Today in fiction
On Aug. 7, 1875, The Crow kidnap Mary and another of the women.
-- "One Thousand White Women" (1998)
by Jim Fergus
From "The Book of Fictional Days"
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Today in Literary History
On this day in 1934, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Judge John M. Woolsey's earlier ruling allowing James Joyce's "Ulysses" into America. This enabled Random House to issue the first U.S. edition, over a decade after Sylvia Beach's original Paris edition, and after a decade of American tourists had been nervously returning from Europe with their banned copies. As told by Random House editor Bennett Cerf ("At Random," 1977), the success of the original case hinged entirely upon these smuggled editions of the novel.
The Random House legal strategy involved delicate timing, as they wanted their challenge to the banning of the book brought to trial while the erudite and liberal-minded Judge Woolsey was in session in New York. It was equally important to somehow get into the court records the views of those famous literary figures -- Edmund Wilson, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, etc. -- who had written reviews proclaiming "Ulysses" to be a masterpiece. Under American law at the time, such outside criticism was not allowed in court; only material actually included within the disputed book could be used as evidence. The Random solution was to take a copy of Beach's edition, paste the supporting reviews into it, have someone take it over to Europe and then be caught smuggling it back. The day of criminality turned out to be one of the hottest in the history of New York, and more difficult than expected:
"The temperature on that dock must have been a hundred and twenty degrees, and the customs people wanted only one thing: to get returning passengers off and get the hell out themselves. They were stamping everything without opening it, saying, 'Get out; go on out.' When our man arrived, the customs inspector started to stamp his suitcase without even looking at it. Our agent, frantic, said, 'I insist that you open that bag and search it.' The inspector looked at him as though he were an absolute lunatic, and said, 'It's too hot.' 'I think there's something in there that's contraband,' our agent said, 'and I insist that it be searched.' So, furiously, the fellow had to open the suitcase. And the agent said, 'Aha!' as he produced our copy of 'Ulysses.' The customs man said, 'Oh, for God's sake, everybody brings that in. We don't pay attention to it.' But the agent persisted, 'I demand that you seize this book.'"
The inspector called his boss, the boss balked, the agent persisted, and the book, much dog-eared and underlined by a district attorney looking for pornography, was eventually donated to the Columbia University Library.
-- Steve King
To find out more about "Today in Literary History," contact Steve King.
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