum of $1,950 for the manuscript. It proved to be an incredible
bargain. Ulysses has gone on to be recognized by many as the greatest
English-language novel of the 20th century. Wolf tells us that Rosenbach briefly
offered the manuscript for sale at $3,000, but quickly pulled it back. He
resisted any further offers, including one from Joyce himself, evidently
distraught that Quinn had sold the manuscript. Joyce hoped to buy it back so he
could give it to the French Library. Rosenbach held onto it for the rest of his
life, and when he died 30 years later, the manuscript was donated to the
Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia.
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