United States v. One Book Called Ulysses

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United States v. One Book Called Ulysses was a 1933 case in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dealing with free speech. It determined whether or not James Joyce's novel Ulysses was obscene.

Contents 1 Background 2 Trial court ruling 3 Appeal 4 Significance 5 References

[edit] Background

In 1922 James Joyce published his most famous novel Ulysses. Prior to its publication as a book, it was serialized in The Little Review, a literary magazine. One installment included a passage dealing with the main character masturbating. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice objected took action; at a trial in 1921 the magazine was declared obscene.^{[citation needed]} The publisher Random House decided to try to get the ban lifted. In 1933, an arrangement was made to import the French edition, and arranged to have a copy seized by customs when the ship was unloaded.

[edit] Trial court ruling

The seizure of the work was contested in the United States District Court in New York City. The United States, libelant^[1], asserted that the work was obscene and therefore not importable and subject to confiscation and destruction. Its publisher Random House, as claimant, argued that the book was not obscene and was protected by the First Amendment, and sought a decree dismissing the action. There was no trial as such; instead the parties stipulated to the facts and made motions for the relief each sought.

Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that Ulysses was not pornographic-- that nowhere in it was the "leer of the sensualist." Acknowledging the "astonishing success" of Joyce's use of the "stream of consciousness" technique, the judge stated that the novel was serious and that its author was sincere and honest in showing how the minds of his characters operate. This honesty led Joyce to show what the characters were thinking. Such thoughts, the judge said, included "old Saxon words" familiar to readers, and:

"[i]n 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."

To have failed to honestly tell fully what his characters thought would have been "artistically inexcusable", said the judge.

Having disposed of the question of whether the book was written with pornographic intent, Judge Woolsy turned to the question of whether the work nevertheless was objectively obscene within the meaning of the law. That meaning, as set forth in a string of cases cited by the judge, was whether the work "tend[ed] to stir the sex impulses or to lead to sexually impure and lustful thoughts." The judge found that the book when read in its entirety did not do so:

"[W]hilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac."

Consequently Ulysses was not obscene, and could be admitted into the United States.^[2]

Within ten minutes of hearing of the decision, Bennett Cerf of Random House instructed the typesetters to start work on the book. One hundred copies were published in January 1934 to obtain U.S. copyright. ^[3]

The news of the decision was cabled to Joyce in Paris. Richard Ellmann, Joyce’s biographer, stated that judge’s eloquent and emphatic decision allowed the author to achieve his ambition of obtaining a "famous victory". Joyce commented triumphantly that “one half of the English speaking world surrenders; the other half will follow”, a gentler version of his prior sardonic prediction that while England would follow suit within a few years after the U.S. stopped censoring the work, Ireland would not follow suit until “1000 years hence.”^[3]

[edit] Appeal

Judge Woolsey's decision was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses by James Joyce. Judge Augustus Noble Hand wrote the decision. Hand's opinion displayed a historical perspective of the harm of overzealous censorship:

"Art certainly cannot advance under compulsion to traditional forms, and nothing in such a field is more stifling to progress than limitation of the right to experiment with a new technique. The foolish judgments of Lord Eldon about one hundred years ago, proscribing the works of Byron and Southey, and the finding by the jury under a charge by Lord Denman that the publication of Shelley's "Queen Mab" was an indictable offense are a warning to all who have to determine the limits of the field within which authors may exercise themselves. We think that Ulysses is a book of originality and sincerity of treatment and that it has not the effect of promoting lust. Accordingly it does not fall within the statute, even though it justly may offend many.^[4]

The opinion also was significant in its urging that any test of obscenity could not rely on mere isolated passages but instead had to consider the work as a whole, a test used by Judge Woolsey and which the Supreme Court later endorsed.

[edit] Significance

This was a notable change in the rulings of the courts of the United States toward obscenity. Before it was universally agreed that laws prohibiting obscenity were not in conflict with the First Amendment.^{[citation needed]}

The significance of the ruling goes beyond its immediate and ultimate precedential effect. Judge Woosley's decision was reproduced in all Random House printings of the novel, and that decision has been recognized as a perceptive analysis of the work.

Richard Ellmann stated that Judge Woolsey’s decision “said much more than it had to”,^[3] and another Joyce biographer and critic, Harry Levin, called the decision a “distinguished critical essay.” ^[5] These opinions are borne out by a comparison of the decision with scholarly criticism.

Judge Woolsey had mentioned the “emetic” effect of some of the passages alleged to be obscene; Stuart Gilbert, Joyce’s friend and author of an early critical study of the novel, stated that those passages “are, in fact, cathartic and calculated to allay rather than to excite the sexual instincts.” ^[6] And Harry Levin therefore noted that the judge described the book’s “effect in terms of catharsis, the purge of the emotion through pity and terror” that is ascribed to tragedy, a theme which Levin found in prior works of Joyce. ^[5]

The judge had also noted that portrayal of the coarser inner thoughts of the characters was necessary to show how their minds operate, a judgment that treats those characters as not mere fictional creations, but as authentic personalities. Gilbert states that the “personages of Ulysse’ are not fictitious”; but that “these people are as they must be; they act, we see, according to some lex eterna, an ineluctable condition of their very existence.” ^[6] Through these characters Joyce “achieves a coherent and integral interpretation of life,” ^[6] or in the words of Judge Woolsey, a “true picture” of lower-middle class life drawn by a “real artist in words” who has devised a “new literary method for the observation and description of mankind.”

[edit] References