ShmoopTube

00:00

Thank you We seek freedom of speech is a fundamental

00:05

part of being an american it's the first amendment We

00:09

love freedom of speech And yet even to this day

00:12

some books are banned One in particular i'd like to

00:16

talk about is ulysses by james joyce So james joyce

00:20

started writing the book in nineteen Fourteen and at the

00:22

time censorship laws were ridiculous And of course this was

00:26

before television but in printed word swear words any kind

00:31

of sexuality it was like nothing was okay This was

00:35

like the town from footloose packed into a chastity belt

00:39

And then like constantly being threatened like i'm gonna wash

00:42

your mouth out with soap that was publishers in nineteen

00:45

fourteen The book was massive It ended up being eight

00:48

hundred pages So even by today's standards is a huge

00:52

book So it was hugely expensive to publish an entire

00:56

book especially one that's hundred pages were talking game of

01:00

thrones territory later on in the harry potter siri's territory

01:04

talk about banned books harry potter So instead of publishing

01:08

the entire book joyce started publishing little snippets of it

01:12

in literary not magazines they didn't have in literary journals

01:17

And readers were like l readers were like what is

01:23

this smut And they actually filed a lawsuit and who

01:27

in particular is But certain readers filed a lawsuit against

01:30

the publishers for printing of ulysses They rocks you like

01:34

brussels Horrible The publishers were cool with it Readers were

01:39

the ones who were outraged that it was lewd and

01:44

they demanded that just get rid of it Stop publishing

01:47

this They filed a lawsuit It was just super dramatic

01:52

In nineteen twenty joyce moved to france He was like

01:55

americans dollar proves and he moved to france And sylvia

01:59

beach who is the owner of the shakes shakespeare and

02:03

company bookstore decided to help print and distribute the full

02:08

eight hundred pages of the book which was awesome around

02:10

france So in nineteen twenty two is one Additions started

02:14

to be to come out and be published and circulated

02:16

But it was still illegal in britain and in the

02:19

u s a little hard to smuggle in an eight

02:22

hundred page book it's pretty thick But of course anything

02:25

that is kind of scandalous is going to be popular

02:29

Obviously so bootleggers started printing the book and circulating it

02:33

Illegally which is awful because then joyce made no money

02:37

from it And i mean at the time it's it's

02:40

not like he was making money from like going on

02:42

worldwide book signing tours with his lewd material or you

02:47

know being a speaking universities anything So that sucks If

02:52

you're at all familiar with joyce everyone knows that this

02:54

stuff is very long it's very complex reading to probably

02:59

like what's the big deal Like why was it banned

03:01

Well by today's standards it's not a big deal you

03:04

know you turn on the tv daytime tv have way

03:06

worse stuff but the reason his book was so famous

03:09

was because he focused on the gritty dirty details of

03:13

just normal natural day to day life So eating drinking

03:17

bowel movements you know much more personal activities if you

03:21

know what i mean The list goes on he just

03:24

covers all of it and it's your kind of growth

03:27

i'm sure but that humans they're gross I'm grove you're

03:32

gross those what we do natural mind However that was

03:37

a radical approach to storytelling at the time The books

03:41

american publisher purposefully very intentionally got a book out there

03:46

And had it confiscated and that way they got to

03:50

go to trial So they were like let's get our

03:53

day in court I want my se on this Luckily

03:57

turn out well for them in nineteen thirty for they

04:00

went to trial and judge john woolsey steamed it Permissible

04:05

He's like this book is fine He said that it

04:08

was fine because the like obscene bits were not lust

04:13

inducing so certain aspects of sexuality He i'm assuming he

04:18

probably would have been cool with but he just said

04:20

that the obscene bits in the book worm or vomit

04:24

inducing than anything Yet it's funny because he still praised

04:28

james joyce is writing style is writing in his writing

04:31

style and he said it's it's a very honest and

04:34

accurate depiction of just human thoughts and feelings and activities 00:04:40.488 --> [endTime] So yeah go him

Full Transcript