8 ms·

United States vs. One Book Called “Ulysses”

147 points by andyjohnson0 4y ago

andyjohnson0 4y ago
Today is Bloomsday [1] and exactly one hundred years since Leopold Bloom's fictional wanderings across Dublin in Joyce's Ulysses. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsday
- maze-le 4y ago
  The Book was published in 1922, but the story takes place in 1904. So its actually the 118th Bloomsday.
  - andyjohnson0 4y ago
    Yes, my mistake. I originally wrote that, but then managed to confuse myself and immediately edited the comment to what it is now. Too late to change it now.
  - paulette449 4y ago
    Sorry to be a pedant - it's 118 years since the "original" 1904 Bloomsday but it's the 119th Bloomsday, if you include the first one. (1905 was one year after the original but was the second Bloomsday etc). There are events all over Dublin today to celebrate [1]. [1] - http://www.bloomsdayfestival.ie/bloomsday-elfsight http://www.bloomsdayfestival.ie/bloomsday-elfsight
isaacfrond 4y ago
From the verdict: Joyce has attempted it seems to me, with astonishing success to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious. He shows how each of these impressions affects the life and behavior of the character which he is describing. I've tried, at least five times to read the book... and failed each time. Then I tried the audiobook. Gave it up. I have to face it, I'm just not up to the task.
- phasersout 4y ago
  I always assumed it's on of those books that everybody has in the bookshelf but no one ever really read.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- scandox 4y ago
  I think the desire to understand the meaning of everything immediately defeats a lot of readers. If you're willing to read it more like a poem - to just experience it and only understand some portion of what's going on then it is quite an immersive book. Time has increased the obscurity of much of what is said and done. Also it was released at a time when the education of an educated person with respect to literature, the classics and language was at something if a peak in Europe.
  - optimalsolver 4y ago
    So you've read it cover to cover?
    - scandox 4y ago
      I don't want to misjudge you but the question kind of suggests that no answer will truly satisfy. I mean like you could ask did your eyeball rest upon each word? Did your brain decode the meaning of every word? I don't know. I read it when I was 17 and again at 21. Haven't read it since. I studied literature so I had to read it the second time. It's very far from being a favourite and lots of silly things are said about it but it is readable and evocative and interesting.
  - culturestate 4y ago
    > I think the desire to understand the meaning of everything immediately defeats a lot of readers. If you're willing to…just experience it and only understand some portion of what's going on then it is quite an immersive book. I love this sentiment. So many people have been conditioned to look for the “truth” in everything, when the reality is that not everything has a fundamental truth that’s meant to be universally understood. There was a thread on one of the design subreddits not long ago about London’s book benches[1]. Some of the commenters were absolutely convinced that the benches are deliberately designed to be hostile to the homeless, because the seat is curved and can’t be easily used for sleeping - never mind that it’s meant to look like an open book. Sometimes a thing is just a thing; sometimes a book is just a poem. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/gallery/2014/sep/01/londons-book-benches-readers-photos https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/gallery/2014/sep...
paulgb 4y ago
This is a fun judgement to read. I wasn’t aware of the backstory, but Ulysses was banned in the US after an excerpt was published, and this judgement is the result of Random House intentionally violating the ban by importing a single copy to force a court to decide on it. > Although Customs had been told in advance of the anticipated arrival of the book, it was not confiscated on arrival, and instead was forwarded to Random House in New York City. As seizure by Customs was essential to the plan for a test case, Morris Ernst, the attorney for Random House, took the unopened package to Customs, demanded that it be seized, and it was. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Called_Ulysses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Ca...
