Joyce’s “locale was Celtic and his season Spring”
You can read the ruling unbanning Ulysses here: https://omekas.library.uvic.ca/s/2022ulysses/item/9118
The legal battle to allow Americans access to Ulysses was settled by a federal judge in New York who actually read James Joyce’s novel based on a day in the life of Dublin, Ireland: June 16, 1904. Happy Bloomsday and hats off to the Honorable John Munro Woolsey of the US District Court of the Southern District of New York.
Ulysses is “...a sincere and serious attempt to devise a new literary method for the observation and description of mankind,” the judge wrote in a ruling issued on December 6, 1933, the same week Prohibition was abolished in America. Both developments would establish freedom for Americans: to legally drink alcohol and read literature the government had banned.
So, as you lift a pint at a Bloomsday celebration, make a toast to Judge Woolsey and Judge Augustus Hand.
Woolsey was appointed by President Herbert Hoover, a Republican who was never known as a crusader for personal liberties. One of Woolsey’s ancestors went to Harvard in 1709. Another was a founder of Yale, which he attended, of course. He wore a tie when he played tennis with his wife. His gavel was carved from the hull of the USS Constitution.
In ruling that the government couldn’t ban Ulysses, he wrote, “I hold that Ulysses is a sincere and honest book.”
As a federal trial judge in New York City, Woolsey was once removed from the Supreme Court, meaning his ruling could be appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, a step below SCOTUS. Which it was. Two of the three members of that court -Learned Hand and his first cousin Augustus Hand - agreed with Woolsey and Ulysses was unbanned.
“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,” wrote Court of Appeals Judge Augustus Hand.
Judge John Munro Woolsey was appointed to the federal bench by President Herbert Hoover.
Judge Woolsey took the time to read Ulysses (785 pages) before ruling that it wasn’t obscene. (Another reason to toast him today.) He rejected the idea that you could judge a book by selected passages some might find objectionable. You can read the entire eight-page decision for yourself right here.
Or, you can read a few excerpts of his ruling and the passages the government used to make its case for banning Ulysses.
JOHN WOOLSEY - “I hold that Ulysses is a sincere and honest book. 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 type of folk whose life, physical and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe.”
JAMES JOYCE – “Ill put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good eyeful out of that to make his mickey stand for him Ill let him know if that’s what he wanted that his wife is fucked and damn well fucked up to my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning theres the mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldn't bother to even iron it out that ought to satisfy him...”
WOOLSEY - ““In respect to the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.”
JOYCE - “yes when I lit the lamp because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the vein or whatever the Dickens they call it was going to burst through his nose......”
WOOLSEY - “My considered opinion, after long reflection, is that while in many places the effect on the reader is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac. Ulysses may be admitted into the United States.”
(Emetic? Def. An emetic is any agent that induces nausea and vomiting, primarily used in the treatment of poisoning to expel toxins that have been swallowed. The most commonly known emetic is ipecac syrup.)
JOYCE – And then a rocket sprang and bang shot bind blank and O! Then the Roman cadle burst and it was like a sigh of O! And everyone cried O! O! And it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! They were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely! O so soft, sweet, soft!
Born and raised in Dublin, Joyce self-exiled to Europe after setting his masterwork in the city on June 16, 1904.
Judge Woolsey’s decision is said to be the most-read judicial opinion ever issued. That’s because after it was issued and Ulysses could be sold over the counter in America, its publisher Random House included Woolsey’s words in every copy sold. Ulysses is still sells about 100,000 copies a year.
“And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn’t probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.” Ulysses
Random House first edition