- intune 4y ago
  Morris Ernst was an ACLU attorney who challenged other high-profile book bans during the period. He found a cooperative publisher and hatched the plan to import a copy of the book from France and have it seized by customs, although the getting it seized was more difficult than anticipated. > A few days later the book showed up at Random House—it had passed through customs. Furious, Ernst personally marched the package over to the customs office and demanded that it be searched. When the inspector opened it and found Ulysses, he muttered, “Oh, for God’s sake, everybody brings that in. We don’t pay attention to it.” Ernst insisted that he seize it. On May 8, the book was officially seized by customs. In lieu of the usual fees, he would receive 5% of the book royalties should it be legalized and published (not a bad deal). More backstory here: https://crimereads.com/banned-books-ulysses-joyce-morris-ernst/ https://crimereads.com/banned-books-ulysses-joyce-morris-ern...
- erie 4y ago
  Some books were banned in the US and US agents helped get its shipments burned, so censorship continued until a very recent time: ' until now no American publisher has dared re-release the book, which sold over a million copies worldwide and has been translated into seventeen languages. A devastating indictment of a media giant, a document of twentieth-century political upheaval, and a reminder of the dark undercurrent of pop culture, How to Read Donald Duck is once again available, together with a new introduction by Ariel Dorfman. https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/donald-duck/ https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/donald-duck/
AthroughZ 4y ago
Having read this book earlier in the year, after putting it off for decades. The description in the text is spot on. It helps to know something of Shakespeare, Greek, and Latin. But even with only a modicum of the above it still a remarkable experience.
kinghtown 4y ago
For anyone curious about Ulysses: It’s great. Read Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man before Ulysses. If you gave up on it before: try again. I used to think it was BS for years but I tried again and ended up loving it. I’d advise skipping student editions or getting hung up on reading tons of notes and criticism while reading it. Just use google translate for latin and know a little bit about Homer and Shakespeare. It’s about mainly about life, death, and reincarnation. Ulysses is like a slot machine in that it rarely pays out on the first pull. And if anyone loved a good pull it was Joyce.
- d4rkp4ttern 4y ago
  There is a nice looking annotated version from Cambridge by Catherine Flynn, to be released in July: https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/irish-literature/cambridge-centenary-ulysses-1922-text-essays-and-notes?format=HB&isbn=9781316515945 https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/ir... Wonder if it’s worth getting, for all of the context. Are there other annotated versions that are recommended?
  - dmurray 4y ago
    There's a companion book I enjoyed called Ulysses Unbound by Terence Killeen. It's quite terse: For each of the 18 episodes of Ulysses it gives a few pages of stylistic notes, a few on the Homeric parallels, a dramatis personae of the real people and events alluded to, and a translation of foreign terms. I liked this style better than inline or footnoted annotations (except, perhaps, for the languages I can't read) as it encourages you to read and digest first, then get a second opinion from the annotator about what's going on. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1065953.Ulysses_Unbound https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1065953.Ulysses_Unbound
- lupire 4y ago
  Ulysses was a challenge project. Joyce tried to make the hardest to understand, most reference-packed book he good. It's the Final Boss of English Literature. I don't see the point of reading it before reading most/all the classic works Joyce built upon.
rendall 4y ago
> 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. He's saying that the Irish are horn dogs, isn't he?
- jan_Inkepa 4y ago
  Talking about his season being spring - I note JJ was born in February, is this some horoscope-adjacent belief?
  - MereInterest 4y ago
    I'd see it more as a cultural reference to spring as the season of new growth and more frenetic activity. Where in the preceding winter, food would be stored and activity minimized, spring means a comparative abundance of food. (Tangent: I'd love to see whether the decreased use of seasonal metaphors is correlated with the prevalence of refrigeration. Spring is less culturally relevant now, with refrigeration reducing the fear of starving in the winter and increasing availability of seasonal produce.) For a humorous comparison, see "The Lusty Month of May", from the 1960 musical "Camelot". (Link to a good performance: https://youtube.com/watch?v=t--e0S5kelY https://youtube.com/watch?v=t--e0S5kelY ). It's basically an entire song about how great it is that spring is here, because spring is a wonderful time for sex.
    - mgdlbp 4y ago
      You just sent me on one of the oddest paths to gathering research on something I've ever taken. :P The song reminded me of a much more recent one, Jonathan Coulton's "First of May", which I decided to look up the inspiration of. From https://wiki.jonathancoulton.com/First_of_May https://wiki.jonathancoulton.com/First_of_May: > * The chorus is a variation on an old folk/schoolyard rhyme, "Hooray, Hooray, the first of May! Outdoor fucking starts today!" In an April 10, 2007 blog post, JoCo credited John Hodgman with the idea for the song, and mentions that the modern dirty rhyme derives from an older, traditional dirty rhyme. Commenters Mike and Bry tracked the reference down to a poem in Another Almanac of Words at Play by Willard R. Espy. > * The poem which Espy cites, in turn, derives from ancient Pagan customs celebrating fertility on the eve of Beltane, the Celtic name for the month of May. So, there's the exact cultural reference? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane Incidentally, May is also International Masturbation Month for entirely unrelated reasons.
janmarsal 4y ago
Stay away from the books written by the dependency hell man. They got banned for a reason.
- onemoresoop 4y ago
  You mean too say something like stay away from all books by Joyce or Hemingway or Poe or many other authors who had struggles with alcohol?
  - lukas099 4y ago
    I think they meant that you have to know/understand too many outside cultural and linguistic references to understand a lot of Joyce's writing. Judging from the other comments here, this seems like a reasonable position.
  - xsmasher 4y ago
    No, it's a reference to "dependency hell" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell Large parts of the book don't make sense if you don't have the right cultural information "installed."
maerF0x0 4y ago
> 1933: The words which are criticized as dirty *184 are old Saxon words known to almost all men and, I venture, to many women Times have changed.
woodruffw 4y ago
It's good to review historical cases like these, as a reminder of how fleeting our contemporary view of free expression in the US is: restricting even the private distribution of literature was broadly popular less than a century ago, and many of the Comstock laws[1] survived well into the 20th century. Distributors of Howl were arrested as late as 1957! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws
dmoo 4y ago
For those of you who might be podcast inclined here is a link from RTE https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/series/32198-ulysses/ https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/series/32198-ulysses/
herpderperator 4y ago
Shouldn't the title be 'v.' without the s? I've noticed that court stuff always uses just 'v.' - not sure why.
pseingatl 4y ago
The manga version is very helpful for those who just want to quickly grab the story.

147 points by andyjohnson0 4y ago

Today is Bloomsday [1] and exactly one hundred years since Leopold Bloom's fictional wanderings across Dublin in Joyce's Ulysses. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsday

maze-le 4y ago
The Book was published in 1922, but the story takes place in 1904. So its actually the 118th Bloomsday.
- andyjohnson0 4y ago
  Yes, my mistake. I originally wrote that, but then managed to confuse myself and immediately edited the comment to what it is now. Too late to change it now.
- paulette449 4y ago
  Sorry to be a pedant - it's 118 years since the "original" 1904 Bloomsday but it's the 119th Bloomsday, if you include the first one. (1905 was one year after the original but was the second Bloomsday etc). There are events all over Dublin today to celebrate [1]. [1] - http://www.bloomsdayfestival.ie/bloomsday-elfsight http://www.bloomsdayfestival.ie/bloomsday-elfsight

isaacfrond 4y ago

From the verdict: Joyce has attempted it seems to me, with astonishing success to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious. He shows how each of these impressions affects the life and behavior of the character which he is describing. I've tried, at least five times to read the book... and failed each time. Then I tried the audiobook. Gave it up. I have to face it, I'm just not up to the task.

phasersout 4y ago
I always assumed it's on of those books that everybody has in the bookshelf but no one ever really read.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
scandox 4y ago
I think the desire to understand the meaning of everything immediately defeats a lot of readers. If you're willing to read it more like a poem - to just experience it and only understand some portion of what's going on then it is quite an immersive book. Time has increased the obscurity of much of what is said and done. Also it was released at a time when the education of an educated person with respect to literature, the classics and language was at something if a peak in Europe.
- optimalsolver 4y ago
  So you've read it cover to cover?
  - scandox 4y ago
    I don't want to misjudge you but the question kind of suggests that no answer will truly satisfy. I mean like you could ask did your eyeball rest upon each word? Did your brain decode the meaning of every word? I don't know. I read it when I was 17 and again at 21. Haven't read it since. I studied literature so I had to read it the second time. It's very far from being a favourite and lots of silly things are said about it but it is readable and evocative and interesting.
- culturestate 4y ago
  > I think the desire to understand the meaning of everything immediately defeats a lot of readers. If you're willing to…just experience it and only understand some portion of what's going on then it is quite an immersive book. I love this sentiment. So many people have been conditioned to look for the “truth” in everything, when the reality is that not everything has a fundamental truth that’s meant to be universally understood. There was a thread on one of the design subreddits not long ago about London’s book benches[1]. Some of the commenters were absolutely convinced that the benches are deliberately designed to be hostile to the homeless, because the seat is curved and can’t be easily used for sleeping - never mind that it’s meant to look like an open book. Sometimes a thing is just a thing; sometimes a book is just a poem. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/gallery/2014/sep/01/londons-book-benches-readers-photos https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/gallery/2014/sep...

paulgb 4y ago

This is a fun judgement to read. I wasn’t aware of the backstory, but Ulysses was banned in the US after an excerpt was published, and this judgement is the result of Random House intentionally violating the ban by importing a single copy to force a court to decide on it. > Although Customs had been told in advance of the anticipated arrival of the book, it was not confiscated on arrival, and instead was forwarded to Random House in New York City. As seizure by Customs was essential to the plan for a test case, Morris Ernst, the attorney for Random House, took the unopened package to Customs, demanded that it be seized, and it was. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Called_Ulysses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Ca...

intune 4y ago
Morris Ernst was an ACLU attorney who challenged other high-profile book bans during the period. He found a cooperative publisher and hatched the plan to import a copy of the book from France and have it seized by customs, although the getting it seized was more difficult than anticipated. > A few days later the book showed up at Random House—it had passed through customs. Furious, Ernst personally marched the package over to the customs office and demanded that it be searched. When the inspector opened it and found Ulysses, he muttered, “Oh, for God’s sake, everybody brings that in. We don’t pay attention to it.” Ernst insisted that he seize it. On May 8, the book was officially seized by customs. In lieu of the usual fees, he would receive 5% of the book royalties should it be legalized and published (not a bad deal). More backstory here: https://crimereads.com/banned-books-ulysses-joyce-morris-ernst/ https://crimereads.com/banned-books-ulysses-joyce-morris-ern...
erie 4y ago
Some books were banned in the US and US agents helped get its shipments burned, so censorship continued until a very recent time: ' until now no American publisher has dared re-release the book, which sold over a million copies worldwide and has been translated into seventeen languages. A devastating indictment of a media giant, a document of twentieth-century political upheaval, and a reminder of the dark undercurrent of pop culture, How to Read Donald Duck is once again available, together with a new introduction by Ariel Dorfman. https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/donald-duck/ https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/donald-duck/

AthroughZ 4y ago

Having read this book earlier in the year, after putting it off for decades. The description in the text is spot on. It helps to know something of Shakespeare, Greek, and Latin. But even with only a modicum of the above it still a remarkable experience.

kinghtown 4y ago

For anyone curious about Ulysses: It’s great. Read Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man before Ulysses. If you gave up on it before: try again. I used to think it was BS for years but I tried again and ended up loving it. I’d advise skipping student editions or getting hung up on reading tons of notes and criticism while reading it. Just use google translate for latin and know a little bit about Homer and Shakespeare. It’s about mainly about life, death, and reincarnation. Ulysses is like a slot machine in that it rarely pays out on the first pull. And if anyone loved a good pull it was Joyce.

d4rkp4ttern 4y ago
There is a nice looking annotated version from Cambridge by Catherine Flynn, to be released in July: https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/irish-literature/cambridge-centenary-ulysses-1922-text-essays-and-notes?format=HB&isbn=9781316515945 https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/ir... Wonder if it’s worth getting, for all of the context. Are there other annotated versions that are recommended?
- dmurray 4y ago
  There's a companion book I enjoyed called Ulysses Unbound by Terence Killeen. It's quite terse: For each of the 18 episodes of Ulysses it gives a few pages of stylistic notes, a few on the Homeric parallels, a dramatis personae of the real people and events alluded to, and a translation of foreign terms. I liked this style better than inline or footnoted annotations (except, perhaps, for the languages I can't read) as it encourages you to read and digest first, then get a second opinion from the annotator about what's going on. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1065953.Ulysses_Unbound https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1065953.Ulysses_Unbound
lupire 4y ago
Ulysses was a challenge project. Joyce tried to make the hardest to understand, most reference-packed book he good. It's the Final Boss of English Literature. I don't see the point of reading it before reading most/all the classic works Joyce built upon.

rendall 4y ago

> 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. He's saying that the Irish are horn dogs, isn't he?

jan_Inkepa 4y ago
Talking about his season being spring - I note JJ was born in February, is this some horoscope-adjacent belief?
- MereInterest 4y ago
  I'd see it more as a cultural reference to spring as the season of new growth and more frenetic activity. Where in the preceding winter, food would be stored and activity minimized, spring means a comparative abundance of food. (Tangent: I'd love to see whether the decreased use of seasonal metaphors is correlated with the prevalence of refrigeration. Spring is less culturally relevant now, with refrigeration reducing the fear of starving in the winter and increasing availability of seasonal produce.) For a humorous comparison, see "The Lusty Month of May", from the 1960 musical "Camelot". (Link to a good performance: https://youtube.com/watch?v=t--e0S5kelY https://youtube.com/watch?v=t--e0S5kelY ). It's basically an entire song about how great it is that spring is here, because spring is a wonderful time for sex.
  - mgdlbp 4y ago
    You just sent me on one of the oddest paths to gathering research on something I've ever taken. :P The song reminded me of a much more recent one, Jonathan Coulton's "First of May", which I decided to look up the inspiration of. From https://wiki.jonathancoulton.com/First_of_May https://wiki.jonathancoulton.com/First_of_May: > * The chorus is a variation on an old folk/schoolyard rhyme, "Hooray, Hooray, the first of May! Outdoor fucking starts today!" In an April 10, 2007 blog post, JoCo credited John Hodgman with the idea for the song, and mentions that the modern dirty rhyme derives from an older, traditional dirty rhyme. Commenters Mike and Bry tracked the reference down to a poem in Another Almanac of Words at Play by Willard R. Espy. > * The poem which Espy cites, in turn, derives from ancient Pagan customs celebrating fertility on the eve of Beltane, the Celtic name for the month of May. So, there's the exact cultural reference? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane Incidentally, May is also International Masturbation Month for entirely unrelated reasons.

janmarsal 4y ago

Stay away from the books written by the dependency hell man. They got banned for a reason.

onemoresoop 4y ago
You mean too say something like stay away from all books by Joyce or Hemingway or Poe or many other authors who had struggles with alcohol?
- lukas099 4y ago
  I think they meant that you have to know/understand too many outside cultural and linguistic references to understand a lot of Joyce's writing. Judging from the other comments here, this seems like a reasonable position.
- xsmasher 4y ago
  No, it's a reference to "dependency hell" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell Large parts of the book don't make sense if you don't have the right cultural information "installed."

maerF0x0 4y ago

> 1933: The words which are criticized as dirty *184 are old Saxon words known to almost all men and, I venture, to many women Times have changed.

woodruffw 4y ago

It's good to review historical cases like these, as a reminder of how fleeting our contemporary view of free expression in the US is: restricting even the private distribution of literature was broadly popular less than a century ago, and many of the Comstock laws[1] survived well into the 20th century. Distributors of Howl were arrested as late as 1957! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws

dmoo 4y ago

For those of you who might be podcast inclined here is a link from RTE https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/series/32198-ulysses/ https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/series/32198-ulysses/

herpderperator 4y ago

Shouldn't the title be 'v.' without the s? I've noticed that court stuff always uses just 'v.' - not sure why.

pseingatl 4y ago

The manga version is very helpful for those who just want to quickly grab the story.